Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative
This vibrant catalogue presents the work of contemporary artist Harmonia Rosales. Featuring over twenty paintings and a monumental sculptural installation, Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative is the artist’s first major touring exhibition and first scholarly catalogue of her work.
Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales (b. Chicago, 1984) rewrites the canon, or the master narrative of art history, from the perspective of an Afro-Cuban American woman in the twenty-first century. Her canvases seamlessly weave the tales and characters rooted in West African Yorùbá religion, Greek mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of the European Renaissance. Through her visual storytelling, Rosales presents the notion of human and cultural survival on her own terms – one that highlights the beauty and strength of Black people, particularly women, while touching upon grand narratives of creation, tragedy, survival and transcendence.
This beautifully illustrated publication includes a catalogue of works in the exhibition, a biography of the artist and new essays by noted scholars in their fields. These essays explore themes ranging from storytelling and narrative to gender and depiction of beauty to race and diaspora.
By Patricia Lee Daigle
Paperback, 250 x 200 mm
96 pages, approx. 30 colour illus.
ISBN: 978-1-913645-50-2
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Patricia Lee Daigle is Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She previously served as Director of the Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis and Curatorial Assistant in Contemporary Art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Rosamund Garrett is Chief Curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, where she previously served as Curator of European and Decorative Art. Prior to this, she worked as Bridget Riley Art Foundation Curatorial Assistant at the Courtauld Gallery, London. She received her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Efeoghene Igor Coleman is the Blackmon Perry Curatorial Fellow in African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She previously served as Assistant Director of Academic Engagement at the Guggenheim Museum. She is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Yale University.
Sophia Quach McCabe is an independent curator and scholar; she was supporting curator of the exhibition Harmonia Rosales: Entwined at the Art, Architecture and Design Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she served as Academic Coordinator. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Natalie McCann is the Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Columbia University.
Helen Morales is the Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was lead curator of the exhibition Harmonia Rosales: Entwined at the Art, Architecture and Design Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (Newnham College).
Exhibition Details
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee
March – June 2023
Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta
August – December 2023
In the press
"An artistic mic drop of conceit and execution." —Forbes
"breathtaking paintings" —The Memphis Flyer
"exhibition of detailed and luminously colored paintings" —Daily Memphian"first scholarly collection of Rosales’ work" —The Current (UC Santa Barbara)