Calida Rawles
Pérez Art Museum Miami
June 27, 2024 – January 12, 2025
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents an exhibition featuring all new works by painter CALIDA RAWLES. This is the artist’s first museum solo exhibition, and reflects aspects of Miami’s diverse communities, natural environments, and rich history.
Calida Rawles’ paintings blend hyperrealism with poetic abstraction, situating her subjects in dynamic spaces. Her recent work utilizes water as a vital, organic, and multifaceted element—as well as a historically charged space which concomitantly represents individual healing and racial exclusion.
“I am so inspired by the Overtown community’s resilience and strength. Through my work, I hope to shine new light on the beauty and untold stories of its residents. I’m immensely grateful to Franklin Sirmans and Maritza Lacayo for supporting my vision and giving me the opportunity to engage so meaningfully with this incredible community,“ said Calida Rawles.
For the exhibition, Calida Rawles bridges the past and the present. Delving into the experience of Black people in America, Rawles partnered with members of the historically Black community of Overtown in Miami. Akin to Tremé in New Orleans, the Historic West End in Charlotte, and countless other neighborhoods in the United States, Overtown transformed from a thriving cultural and commercial hub for Black people to a town subjected to gentrification, systemic racism, and mass displacement. The new paintings seek to illuminate and celebrate the history, resilience, and beauty of the historically Black Miami neighborhood, giving shape to an American experience that is often overlooked.
“It is extremely exciting to work with Rawles on her first museum solo presentation. While Rawles’s signature style will be present, she is also pushing her boundaries and working in natural waters for the first time, resulting in paintings with a new color composition and feel,” said PAMM Assistant Curator Maritza Lacayo.
Calida Rawles’ process begins with a series of preliminary photoshoots in Virginia Key Beach and a public pool in Overtown, which form the subject matter for the lifelike paintings. By photographing Black subjects in an ocean for the first time, Rawles interrogates the Atlantic Ocean's history as the site of the supremely exploitative Transatlantic Slave Trade. As a result, the finished work critically engages with Miami’s water-entwined climate, while connecting to larger histories of beauty, oppression, and persistence in contemporary American life.
CALIDA RAWLES
Calida Rawles received a B.A. from Spelman College, Atlanta, GA (1998) and an M.A. from New York University, New York, NY (2000). Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY (2021); Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA (2020); and Standard Vision, Los Angeles, CA (2020). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including Generation*. Jugend trotz(t) Krise, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany (2023); Rose in the Concrete, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2023); 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2022); Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2021), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2023); A Shared Body, FSU Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL (2021); View From Here, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2020); Art Finds a Way, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2020); Visions in Light, Windows on the Wallis, Beverly Hills, CA (2020); Presence, Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA (2019); With Liberty and Justice for Some, Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Sanctuary City: With Liberty and Justice for Some, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA (2017); LACMA Inglewood + Film Lab, Inglewood, CA (2014); and Living off Experience, Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY (2002). Rawles created the cover art for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, “The Water Dancer,” and her work is in numerous public and private collections, including Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.
PAMM - Pérez Art Museum Miami
1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, FL 33132
