Wonklife

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Wiley likes to keep his intentions ambiguous, comparing himself to the two-faced Nigerian trickster god Eshu. Does the decision to paint an anonymous black man (or Ice T) posing like Napoleon constitute an act of social justice that gives African-Americans their rightful place in the Western pantheon? Yes. Is it a mockery of the pantheon itself and anyone who would wish to be in or buy into it? That too. “As an artist and a student of history,” he says, “you have to be at once critical and complicit, to take a stance that says, ‘Yes, I’m in love with this magic, this way of painting, but damn it’s fucked up.’