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I mean, the radical contingency that is - that exists and the fact that I'm going into the streets and finding random strangers any given day - who's in these streets that day?

Kehinde Wiley

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Kehinde Wiley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 28
Painter
LA
California
Facts
Radical
Mean
Stranger
Going
Exists
Findings
Finding
Streets
Contingency
Fact
Random
Given
Strangers

More quotes by Kehinde Wiley

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Believing that navel-gazing in and of itself can transform itself into something that means something for society. I mean, we are communicative creatures. We desire to sort of understand each other's experiences and points of view. Storytelling is what painting, literature, filmmaking is all about.
Kehinde Wiley
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I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.
Kehinde Wiley
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I've had moments where I've met people who were complete, like, idiots, who could not understand visual culture to save their lives.
Kehinde Wiley
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I actually studied cooking and, like, was thinking about becoming a chef.
Kehinde Wiley
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I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience, this is how I have come to the paintings I do now.
Kehinde Wiley
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I love the idea of engaging religious sentiment and how that vocabulary has evolved over time.
Kehinde Wiley
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As a twin, I operate with twin desires.
Kehinde Wiley
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He's a great - he's a great professor. He retired recently, but.But Peter Halley as well.
Kehinde Wiley
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[My parents] met in university back in the '70s. And I didn't grow up with my father. He - they separated before I was born.
Kehinde Wiley
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I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio.
Kehinde Wiley
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Mel [Bochner] sets a very high standard. He expects only the best and most thoughtful and rigorous examinations, not only of the history of art but your own practice.
Kehinde Wiley
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There's something really cool about being able to fly to South Africa and watch one of the most talented African footballers wearing a shoe on the field.
Kehinde Wiley
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What's great about it is that painting doesn't move. And so in the 21st century, when we're used to clicking and browsing and having constant choice, painting simply sits there silently and begs you to notice the smallest of detail.
Kehinde Wiley
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I enjoy Chicago as one of the great American cities. When I come here and take a taxi from the airport, I meet a young man from Somalia. I meet a young man from Eritrea who engages with this nation with a sense of hope and a sense of desire. But we also we know that there are other elements of this nation that are toxic.
Kehinde Wiley
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You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations.
Kehinde Wiley
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The ability to look at certain patterns with regards to urban fashion, with regards to swagger, with regards to cultural hegemony, with regards to the ways in which young people look at resistance culture as a pattern that should be mimicked and admired.
Kehinde Wiley
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I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where people are in cars.
Kehinde Wiley
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It was something that came sort of matter-of-factually. Because there - it's like really - real honest engagement with the people around me and just like really honestly being a little bit confused, quite frankly, about Harlem.
Kehinde Wiley
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We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.
Kehinde Wiley
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At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing your father for the first time - my mother destroyed all pictures of him.
Kehinde Wiley