Michaela Yearwood-Dan | Some Future Time Will Think of Us

On view at Marianne Boesky Gallery

507 & 509 West 24th Street, New York, NY

 

For sales inquiries, please contact Director Savannah Downs: 

 savannah@boeskygallery.com

 

Marianne Boesky Gallery presents Michaela Yearwood-Dan: Some Future Time Will Think of Us, the London-based artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery. The new paintings, ceramics, works on paper, and site-specific mural and sound installation embody Yearwood-Dan's ongoing investigation of contemporary culture and millennial political concerns, as well as her desire to build spaces of queer community, abundance, and joy. 

 

Yearwood-Dan (b. 1994; London, UK) has developed a singular visual language that draws on a diverse range of influences, including Blackness, queerness, femininity, healing rituals, and carnival culture. Moving freely between painting, drawing, and ceramics, Yearwood-Dan embeds botanical motifs and diaristic meditations within brushy, swirling forms and heavy drips of paint. From the monumental scale of her paintings to the more intimate scale of her ceramics and works on paper, Yearwood-Dan's practice frequently reflects an inviting domesticity. Resisting any singular definition of identity, the artist explores the possibilities of creating spaces-physical, pastoral, metaphorical-that allow for unlimited and unbounded ways of being.

 

Some Future Time Will Think of Us features new paintings-including a monumental, multipanel painting, the artist's largest to date-alongside works on paper and ceramics in the gallery's 507 W 24th Street space. In the gallery's adjacent space at 509 W 24th Street, Yearwood-Dan will produce an immersive mural and accompanying sound installation. Lush and brightly hued, this work is at once personal and political, exemplifying Yearwood-Dan's distinctive approach to engaging materials and colors for their symbolic associations. The handbuilt ceramic vessels are an unmistakable nod to women's work and domesticity-as women have been the primary producers of ceramic goods throughout history. The pale pinks, brilliant oranges, deep violets, and rich blues employed throughout her work subtly echo colors of the lesbian and bisexual pride flags. Ceramic petals collaged into her paintings make reference to queer history-pansy petals reclaim a common slur for gay men, while green carnations recall the lapel pins popularized by Oscar Wilde and worn to signal queerness in England and the United States in the 19th century. 

 

Language intertwines with botanical motifs throughout Yearwood-Dan's work: abstract habitats teem with painted plant life while live houseplants grow out of wall-mounted ceramics. Within the paintings, she inscribes lines of text-pulled from song lyrics, poetry, or her own diaristic writings. These meditations, appearing at various scales and degrees of legibility, are at once insightful and funny, confident, and questioning. Her words beckon the viewer into a vivid, welcoming world of paradox, play, and contemplation formed within an atmosphere of swirling forms and brilliant hues. 

 

The exhibition takes its title from a poem by Sappho; titled "You may forget but," the fragment is a brief, optimistic stanza:

 

ABOUT MICHAELA YEARWOOD-DAN

Michaela Yearwood-Dan's work has been shown at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy; and the Museum of Contemporary African Art, Marrakesh, Morocco, among others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami, FL; and the Columbus Museum of Art and Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH. In 2022, she produced her first public mural installation for Queercircle, London, UK. She has participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including the Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy, and Bloomberg New Contemporaries in Partnership with Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation, London, UK. The artist received her B.A. from the University of Brighton in 2016. Yearwood-Dan lives and works in London.