Kehinde Wiley The World Stage: Haiti at Roberts & Tilton

Today (10/25) is the last day to see Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage:Haiti, the latest in his series of global portraits. For this exhibition he altered his usual process for finding subjects.

From the press release:

…Kehinde Wiley found beauty in Haiti bringing it to the forefront by creating his own beauty pageants, in the long tradition of pageant culture native to the region. In previous World Stage iterations, Wiley conducted his castings on the streets. With The World Stage:Haiti, he employed a different approach specific to the culture: open calls on the radio, posters around the streets of Jacmel, Jalouise and Port-au-Prince culminating in beauty pageants. Across the Caribbean, pageants serve as mass entertainment events, allowing locals to do more than exhibit poise, talent and physical beauty; pageants are a manifestation of collective cultural values. Wiley’s pageant winners were chosen randomly rather than through a judging process. By showing the pageant contestants paintings of European masters on which the new works would be based, Wiley deepened the connection between both place and era.

For a really fascinating look at his previous work and process, I recommend watching the recent PBS documentary Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace, available on their website (free).