Master Narrative
Mar 10 - Jun 4, 2023
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Memphis, TN
Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative features twenty paintings by the Los Angeles based artist Harmonia Rosales (b. Chicago, 1984), who seamlessly entwines the tales and characters of the Afro-Cuban Lucumí religion, Greco-Roman mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of European Old Masters. Through her vibrant and visceral paintings, she challenges the concept of the master narrative in a way that collapses the passing of millennia and bridges the vastest of oceans. For Rosales, storytelling is a journey of personal discovery and a reclamation of one’s cultural identity as a means of survival. She asks us to consider the universality of creation, tragedy, resilience, and transcendence through a Black diasporic lens.
Exhibition Images
Featured Artworks
Press
Funded by a group of anonymous donors, the $5 million Blackmon-Perry fellowship establishes a permanent rotating position for a young curator of color while also providing money for exhibitions and regular purchases of works by contemporary and historic Black artists from around the world…
Apr 12, 2022
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At a young age, Harmonia Rosales fell in love with the Renaissance masters who wove tales from Greco-Roman mythology and Christianity in their paintings. “They tell a full story, corner to corner, like a children’s book where you don’t have to really have the text,” she says. “You can almost look at the image and know this is what happened [...]"
Mar 15, 2023
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An exhibition of detailed and luminously colored paintings in the Renaissance style that has “taken the art world by storm” is now on display at the Brooks...
Mar 31, 2023
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Now on exhibit at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the large 2017 painting "The Birth of Oshun" depicts a beguiling Black woman perched atop a large scalloped shell that appears to have risen from the sea. She is flanked by what appear to be similarly otherworldly men and women, floating among peacock feathers and flower-patterned fabric...
Apr 10, 2023
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Talks
Harmonia Rosales: MASTER NARRATIVE
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art
Mar 10, 2023A conversation between Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales and exhibition curator Dr. Patricia Daigle, MBMA Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative.