Edited with text by Maritza M. Lacayo. Foreword by Franklin Sirmans. Text by Regina R. Robertson, Enuma Okoro. Interview by Christine Y. Kim.
Rawles’ transcendent, hyperrealistic paintings of Black bodies in water reckon with the legacy of racial injustice
Published with Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Los Angeles–based artist Calida Rawles (born 1976) creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright, mysterious bodies of water. The water, itself a sort of character within the paintings, functions as an element that signifies both physical and spiritual healing, as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion. For her first solo museum show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Rawles creates a bridge between her signature style and a story within Miami’s history that is often ignored and obscured. She takes as her subject the residents of Overtown, a once prosperous Miami neighborhood dismantled by systemic racism and gentrification. For the first time, Rawles photographed her subjects submerged in water at the formerly segregated Virginia Key Beach. By taking photographs in situ, Rawles directly engages with the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow–era south and Miami’s own ecological history.
"On the Other Side of Everything" (2021) is reproduced from 'Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Artnet
Jennifer Piejko
When her subjects’ faces are visible they are smiling or serene. Anxieties dissolve in the water; their immersion resembling a baptism or purification ritual.
The New York Times
Hilarie M. Sheets
Rawles is known for her paintings of Black people floating, often singly or in pairs, in rippling watery landscapes, at once hyper-realistic and dreamily abstracted. The sparkly element symbolizes a space of both historical trauma — recalling the death and drowning of so many enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage in the Atlantic — and healing.
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“Thy Name We Praise” (2023) is reproduced from Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides, published to accompany the artist’s first solo museum show in America—on view at the Pérez Art Museum through February 2025. Specifically for this show, Rawles’ paintings depict residents of Miami's Overtown neighborhood—known as the Harlem of the South before it was bifurcated by the development of I-95—submerged in the formerly segregated waters of Virginia Key Beach. “Overtown continues to become further fragmented, but the heart and soul of the community is still there, beautiful and connected,” Rawles writes. “I wanted to capture that beauty holding together the fragmented. I’m excited and honored to create something that comes out of my time with the residents and the folks of Overtown. In one of the paintings, you can see light that has a spiritual element to it, that light coming through the fragmented body. This is a time for unity, mobilization, creativity and power. We are going to make it through, and these beautiful Black people, their culture and history are going to be honored.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 152 pgs / 63 color / 10 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $71 GBP £45.00 ISBN: 9781636811406 PUBLISHER: DelMonico Books AVAILABLE: 7/30/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by DelMonico Books. Edited with text by Maritza M. Lacayo. Foreword by Franklin Sirmans. Text by Regina R. Robertson, Enuma Okoro. Interview by Christine Y. Kim.
Rawles’ transcendent, hyperrealistic paintings of Black bodies in water reckon with the legacy of racial injustice
Published with Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Los Angeles–based artist Calida Rawles (born 1976) creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright, mysterious bodies of water. The water, itself a sort of character within the paintings, functions as an element that signifies both physical and spiritual healing, as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion.
For her first solo museum show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Rawles creates a bridge between her signature style and a story within Miami’s history that is often ignored and obscured. She takes as her subject the residents of Overtown, a once prosperous Miami neighborhood dismantled by systemic racism and gentrification. For the first time, Rawles photographed her subjects submerged in water at the formerly segregated Virginia Key Beach. By taking photographs in situ, Rawles directly engages with the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow–era south and Miami’s own ecological history.
