Kehinde Wiley | The World Stage: Israel | The Jewish Museum NYC

   i saw the kehinde wiley exhibit at the jewish museum this past thursday. i did not think that i would like it as much as i had.
kehinde wiley is a black man who has made paintings of men of color who have been influenced by american black hip hop culture around the world. one of the countries that he has gone to was israel . he was particularly  fascinated by ethiopian jews in israel.
 this is an exhibit about  israelis and was made in conjunction with the jewish musem of new york city.   the paintings are large and they meld together ashkenazic , sephardic and ethopian jewish cultures.
the exhibit displays paintings as well as torah ark curtains and religious oriented papercuts . wiley incorporated patterns from these very ashkenazic jewish items into the portraits of ethiopian jewish israelis. above each painting is a mini torah ark with lions . for the jewish men portrayed the ten commandments are written and for the israeli arab portraits there is the rodney king mantra  "why can't we all just get along" written in hebrew. the melding of all the different cultures in each painting is quite beautiful. this video that i have posted is also at the exhibit . when i viewed the exhibit there was a free tour . it was quite detailed and without it i would not have understood as much of the hidden meaning of each painting as there is not much text in this exhibit. unfortunately the tour is only given  on weekdays . perhaps the artist wanted the paintings to speak for themselves.
even if you do not see a guided tour of this exhibit it is still worthwhile to view it.