When UK artist Santigold’s (fun fact: Santi rhymes with monty) album, Master of My Make-Believe, dropped earlier this month, many people were struck by the album cover. In a recent interview withKehinde Wiley, the designer of this fascinating cover, Dazed Digital got Wiley to speak on the cover’s conception and on his new exhibit, “An Economy of Grace.” Particularly interesting are the parallels Wiley draws between his work and Santigold’s:

Santi and I are both concerned with decentralising a certain aesthetic taste. Our influences are also similar, pulling from places like Brazil, West Africa, and Sri Lanka. Aesthetically Santi and myself both have an abiding interest in finding parallels between cultures and genres.

This aesthetic of decentralizing is definitely apparent in Santigold’s album cover. In it, disparate art styles and aesthetics are juxtaposed and shown to be both starkly different and surprisingly compatible. For the full interview and a complete look at the new exhibit, click here and here.

The post Interview: Kehinde Wiley Speaks on Santigold’s Album Cover and New Exhibit appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

SOFIA MALDONADO, Concrete Jungle Divas, 2010

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL will be running an exhibit this summer celebrating hip-hop culture. “Beyond Bling: Voices of Hip-Hop in Art” will feature contemporary works that have managed to incorporate marked influences from hip-hop and street culture in order to address the question of “what it means to speak with a historically urban voice in this age of advanced globalization.” The exhibit will include works from artists Michael Anderson, Iona Rozeal Brown, Vince Fraser, Gajin Fujita, Luis Gispert, Sofia Maldonado, Nadine Robinson, Mickalene Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley. Visitors are eligible to receive discounted admission every thursday 5pm–8pm: $10 adults / $5 children 17 and under. Exhibit will run until August 14th.

To read more, check out the exhibit’s Facebook.

Photo via Ringling

The post “Beyond Bling: Voices of Hip-Hop in Art” Exhibit at Florida Art Museum appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.