KEHINDE WILEY, an African-American artist, has gained attention for his vibrant, large-scale paintings that appear to mix urban hip-hop imagery with old-master portraiture. His subjects tend to be young black men in hoodies and jeans, who strike the confident poses of kings and aristocratic dandies against bright and ornate wallpaper-like backdrops. For his World Stage series, Mr Wiley has travelled the globe to paint portraits of black men from the streets of India, China, Brazil, Nigeria and Senegal. The most recent stop on this world tour was Israel, and his portraits of confident black Israeli Arabs and Jews are now on view at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum until May 27th.
Dressed in a black Obama T-shirt, black jeans and black high-top trainers, Mr Wiley describes some of the unique challenges of his Israel paintings. "How do you have a conversation about Israel without discussing Palestine?" He asks. "And who am I to have the conversation I'm trying to have?" He adds that his role as an outsider makes his job both easier and harder. "I can allow myself to be destabilised and find new histories."
As with his other World Stage paintings, these feature subjects Mr Wiley found through a method he calls "street casting": during his wanders around a new city he meets and talks to people—some strangers, some acquaintances—and invites some to model in his studio. Many of the portraits in this show are of Ethiopian Jews whose families immigrated to Israel in the 1980s and '90s during Israel-sponsored airlifts. Kalkidian Mashasda, an Ethiopian Jewish rapper from Tel Aviv, is in several portraits.
"Mostly I worked with friends of friends," Mr Wiley says. "I wanted to work with males, ages 18 to 35, who in some way were dealing with or challenging the anxiety and narcissism of youth-entertainment culture."