Somaya Critchlow // Paintings

Critchlows portraits of Black women transform Western portraiture and conflate kitsch with tradition

Somaya Critchlows canvases and sketchbooks log an ongoing process of world building. The artist fashions these realms by drawing upon her expansive knowledge of picture-making traditions ranging from the Renaissance to the Rococo. In charting the ever-expanding dimensions of this female-dominated universe, Critchlow casually disarms the distinctions that inform concepts of high and low culture by uncovering the ways in which class and racial difference are routinely conflated. The voluptuous, self-possessed women who explore Critchlows fantasy landscapes and pensively occupy domestic interiors or otherwise blank pages owe as much to the aesthetics ofLove and Hip Hopas they do to Peter Paul Rubens, and thus prompt the viewer to consider the disparate ways in which we esteem these forms of cultureand the women they feature.

• Publisher:Skira (March 22, 2022)
• Language :English
• Hardcover :120 pages
• ISBN-10 :8857244814
• ISBN-13 :9788857244815
• Item Weight :1.41lbs