Masha
Harmonia Rosales is an Afro-Cuban American who is redefining our understanding of classical art, and thus our origins—by repainting it in her own likeness.
And not just her likeness, but the likenesses of all WOC. The 33-year-old Chicago-based artist’s most recent project, called New Waworld Consciousness, is a rejection of the white male traditions of art and the portrayal of whiteness and superiority within those traditions.
New World Consciousness breaks down our assumed versions of both The Virgin Mary and of Eve by combining them into one black, female, entity. Rosales’ “The Creation of God,” a reimagining of Michelangelo’s “Adam,” replicates the original almost entirely…besides the fact that God is a black woman.
The artist’s goal, as stated in an interview with Dazed earlier this month, was to impress why “we must reject the stale, male traditions of art.” Why for example, is every one of Michelangelo’s characters white, “when more than 70% of the human race if of non-white descent?”
Similarly, why is the birth of humanity glaringly omit the gender that is actually capable of birth?
Her play on Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” reimagines the white male—portrayed by the original as the “principal source of proportion among the classical orders of architecture”— as “The Virtuous Woman” instead.
This is her incredible “The Birth Of Eve?”
“When all we see in art history is a male-dominated white heaven, we become the inferior to this gender and cultural imperialism,” Rosales said to Dazed.
And a black woman on the cross, in place of Jesus.
Rosales’ “The Birth of Oshun” has the painter turning Botticelli’s “Venus” into “Oshun,” a powerful black deity rocking gold-patch vitiligo.
Rosales chooses to rewrite women and people of color into history because, as she told the publication, “Were we not there? Did we not all help to build this land we live on? We could not have accomplished what we have without the other.”
Peep more of Harmonia Rosales’ incredible artwork on her Instagram or her website.
h/t Dazed