LibGuides: Harmonia Rosales: Reading List

Exhibition Description

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 Yorùbáreligion, 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.

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.

Click here to go to the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art's website.

Reading List

Afro-Cuban Myths by Romulo Lachatanere
"The essay "The Afro-Cuban Festival 'Day of the Kings'" by Fernando Ortiz, founder of Afro-Cuban studies, describes how, as in Brazil, Catholic priests and the colonial government as early as 1573 allowed and encouraged the African slaves to celebrate Epiphany, the Festival of the Three Kings...Free people joined in and the dances, music and costumes paraded by the various eyewitnesses demonstrate how early and how immense were the African contributions to what was to become the carnival of the African Diaspora.
Afro-Cuban Tales by Lydia Cabrera
The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World—of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own.
A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See by Tina M. Campt
Examining the work of contemporary Black artists who are dismantling the
white gaze and demanding that we see—and see Blackness in particular—anew. In A Black Gaze, Tina Campt examines Black contemporary artists who are shifting the very nature of our interactions with the visual through their creation and curation of a distinctively Black gaze.
Blk Art by Zaria Ware
ISBN: 9780063272415
A fun and fact-filled introduction to the dismissed Black art masters and models who shook up the world. Elegant. Refined. Exclusionary. Interrupted. The foundations of the fine art world are shaking. Beyoncé and Jay-Z break the internet by blending modern Black culture with fine art in their iconic music video filmed in the Louvre. Kehinde Wiley powerfully subverts European masterworks. Calls resonate for diversity in museums and the resignations of leaders of the old guard. It's clear that modern day museums can no longer exist without change--and without recognizing that Black people have been a part of the Western art world since its beginnings. Quietly held within museum and private collections around the world are hundreds of faces of Black men and women, many of their stories unknown. From paintings of majestic kings to a portrait of a young girl named Isabella in Amsterdam, these models lived diverse lives while helping shape the art world along the way. Then, after hundreds of years of Black faces cast as only the subject of the white gaze, a small group of trailblazing Black American painters and sculptors reached national and international fame, setting the stage for the flourishing of Black art in the 1920s and beyond. Captivating and informative, BLK ART is an essential work that elevates a globally dismissed legacy to its proper place in the mainstream art canon. From the hushed corridors of royal palaces to the bustling streets of 1920s Paris--this is Black history like never seen before.
The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts by Baba Ifa Karade
An introduction to the spiritual source of the beliefs and practices that have so profoundly shaped African American religious traditions.
Most of the Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas were from the Yoruba nation of West Africa, an ancient and vast civilization. In the diaspora caused by the slave trade, the guiding concepts of the Yoruba spiritual tradition took root in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States.
Harmonia Rosales by Patricia Lee Daigle
ISBN: 9781913645502
This vibrant catalogue presents the work of contemporary artist Harmonia Rosales. Featuring over twenty paintings and a monumental sculptural installation, Harmonia Rosales: master narrative is the artist's first major touring exhibition and first scholarly catalogue of her work. Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales (b. Chicago, 1984) rewrites the canon, or the master narrative of art history, from the perspective of an Afro-Cuban American woman in the twenty-first century. Her canvases seamlessly weave the tales and characters rooted in West African Yorùbá religion, Greek mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of the European Renaissance. 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. This beautifully illustrated publication includes a catalogue of works in the exhibition, a biography of the artist and new essays by noted scholars in their fields. These essays explore themes ranging from storytelling and narrative to gender and depiction of beauty to race and diaspora.
Santeria Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art by Arturo Lindsay (Editor)
"Gathers texts exploring the relationship between Santería and aesthetics. Essays by artists, scholars, and religious leaders are dedicated mostly to Cuba, with one essay on Brazil and others on various Caribbean artists... This work serves as a good introduction to the topic from a contemporary perspective. Profusely illustrated; contains a useful glossary of terms and generous notations." - Handbook of Latin American Studies

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