Hammer Art History Lecture

Harmonia Rosales in Conversation with Denva Gallant and Tiffany E. Barber

Harmonia Rosales joins medieval art historian Denva Gallant (Rice University) and scholar of Black diasporic art Tiffany E. Barber (UCLA) for a conversation on her reinterpretation of Christian iconography through the lens of West African cosmology and diasporic African philosophies.

Rosales’ lecture explores how art can reshape humanity’s relationship to the natural world through the lens of West African cosmology and diasporic African philosophies. Rosales views nature as a living, conscious force with agency and memory. Her fine art practice engages with the visual traditions of medieval and early European art, placing Yoruba narratives in conversation with European iconography, and considers how images can both preserve and challenge inherited ideas around power. Building on the dialogue at the center of the Getty exhibition Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages, Rosales will discuss how she draws upon historical forms to challenge inherited narratives that disconnect humanity from the earth. Across painting, sculpture, literature, and public works, her practice ponders what becomes possible when marginalized origin stories are given the same monumentality and sacred authority historically afforded to the European canon.