Kehinde Wiley was awarded the US State Department Medal of Arts on January 21st, 2015. The Secretary of State John Kerry awarded the medal to the American artist, in honor of his commitment to the US State Department's cultural diplomacy outreach through the visual arts. Wiley, who lives in between Beijing, Dakar and New York, perfectly embodies the international spirit of the award. In addition, the artist will be the subject of a major exhibition titled Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, that will be staged at the Brooklyn Museum, from February 20th to May 24th, 2015. The exhibition will then travel to the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, Texas (October 16th, 2015 - January 10th, 2016), the Seattle Art Museum, Washington (February 12nd, 2016 - May 8th, 2016) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia (June 3rd, 2016 - September 5, 2016).

Born in Los Angeles, Kehinde Wiley, a Yale University graduate, has made a name for himself with his very own take on history's portrait painting tradition, which is based on the clash between the aesthetics of contemporary culture and Old Masters. His large scale paintings depict young African-Americans in the style of European royals. By blending contemporary elements from the urban culture with iconic symbols of 17th to 19th century Western art, Wiley achieved to create outstanding artistic aesthetics. As a contemporary descendant of a long line of portraitists, Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic, and sublime in his representation of urban black and brown men found throughout the world.

Kehinde Wiley is represented by Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris.

Picture courtesy of Galerie Daniel Templon. Kehinde Wiley, Diarra Mohamed and Mohamed Konate, 2013, oil and acrylic on canvas, 234 x 234 cm, 92 x 92 in.