Kehinde Wiley is one of the leading American artists to emerge in the last decade, ingeniously reworking the grand portraiture traditions and drawing attention to the dialectic between a history of aristocratic representation and the portrait as a statement of power and an individual’s sense of empowerment. The artist began his first series of portraits in the early 2000s during a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He set out to recast assertive and self-empowered young men from the neighborhood in the style and manner of traditional history painting.

I chose Dala Floda by Commercial Type as the title treatment due to its presentation of traditional letterforms in a modern style. Dala Floda is rooted in the typefaces of the Renaissance, but with the modern twist of stencil, and mirrors what Wiley sets out to achieve in his portraits. Cyan is used as the main color of the materials, drawing from the background of Wiley’s Saint John the Baptist.

When representing the artist’s name, I leaned into layering it with the intricate and highly stylized floral backgrounds of his portraits. In this way, the subject is brought forward and in some cases even obscures the title, building visual depth and intertwining Wiley’s name in his work.

Primary image

Kehinde Wiley. Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, 2013, American, b. 1977, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Colección Saorín & Sobrino. © Kehinde Wiley. Photo: Stephen White, Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery.