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The newest person to pay homage to Virgil Abloh’s rich legacy is the young black painter, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe. His portrait of Abloh now appears on the cover of a newly released special issue of Teen Vogue.
Quaicoe who was born in Ghana but now based in Accra and Portland, Oregon, creates strong images of Black people who in most cases stare back at their viewers. Rendered in shades of black, grey, and white, Quaicoe’s subjects are typically pictured against the warmly colored background that is left thick and textural, emphasizing their forms. In a 2021 interview, the artist said that he arrived at this style in an attempt to “appreciate the skin tone of Blackness—the beauty of Blackness—and to appreciate and accept who we are.”
On the Teen Vogue cover, Abloh is shown wearing a green jacket on top of a red-orange zip-up sweatshirt. Abloh looks out longingly at the viewer, his eyes containing hints of the hues seen on the sweatshirt. Teen Vogue said it chose Quaicoe for the project because Abloh was the son of Ghanaian parents.
