The World Stage: Africa at the Studio Museum

Kehinde Wiley paints almost life-sized portraits of young black men, mostly anonymous but occasionally famous, in their street clothes, posing against richly colored backgrounds. The catch? He usually asks his subjects to pick a pose from a painting by an Old Master. In the exhibition currently on view at the Studio Museum, he had his subjects in Lagos and Dakar mimic the poses of famous local statues. It’s a somewhat simple formal template that yields richly layered, utterly unique work.