Purchasing merchandise from the store is one thing, and getting your hands on the limited editions from your favorite artist like Kehinde Wiley is another. Kehinde Wiley’s store has ever been growing with items wearing his invaluable painting either from an exhibition or another colossal event. These can serve as a wonderful gift for art lovers this Easter or you may just purchase them for yourself to remind you that paintings can serve different purposes.
In this article, we have listed a few of our favorite merchandise Kehinde Wiley has put out to the world.
1. DEATH OF HYACINTH PLAYING CARDS
This deck of cards features Kehinde Wiley’s 2022 painting titled The Death of Hyacinth (Ndey Buri Mboup), first exhibited in Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence at Foundazione Giorgio Cini in 2022, as a collateral event of the 59th international art exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Expanding on Kehinde Wiley’s body of work DOWN from 2008, which was initially inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb as well as historical paintings and sculptures of fallen warriors and figures in the state of repose, Wiley created an unsettling series of prone Black bodies, re-conceptualizing classical pictorial forms to create a contemporary version of monumental portraiture, resounding with violence, pain, and death, as well as ecstasy.
2. WORLD STAGE: JAMAICA COLORING BOOK
This 32-page coloring book includes 15 ready to be colored-in works from Kehinde Wiley’s 2013 exhibition The World Stage: Jamaica. First exhibited at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, Wiley, using his notorious street casting method, places contemporary Jamaican natives in heroic poses that reference directly from 17th and 18th century British portraiture and feature background patterns inspired by British textiles. The body of works offers a corrective to the omission of the black figure from art history and specifically comments on the nature of the relationship between the United Kingdom and its former colonial holding. Wiley’s exhibition The World Stage: Jamaica is part of a broader project titled “The World Stage,” which presents portraits of black and brown men and women the artist met in China, Brazil, Nigeria, Haiti, Israel, and India.
- -8.5″x11″
- -15 illustrated works to color-in
- -Soft-touch, coated paper finish
- -Recommended mediums: non-bleed markers and wax or oil-based colored pencils
- -Suggested age use: 12 yrs +
3. MORPHEUS BASKETBALL AND STAND
This limited edition, 2023 leather basketball features Kehinde Wiley’s 2008 painting Morpheus, reimagined from the Jean-Antoine Houdon 1777 marble sculpture of the same name. Featured in the 2008 exhibition “Down” at Deitch Projects, the series references and re-conceptualizes classic pictorial forms of heroism in the face of death. Morpheus features a model from Brooklyn, lain across a white sheet while florals from the background spring into life around his body. Unlike its 18th century counterpart, he addresses onlookers with direct eye contact and a seductive look of invitation, with the repeating floral background protruding into the foreground.
- Regulation size, premium leather basketball in monogrammed cotton dust bag.
- Heavy lucite basketball stand with beveled edges and engraved, Kehinde Wiley signature.
4. NOTES ON BLUE SILK SCARF
This limited edition silk twill scarf features Kehinde Wiley’s 2021 painting titled Portrait of Aissatou Dialo Gueye II, which is from the body of work that Kehinde developed during the period of COVID-19 in 2020. Kehinde spent this time in quarantine at Black Rock Sénégal, the artist compound and residency program he founded in 2019 on the coast of Dakar, Sénégal. In the absence of any ability to follow his traditional streetcasting methods, which enable him to find models at random on the streets of New York and many other international cities around the world, Kehinde decided to focus on the people and friends of people immediately surrounding him in Dakar. As Kehinde describes them, “What follows are a series of portraits that I might consider friends and family of Black Rock.”
Aissatou Dialo Gueye works at Black Rock Sénégal. She is posed here wearing a dress by Senegalese designer Sarah Diouf, who is also a good friend and collaborator of Black Rock. The background pattern, which features flowering fruit trees and vines, references a British textile originally produced by Liberty and Co. in London at the turn of the 20th century. The scarf is made from Italian silk twill with the image printed on both sides and is presented in a monogrammed rigid box, wrapped in branded tissue paper.
- 36 x 36 in. (91 x 91 cm).
- Printed on both sides.
5. GRACE CANDLE
The Grace Candle is titled after Kehinde Wiley’s exhibition An Economy of Grace, the artist’s first-ever series dedicated to female subjects which celebrates the strength and beauty of Black femininity. This limited edition candle is inspired by Wiley’s portrait Dacia Carter II (2012) which features model Dacia Carter against a backdrop of rich greenery and luscious pink flowers. It offers an exquisite blend of woody, green fig fragrance that has been mixed with a base of cedar wood and pink peppercorn to produce a complex and harmonious scent.
