The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar was Kehinde Wiley’s (b. 1977) first solo exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem and featured ten new paintings from his multinational “The World Stage” series.

Organized by Christine Y. Kim, young Black men mimic historical public sculptures from Dakar, Senegal, and Lagos, Nigeria. The series brings into focus African youth in both cities, and highlights local representations of power and calls attention to the ways that black youth seek to represent themselves outside of colonial and national modes of representation, often by turning to African diasporic forms such as hip-hop to gain visibility outside dominant visual regimes.