Kehinde Wiley, Exhibition, National Gallery, London: 10 December 2021-18 April 2022

Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977, Los Angeles) is best known for his portraits featuring Black sitters - as well as people from different ethnic backgrounds - in the traditional settings and poses of Old Master paintings, often donning contemporary streetwear. 

The resulting images pose questions about power, privilege and identity, while highlighting the absence or marginal role of Black figures in mainstream European art. 

This exhibition switches the focus from portrait to European landscape traditions and establishes a dynamic relationship between Wiley’s work and the National Gallery’s historical landscapes and seascapes by artists such as Claude, Friedrich, Turner and Vernet. Through five paintings and one six-channel digital film, the artist explores European Romanticism and its epic landscape scenes and, at the same time, looks into today's concerns relating to our interaction with nature, such as migration and climate change.