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Harmonia Rosales

Artist Statement

“I am a womanist who endlessly explores black female empowerment through visual art that challenges ideological hegemony and the subordinate woman in contemporary society.”

Biography

Harmonia Rosales is an Afro-Cuban American born in Chicago. The black female bodies in her paintings are the memories of her ancestors expressed in a way to heal and promote self-love.  In addition, the approach that nourish Rosales’s art is closely linked to her Multi-cultural Afro-Cuban background. The ethereal creations to which she gives birth on the canvas are a synonym of female empowerment and cultural acceptance, both of which she has grappled with. As a young girl, the Renaissance masters impeccable skill and composition fascinated her but she could never relate because they depicted primarily a white male hierarchy and the idealized subordinated woman immersed in Eurocentric conception of beauty. Rosales’s main artistic concern has been focused on black female empowerment in western culture.  Her paintings depict and honor the African diaspora. The artist is entirely open to the ebb and flow of contemporary society which she seeks to reimagine in new forms of aesthetic beauty, snuggled somewhere between pure love and ideological counter-hegemony. Her message is to create a sense of harmony.