Kehinde Wiley

Regard the Class Struggle as a Main Link in the Chain, 2007
Oil and enamel on canvas
8 x 6 feet
Collection Miami Art Museum, museum purchase with funds from the MAM Collectors Council

MAM has acquired a monumental painting by rising art star Kehinde Wiley through the Collectors Council.  Wiley gained international attention for his Passing/Posing series, in which he recruited residents from New York's Harlem to enact poses they selected from paintings reproduced in art history books.  With virtuoso technique, Wiley inserted Harlem residents into canonical Western portraiture, critiquing the omission or misrepresentation of people of African ancestry and critiquing the ways racism and sexism converge in stereotypes. 

The pose in Regard the Class Struggle as a Main Link in the Chain comes from a Social Realist painting of one of the "Iron Women" used to promote gender equality during China's Cultural Revolution.  The painting's subject is positioned gracefully amid an ultra-saturated flurry of decorative motifs, including flowers, butterflies, and a delicate filigree pattern, confounding stereotyped expectations of black maleness with traditionally feminine elements.

After receiving a B.F.A from the San Francisco Art Institute, Wiley completed his graduate studies at Yale University.  Shortly after earning an M.F.A., he was granted a position as artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Wiley has had solo shows at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York and has been included in numerous group shows.  His work can be found in such public collections as the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. He is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant.