Current Exhibition

Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative

Dates: August 18 – December 2, 2023

Location: Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA

“[I]f one could make a people lose touch with their capacity to create, lose sight of their will and their power to make art, then the work of subjugation, of colonization, is complete. Such work can be undone only by acts of concrete reclamation.” -bell hooks, Art on My Mind, 1995

Cultural reclamation permeates Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative, an exhibition of twenty paintings and a large scale sculptural installation by the Los Angeles-based Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales who seamlessly entwines the tales and characters of the Yorùbá religion, Greco-Roman mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of European Old Masters. Master Narrative opens at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art on Friday, August 18, following its presentation at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

 

Harmonia Rosales, DINIS DIAS': Land of the Negros, 2022. Oil, fabric, iron oxide, and 24k gold on Belgian linen mounted on wood panel, 36 x 72 in., Private collection

The installation in this exhibition is Rosales’s first foray into sculpture and depicts her own version of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling stretched across the hull of an overturned slave ship that hovers above the viewer. 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.“We are fortunate to have Harmonia Rosales’ first traveling solo museum exhibition at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Rosales’ work confronts the concept of a master narrative through imagery that is both beautiful and challenging. Her masterfully-rendered paintings and a large-scale installation will engage AUC students and the general public,” said Executive Director Liz Andrews.

 

Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, the first monograph for the artist, published by Paul Holberton Press. The exhibition opens to the public on August 18.

About Harmonia Rosales

 

Harmonia Rosales (b. 1984, Chicago, Illinois) is an Afro-Cuban American artist currently based in Los Angeles, California. Her exquisite canvases navigate and question received narratives from ancient myths, Biblical stories, classical antiquity, and Afro-Cuban culture, while challenging Eurocentric perceptions of beauty. Her work has been shown in various group and solo exhibitions including Femme Touch(2020) at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Miss Education: Reclaiming Our Identity (2020) at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn, and most recently Harmonia Rosales: Entwined(2022) at the Art, Architecture & Design Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrativeis organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara.To learn more, please visit harmoniarosales.art or @honeiee on social media

PROGRAMMING

Opening Day - August 18, 2023

Click the Image to RSVP to the Opening Reception
Join us for an artists talk at 7pm in the Cosby Auditorium between Harmonia Rosales and Arturo Lindsay, August 18, 2023.

Resources

Harmonia Rosales Master Narrative by Patricia Lee Daigle
Santeria Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art by Arturo Lindsay
The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts by Baba Ifa Karade
Afro-Cuban Tales by Lydia Cabrera
A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See by Tina M. Campt
Afro-Cuban Myths by Romulo Lachatanere

Books are available for students to view in the Woodruff Library.

Books are also available to purchase in the Spelman College Bookstore on campus

 or at 

44th and 3rd Bookseller in the West End.

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