The purpose of this study has been to compare Kehinde Wiley’s work to the european counterparts that inspired them from a postcolonial feminist perspective. I wanted to examine their relationship and what they communicate. To do this I asked these questions: How are men and women portrayed? What do their body language tell us? Of what significance are clothes and accessories? How is the room depicted and what meaning does it hold? To answer these questions I used semiotic analysis. I have focused on Kehinde Wiley’s work The World Stage: Haiti which depicts Haitian black women. In the analysis four pieces of Kehinde Wiley’s paintings and their european counterparts were used.

The history of arts have at large ignored the black face placing her in the background as slave or servant. Kehinde Wiley attempts through his work to give black people a rightful place in the history of art. He makes his portraits large and magnificent to be fit for the grand halls. These halls have long been dominated by art with white faces. He manages to make visible the often difficult to see domination of white faces in art. Through his paintings he opens up for dialogue about art history and history itself. He opens our eyes to how colonial times have effected and still effects our society. He questions and brings to the light these issues.