Portrait of Eve, 2022
Oil on wood panel
36 in. x 36 in. / 91.44 cm. x 91.44 cm.

Influenced by her multicultural Afro-Cuban background, Rosales’ primary artistic concern focuses on Black female empowerment through a diasporic lens. Her work entwines the oral narratives and deities of West African Yorùbá religion, Greco-Roman mythology, and Christianity. Reimagining hegemonic narratives preserves the memory of her ancestral lineage and functions to champion resilience and question Eurocentric notions of beauty. While her subjects serve as conduits for the internal struggles of a disempowered society, they encourage sympathy, empathy, and empowerment.

In most of Rosales’ work, her subjects are gifted with an ori (one’s inherent destiny). Since Eve represents all women in the African diaspora, her portrait magnifies the chronological ori affixed to her life. In a cyclical pattern, one sees her birth, her travels through the Atlantic slave trade, being sold, her death, and the generational impact of her life on Earth. Enclosing her ori are bursts of flowering figs, denoting the human temptation to seize power.

Current solo exhibit: Garden of Eve, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA. Upcoming solo exhibits: Master Narrative, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN.

Courtesy of the artist (@honeiee)

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