A striking canvas, Passing/Posing (St Thomas), belongs to Kehinde Wiley’s ebullient series of large-scale portraits which featured in the artist’s breakthrough exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, 2004. Dressed in everyday clothing, Wiley’s larger-than-life figures blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation, forcing a critical consideration of the codified portrayal of black masculinity. The title Passing/Posing refers to the tension created by the need to attain the privilege and power traditionally associated with whiteness and the desire to preserve one’s identity and define oneself as an individual. It also alludes to Kehinde Wiley’s specific efforts to redefine and affirm black identity through a new style of portraiture: the depiction of young men from the streets of Harlem as saints and angels, in poses inspired by Renaissance and Baroque paintings.

Wiley’s subjects—dressed in their everyday clothing—seem to float over flat, brightly colored backgrounds that suggest infinite space, the intricate design of the background reminiscent of Islamic and French Rococco wallpaper. The protagonists are transformed into icons of beauty and desire in a surrounding of elegance and wealth. In creating these monumental paintings, the artist borrows poses, imagery, and titles from works by the Italian master painters Titian and Tiepolo, as well as the British artists Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. A contemporary descendent of such classic masters of portraiture, Wiley engages the visual rhetoric of heroism to explore pressing issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality, highlighting the absence of black voices in the canon of art history.