Kehinde Wiley features in 'NAOMI: In Fashion'
Kehinde Wiley’s painting Portrait of Naomi Campbell is included in the 2024 exhibition NAOMI: In Fashion, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition explores the extraordinary career of Naomi Campbell, celebrating her creative collaborations, activism and far-reaching cultural impact through the work of artists, photographers and designers.
In Wiley’s painting, Campbell strikes a powerful, heroic pose once favoured by European nobility: in half-profile with horse-reins in hand. She gazes confidently at the viewer in front of a lavish floral background, with light bouncing off her dark skin in a style reminiscence of neo-classicism. Animated with stark visual and cultural juxtapositions, Campbell is presented as an emblem of strength within a complex socio-political framework.
The composition and the subject’s stance reference a Ca. 1635 work by Spanish court painter Deigo Velazquez, Equestrian Portrait of Elisabeth of France. By employing the heroic visual vocabulary of European portraiture to depict a contemporary Black woman, Wiley distils a complex dialogue about race and identity in a post-colonial age.
The artist explains: “Art history is a heavy burden to carry on your shoulders and as opposed to running away from that burden, I turn that burden into the subject of my work”.
