Through Gilded Portraits, Tawny Chatmon Envisions a Dazzling Future — Colossal



Art
Photography

#gold
#mosaics
#portraits
#Tawny Chatmon

“Each time I take into consideration the longer term, I take into consideration my kids and the truth that I really feel that the longer term doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to them,” says Tawny Chatmon (previously). “The work I’m creating now could be what I’m manifesting for his or her current and future.”

Typically centering her portraiture on adolescents, Chatmon is visionary, imagining a time when kids are “dwelling in peace, being secure, being protected, being freed from stereotypes, dwelling freely and joyously, being handled gently by the world.” This dream is rooted in a long-held need for younger Black individuals to be acknowledged as inherently invaluable and important, visualized by way of the artist’s signature glimmering elaborations.

Paying homage to Gustav Klimt’s works and pastiglia, or low-relief decorations, of Fifteenth-century Italian artists, Chatmon’s Remnants and Pastoral Scenes collection overlay portraits with gold leaf, acrylic paint, semi-precious stones, and different mixed-media. The gilded additions usually cloak clothes and generally the backdrop, whereas the works retain the unique photographic depiction of the sitter’s face and limbs.

Remnants comprises cut-and-pasted scraps from the artist’s early work, and Pastoral Scenes positions the figures towards distant landscapes. Each collection, although, honor ancestral ties and emphasize the necessity to break away from outdated modes of being. “My work is a good looking resistance just because it exists,” she says. “Existence, by definition, is the state of being alive or being actual, and regardless of early depictions of Black our bodies as background or ‘different’ in Western artwork, whereas primarily centering whiteness, we’re actual. We all the time have been.”

“Iconography/In honor of the sacred divinity that exists inside us” (2023), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic on archival pigment print, 47 x 35 inches

Chatmon takes the same method in her ongoing Iconography collection, which evokes Byzantine-era works that depict spiritual figures by way of dense mosaics. “These visible declarations had been used to help the observer in specializing in all issues sacred and had been seen extra as literal prayers than artwork. Believed to function conduits to the divine, every was meticulously crafted by an iconographer embarking on a journey of prayer and meditation,” she shares.

Her items draw on this custom by way of swaths of gold tesserae that transcend the earthly. In “A Hopeful Reality,” Chatmon fashions flowing, metallic clothes for 2 younger ladies, who embrace in entrance of a tiled backdrop with blue, floral filigree. One other work, “In honor of the sacred divinity that exists inside us,” options the artist’s daughter sporting a gown draped over her shoulders and a robe with a portrait of Harriet Tubman close to her coronary heart. “Simply as Byzantine icons function home windows to the non secular realm, might my icons function technique of sending gratitude to our ancestors and a connection to those that helped form our lives all through historical past,” the artist says.

And the devotional nature of those early Roman works isn’t misplaced on Chatmon. For each bit, she pre-determines what she’s hoping to speak and when full, considers “what I need the work to do as soon as shared with others by saying a prayer over the work and setting intentions.”

Chatmon at present has a limited-edition print obtainable by way of Artwork + Tradition to assist The Last Resort Artist Retreat, a residency for Black creatives. She additionally has work in a number of exhibitions opening within the coming weeks, together with group exhibits at Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts. You may comply with her newest endeavors on Instagram.

“Remnants/I Was Born to Stand within the Gentle” (2020-2022), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic, different combined media on archival pigment print, 63 x 41 inches

“Pastoral Scenes/Ralisha” (2021-2022), 24k gold leaf, acrylic, semi-precious stones, thermoplastic polymer resin, and different combined media on archival pigment print, 56 x 36 inches

“Bridgetower Frieze” (2021), 24k gold leaf and acrylic on archival pigment print, 40 x 30 inches

“Remnants/Aunt Mattie’s Beloved Frock” (2021), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic on archival pigment print, 30 x 24 inches

“Iconography/And All Generations Shall Name Us Blessed (earlier than completion)” (2022), 24k gold leaf, paper, abalone shell, and acrylic on archival pigment print, 44 x 36 inches

#gold
#mosaics
#portraits
#Tawny Chatmon

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