Kehinde Wiley
A Maze of Power – Morocco
The Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is devoting a solo show to Kehinde Wiley until June 15, 2025.
Fruit of a 12-year-long project, this exhibition highlights 11 monumental portraits of African heads of state, reinterpreted by one of the most influential artists of his generation. Through a bold and exploratory artistic approach, Kehinde Wiley questions the representation of power and reimagines its visual codes.
Following Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the artist began reflecting on the notion of presidential leadership. In 2012, he launched an ambitious project: to create a unique series of portraits showcasing African leaders. Over ten years, he traveled across the continent, working closely with several heads of state to craft compositions that reveal each leader’s singular vision of what it means to be an African head of state today. Inspired by the grandeur of aristocratic, royal, and military portraiture from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in Europe, Wiley weaves a visual narrative that captures the distinctive identities of these nations.
This project was initially presented at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (Paris, France) in September 2023 and then at the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar (Senegal).
The artist
Born in 1977 in Los Angeles, Kehinde Wiley lives and works in New York. Examining issues of racial and sexual identity, his works create collisions where art history and street culture come face to face. The artist makes eroticised heroes of the invisible, those traditionally banished from representations of power. His work reinterprets the vocabulary of power and prestige, part politically-charged critique, part an avowed fascination with the luxury and bombast of Western symbols of male domination.
