Abed Al Ashe And Chaled El Awari 2011

Kehinde Wiley made this painting, Abed Al Ashe And Chaled El Awari, using oil on canvas to bring together the everyday and the extraordinary. The tight rendering of skin tones and clothing contrasts with the flat, decorative background, and I just love how Wiley fearlessly mixes it all up. Check out the patterned background; it's like wallpaper on steroids. Then, those floral embellishments crawling over their shorts, like vines claiming new territory. It's this tension that grabs me—the real versus the staged, the personal versus the historical. Wiley is in conversation with artists like Van Dyke or Titian, those old masters who painted portraits of power and privilege. He flips the script by placing young, contemporary men of color in these traditionally formal poses. He is reimagining who gets to be seen, valued, and immortalized on canvas. It's about visibility, representation, and owning art history.