FRIEZE LOS ANGELES 2023

Tiwani Contemporary is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Los Angeles 2023, with the first ever solo booth presentation of British painter, Michaela Yearwood-Dan. 

Founded in London in 2011 by Maria Varnava, Tiwani Contemporary represents emerging, early career and established artists from Africa and its diaspora. For its first appearance at Frieze LA, which follows its sell-out booth at Frieze London 2022, Tiwani will show a new body of work by Yearwood-Dan comprised of works on canvas, ceramic planters and the artist’s first large-scale works on paper. 

The work continues the artist’s exploration of queer community spaces through the vehicle of abstract painting, with texts playfully concealed throughout the works. Projected and inscribed upon the paintings and large-scale works on paper, extracts of Yearwood-Dan’s experiences, influences, personal reflections and questions commingle with abstracted  and botanical gestures and marks that border, lead towards, and give way to speculative clearings - spaces and gaps that have the capacity to be filled with utopic imaginings. The artist’s planters, made from earthenware clay and underglaze, are a continuation of the artist’s ceramic practice, which connects with ideas around the relationship between female sexuality and flora. 

The works remain vested in holding and debating the real-life politics and  cultural demands of femme, black and queer individuals in the world coming together as communities, manifesting and nurturing critical, safe and joyous environments.

Yearwood-Dan says, “The works presented for Frieze LA seem to manifest as small (sometimes large) acts of resistance against societal assumptions, collective trauma and the cliche strictures of representation. The works are intentionally joyous, sensual and otherworldly; referencing the present, past and future whilst embodying an energy which, I think, is intrinsically linked to queerness and lends itself to conversations around what queering spaces can look like.”

Participating at Frieze Los Angeles is an expression of Tiwani’s ongoing commitment to developing global platforms for its roster of artists. Maria Varnava says, “We are delighted to be debuting Michaela’s latest work at Frieze LA. Los Angeles is now undoubtedly one of the artworld’s major capitals and we look forward to continuing our ongoing conversation about art and artists from Africa and its diaspora with the collectors, curators, critics and art lovers in the city.”

Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s work reflects on subjectivity and individual identity as forms of self-determination. Whilst her work may be underpinned by an expansive and multivalent repertoire of cultural signifiers borrowing freely from blackness, healing rituals, flora, texting, acrylic-nails, gold-hoops, carnival culture, these reference points enable her to present and privilege the variance of her own individual experience. 

As such, her work refuses to be framed by narrow expectations of racial or gendered notions of collective identity and history. She defamiliarizes many of those reference points in her work resisting the clichés and strictures of representation.

Michaela Yearwood-Dan lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include Let me Hold You, Queer Circle, London, UK (solo - 2022); The Sweetest Taboo, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 2022); Laced, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK (group - 2021); Summer exhibition, Royal Academy, London, UK (group- 2021); Be Gentle With Me, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (solo - 2021); Ancient Deities, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (group - 2020); Clay TM, TJ Boulting, London, UK (group - 2020); The Green Fuse, Frestonian Gallery, London, UK (group -2020); No Time Like the Present, Public Gallery, London, UK, (group - 2020); Begin Again, Guts Gallery, London, UK, (group - 2020); After Euphoria, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 2019) and One English Pound, Sarabande, The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation (solo - 2019).