Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of sexual assault and harassment. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
Kehinde Wiley, the widely known artist who painted Barack Obama’s official portrait held at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, has been formally accused of sexual assault in a complaint filed in New York County earlier this year, as first reported by the Independent.
Artist Ogechi Chieke accused Wiley in a February lawsuit of forcibly touching her at a dinner following a New York City art show the two had attended in 2007. Chieke was initially flattered by Wiley’s interest in her work, but as the two waited for a table for dinner, he allegedly grabbed Chieke’s vagina and made unwanted comments, the lawsuit claims.
Wiley’s lawyers, Jennifer Barrett and Jaqueline Stykes, and his gallery, Sean Kelly, have not yet responded to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries. The artist previously denied the accusations in a February statement to the Independent, stating that “there is no truth to Ms. Chieke’s allegations” and that he had never met his accuser.
A woman by the same name as the plaintiff and Wiley are pictured standing next to each other at an event titled “Shaken, Not Deterred” on February 14, 2007, according to a photograph on Getty Images.
According to the new suit, Wiley told Chieke he “would lick that p***y so clean” while forcibly touching her, causing Chieke to leave the restaurant distraught before the dinner began. Chieke was so traumatized from the incident, the lawsuit said, that she quit working in the fine art world and moved to California. Chieke’s lawyers asked the court to grant Chieke “compensatory damages” for emotional distress and attorneys’ fees as well as other relief that could be determined during a jury trial.
Chieke’s attorneys, Eric Baum and Reyna Lubin, told Hyperallergic that they invoked a provision of New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law that created a two-year “lookback” period for survivors to file claims considered to be outside of the statute of limitations.
The “lookback” provision expired on February 28, Chieke’s lawyers said, the same day the lawsuit was filed in the County of New York.
“In this case, it allowed survivors of gender-motivated violence to file claims that might otherwise have been too old to pursue in court,” Baum and Lubin told Hyperallergic.
The complaint comes in the wake of at least four allegations against Wiley made on social media, all of which he vehemently denied. Last May, Ghanaian artist Joseph Awuah-Darko accused Wiley of sexually assaulting him twice, including at a June 2021 dinner for Ghana’s Creative Art Council, where Awuah-Darko said Wiley groped him and made unwanted comments. The second alleged assault was “much more severe and violent,” Awuah-Darko said, but did not provide additional details.
In a statement Wiley shared with Hyperallergic at the time of the allegation, Wiley said: “Someone I had a brief, consensual relationship with is now making false, disturbing, and defamatory accusations about our time together.” On Instagram, Wiley said Awuah-Darko’s claims were “baseless and defamatory.”
In the weeks following Awuah-Darko’s post, three more individuals made public allegations, which Wiley also unequivocally denied. Activist Derrick Ingram said on Instagram that he had been raped by Wiley in 2021 at his Soho apartment during a four-month relationship with the artist. Ingram also accused Wiley of “extreme violence,” including punching him in an Uber. In another statement, filmmaker and curator Nathaniel Lloyd Richards said Wiley groped him in 2019 at a Beijing sushi restaurant. A fourth person, photographer Terrell Armistead, accused Wiley in June of groping and sexually assaulting him in 2010, claims that Wiley denied.
In response to the accusations, art museums including Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Joslyn Art Museum in Nebraska halted plans to display Wiley’s artwork.
Wiley and his attorneys have until May 1 to respond to the complaint, according to Chieke’s lawyers.