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Wiley PassingPosing forPR 7x5

Kehinde Wiley, "Passing/Posing #15," 2002. Oil and enamel on canvas, 56 x 48 inches. Collection of RBC Wealth Management. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago © Kehinde Wiley

She became fascinated with the Japanese ganguro fashion culture, in which teenagers emulate African-American hip-hop celebrities by darkening their skin and bleaching their hair.

“She’s both flattered and perturbed by the Japanese teenagers’ obsession with African-American culture,” Stamey says, “and uses her artwork to address those conflicting reactions.”

Stamey is uniquely interested in brown’s work as she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Japanese American artist Roger Shimomura and in Wichita curated a number of African American art exhibitions. “The Human Touch exhibition happens to include multiple artists who I have incorporated in past projects, and the opportunity to re-engage with their work through this show is a treat,” she says.

Also based in Los Angeles, artist John Sonsini paints lush large-scale portraits of Latino day laborers whom he hires as models in his studio. “This is a very different kind of labor, one of stillness and patience rather than action and toil,” Stamey explains.

Sonsini will also speak at 7 p.m. to museum patrons Jan. 31 in the SMoCA Lounge, a talk co-sponsored by Bentley Projects, which will exhibit his work Feb. 1–23 at its downtown Phoenix gallery, 215 E. Grant St. The opening reception is Saturday, Feb. 9.

“I think that visitors to the exhibition will find in it a celebration of cultural and artistic diversity,” Stamey says. “More specifically, I think they will find that a number of the artists are challenging us to dismantle racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes and rethink many of the assumptions we hold about one another.”