Nigerian artist Kehinde Wiley gets put Obama on display at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

NIGERIAN artist Kehinde Wiley has become one of the two first black artists to create official Smithsonian-commissioned portraits of a former US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.

Yesterday, Mr Wiley and Amy Sherald became the first black artists to create the two portraits, which now adorn the walls of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. President Barack Obama has paid tribute to the two artists, describing their work as humbling and saying it proves that odds can always be overcome.

President Obama said: "To call this experience humbling would be an understatement.  That's because, as a former president, when you choose an artist to describe your likeness, you have the opportunity to shape, quite literally, how someone sees the office of the American presidency and how they might see themselves in that presidency.

"Kehinde Wiley and I share some things in common as both of us had an American mother who raised us, an African father who was absent from our lives and a search to figure out just where we fit in. I wrote a book about that journey because I can't paint but I suspect a lot of Kehinde's journey is reflected in his art."

According to the former president, he was struck by the way his portraits challenge the way people view power and privilege. He added that the arts have always been central to the American experience as they provoke thought, challenge assumptions and shape how people define their narrative as a country.

"Thanks to Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, generations of Americans and young people from all around the world  will visit the National Portrait Gallery and see this country through a new lens. These works upend the notion that there are worlds where African Americans belong and worlds where we don't and that's something Michelle and I hope we contributed to over the eight years we were so privileged to serve you from the White House.

"They'll walk out of that museum with a better sense of the America we all love, clear-eyed, big-hearted, inclusive and optimistic.  I hope they'll walk out more empowered to go and change their worlds," President Obama added.