The Galerie Templon entrusted Communic’Art to create and produce the catalogue for the exhibition Tahiti by Kehinde Wiley.

Kehinde Wiley – American art scene star and official portrait painter of Barack Obama – is back in Paris. For his first Parisian exhibition since 2016 in the Petit Palais, Kehinde Wiley exhibited a new series of paintings as well as a video installation from May 18 to July 20 2019, which was based on his stay in Tahiti during the past year.

Wiley's new works relate to the Māhū of Tahiti, a traditional community in Polynesia of people of the third gender: between man and woman. The Māhū were shown great respect in their society before being excluded by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. Referring to and confronting the famous paintings by Paul Gauguin which also include subjects from the transgender community. The portraits of beautiful transgender Tahitian women by Wiley, however, are charged with historical connotations relating to colonialism and sexual objectification. Developing questions about masculine identity and virility already found in filigree in his previous portraits, these new works explore the question of identity from the angle of transformation and approach the artificial as a transcultural and unnatural phenomenon.

Over the past fifteen years, Kehinde Wiley has developed a remarkable body of work which, while questioning it, contributes to the canon of portrait art in Western art history. Wiley's meeting with Tahiti is a continuation of the artist's journeys through the contemporary world following his exploration of North America, South Asia and West Africa. The artist’s attention to Tahiti now provides an opportunity to re-examine France, its colonial history and its image through the prism of Gauguin's paintings. True to its approach, the exhibition presents a singular political and aesthetic perspective on the power of art to influence perceptions and to give visibility to forgotten figures in history.

To buy the exhibition catalogue: 

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