Creation of God

Rosales presents the first human as a Black woman formed from the clay of the earth, the reddish-brown markings of her new body echoing the rusty land around her. The first woman Eve reaches for God’s life-giving touch. In another moment God will imbue her with energy, also known as the life-force, or asé. One cannot help but notice God is depicted as a strong Black woman, her protective pink covering forming a womb around the twelve nude figures. In the artist’s words, “…when you consider that all human life came out of Africa, the Garden of Eden and all, then it only makes sense to paint God as a black woman, sparking life in her own image.”

By subverting Michelangelo’s well-known fresco, Rosales paints Black female empowerment into history, and simultaneously challenges hegemonic systems of belief. Created for her first solo exhibition Black Imaginary To Counter Hegemony in 2017, the painting visualizes Rosales’s underlying challenge throughout her body of work: “Why have we accepted Eurocentric perceptions of beauty and historical narratives for so long?”

Exhibitions