CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/1/2023

Celebrate Women's History!

Jordan Casteel’s Pretty in Pink (2019) is reproduced from Women’s History Month Staff Pick, Women Painting Women, published by DelMonico Books and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. This image “moves into the public sphere but retains a sense of the private,” curator Andrea Karnes writes. “It depicts a contemporary young Black woman on the New York City subway looking at her phone—beautiful and bedazzled, she is pictured with a pink outfit, eyeshadow, lipstick, embellished phone case and backpack. Although she is on an urban mass transit system normally associated with crowds, her isolation and close view suggest a metaphor for the modern condition, in which we are all zoomed into our phones, and social interaction is increasingly limited due to the Internet, social media, and the pandemic. Casteel is known for painting the everyday from her community and has discussed the idea of representing the unseen. Through her focus on shared interactions and conversations, she embraces the nuances of lived experience. ‘With access comes responsibility,’ Casteel has said to describe her visibility as an artist and why it is important for her to treat each subject with reverence and care.”