Kehinde Wiley’s Passing/Posing (The Reluctant Messiah), 2002, relays a sense of pride and grace as a young Black man confidently poses against an ornate decorative pink and silver background. Drawing inspiration from old masters such as Titian and Michelangelo, Wiley transforms ordinary individuals into monumental subjects reminiscent of the royal and ecclesiastical sitters of his predecessors. In the present example, a young man in a bright orange hoodie stands with his right hand outstretched and his left hand across his heart in a pose reminiscent of devotional Catholic paintings. A lush cyan reflects off his skin as he gazes out, his head encircled by a golden halo, in a brilliant collapse of the classical and the contemporary.
Once triggered by a mugshot of a Black man found on a neighborhood sidewalk, Wiley reflected on portraiture from the eighteenth century and noticed the stark contrast between portraits of the disempowered and those conveying divinity, heroism, and self-possession. This led him to consider the choices of bodily positioning in in portraits and how this can impart dramatically different connotations. This revelation fueled Wiley's desire to redefine the narrative, stating, “I was breastfed going to museums and wanting to be able to copy that language and get it right, and when it became my turn to play, I wanted the protagonist of that story to look like me. I wanted to occupy that field of power.”
“I'm talking about the body that I navigate the world with, the difference in the way it has been pictured historically and the way that it feels to taste it, to inhibit it, and to be reminded daily of the dissonance between its representation and its actuality as the subject matter of my work.”
—Kehinde Wiley
Wiley adopted what he calls “street casting” in his landmark series Passing/Posing, inviting young Black men, strangers on the street, to pose for his work. The series addresses the imbalance of power inherent in images such as police mugshots, rejecting the historically passive role of the sitter and instead opting to make subjects active participants with a degree of creative agency. Wiley encourages his models to go through art history books, look at the positions held by nobility and biblical figures in Renaissance and Baroque paintings, and choose a pose to emulate.
In Passing/Posing (The Reluctant Messiah), Wiley puts forth a grand-scale portrait loaded with reimagined historical references. The golden frame, traditionally symbolic of a sacred space, challenges Western European notions of grace. The present example combines this with mandala iconography drawn from Hinduism. Traditionally symbolic of a womb, the mandala here is surrounded by undulant sperm and faces with plumed caps or avian-like bodies. Passing/Posing (The Reluctant Messiah) serves as a testament to Wiley’s ability to fill a single canvas with profound meaning, challenging norms and inviting viewers to engage in a thoughtful exploration of societal narratives and personal identity.