The paintings of Calida Rawles (b. 1976, Wilmington, DE; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) merge hyper-realism with poetic abstraction. Situating her subjects in dynamic spaces, her recent work employs water as a vital, organic, multifaceted material, and historically charged space. Ranging from buoyant and ebullient to submerged and mysterious, Black bodies float in exquisitely rendered submarine landscapes of bubbles, ripples, refracted light and expanses of blue. For Rawles, water signifies both physical and spiritual healing as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion. She uses this complicated duality as a means to envision a new space for Black healing, and to reimagine her subjects beyond racialized tropes. Enhancing the seductive nature of water, the work tempers heavier subjects with aquatic serenity and geographic and temporal ambiguities, inviting multiple readings. Embedded in her titles and topographical notations in the compositions, Rawles’ canvases represent an expansive vision of strength and tranquility during today’s turbulent times, while insisting on the triumph of humanity.
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 the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN (2025); Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL (2024); The Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, DE (2024); Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY (2023; 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 Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2024); Ordinary People - Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA (2024); L.A. Story, Hauser & Wirth, West Hollywood, CA (2024); Story 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, 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, 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); and LACMA Inglewood + Film Lab, Inglewood, CA (2014)
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, Los Angeles, CA; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Rawles’ first large-scale public art installation, The Way of Time (2022), is now on display at the Sofi Stadium promenade in Inglewood, CA.