Kehinde Wiley: A maze of power

Kehinde Wiley presents a news series of portraits depicting African heads of state. Begun confidentially in 2012, the project explores the staging of power. Wiley began considering the concept of presidential leadership at Barak Obama's election in 2008. He conceptualised his presidential project in 2012, and spent the next decade travelling Africa meeting and painting the heads of state. Exploring the history of aristocratic, royal and military portraiture in 17th - 18th and 19th-century Europe, Wiley created a composition that illustrates each leader's singular view of what it means to be a contemporary African leader.