Michaela Yearwood-Dan

Sotheby’s London, 22 March 2022, lot 11 (donated by the artist and Tiwani Contemporary)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s body of work might be characterised as an ongoing negotiation of identity; whether that of the artist herself, or that of the young, queer person of colour in the contemporaneous age. Employing layers of vivacious colour with pseudo representative evocations of botanical elements, Yearwood-Dan’s work builds up a personal symbolism which stretches the realm of abstraction beyond its foundational conceptions.

With the present lot, Yearwood-Dan makes use of colours akin to those present in the LGBTQ flag to allude to queer history, including also various personal epithets which further situate the work within the artist’s inner world. In doing such, Yearwood-Dan finds alternative ways to paint a portrait of a figure, whether personal or more representative of a community. The effect of this is a work which adopts a political dimension by eschewing the contemporary tenets of black figuration, simultaneously identifying itself amongst that milieu of artwork whose central gesture can be characterised as the subversion of the canon and insertion of blackness at the top of the hierarchy of genres. In this political sense, the present lot can be read almost as a history painting or stately portrait.

Yearwood-Dan has exhibited at institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas), Palazzo Monti (Italy), and the Museum of Contemporary African Art (Marrakesh). Her work is held in permanent collections at the Hirshhorn Museum, Speed Art Museum, Nasher Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art (Miami), Crocker Art Museum, and the Jorge M. Perez Collection. In 2022, she completed her first public mural for Queercircle in London. She has participated in fellowships and residencies, including Palazzo Monti and Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Yearwood-Dan earned her B.A. from the University of Brighton in 2016 and is based in London.