Soly Cisse 2008

Curator: Soly Cisse. What grabs you first about this 2008 portrait by Kehinde Wiley? Editor: The gaze. Direct, slightly challenging, but… warm? It’s juxtaposed against this vibrant, almost dizzying backdrop, and embellished, almost vandalized t-shirt. There is something wonderfully unsettling there. Curator: Unsettling in what way? This work typifies Wiley’s signature style: an everyday person—here a man, Soly Cisse—rendered with the visual language of grand, historical portraiture. Wiley actively engages the politics of representation, replacing figures of power with those who are typically unseen in such settings. Editor: Exactly. He’s both elevated and… defaced. This contrast, is at the heart of it. Those almost cartoonish pictograms on the shirt of a man presented with regal confidence. It’s like two art histories colliding, shouting at each other from across time and cultures. Curator: The background is intriguing as well. Those vibrant swirling patterns are inspired by West African textiles, specifically Ankara fabrics, historically used to express identity and status. So, Wiley is not only placing this man into an art historical canon, but also rooting him in a very specific cultural context. Editor: Which of course plays into the idea of visibility and invisibility, who gets to be seen, who gets to be celebrated and what symbols elevate them? The decorative patterns, meant to celebrate, almost swallow him. It reminds me of those old Hollywood portraits, but then filtered through a modern, critical lens. It’s… layered, to say the least. Curator: I think Wiley also compels us to consider the institutions that bestow value on art and how those systems historically excluded people of color. By using this heroic scale for the figure, he confronts and disrupts those power structures. Editor: For me, the success of this portrait lies in its refusal to offer easy answers. It doesn't simply celebrate or critique; it invites a deeper look, questions historical assumptions, and lingers in that beautifully uncomfortable space in between. Curator: Absolutely. It's a dialogue, a visual argument presented with undeniable skill and a wink of rebellion. A gorgeous collision of worlds, leaving a rich feeling of curiosity and unsettled wonder.