Cassi Namoda, Nude Maria Combing Her Hair, 2021; Hand Embellished, Signed, and Numbered Limited Edition Print - Artist Proof Framed in Gray Wood

Cassi Namoda’s expressive portrayals pay homage to her cosmopolitan roots as the daughter of a Mozambican mother and an American father, who spent most of her childhood traveling around the world. Now based in Los Angeles and New York, she infuses her paintings with dream-like elements and folkloric references that, taken together, lend a distinct, cinematic feel to imagined moments largely set in post-colonial Mozambique. Her work has been featured on the front cover of Vogue Italia (January 2020), and is held in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Studio Museum, Harlem; and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Nude Maria Combing Her Hair depicts a woman seated before a vanity table. Although her face is obscured by her posture away from the viewer’s vantage point, the main character—skillfully rendered with intimacy and care—commands attention from the center of the pictorial frame. Facing a male suitor bearing a bouquet of red flowers, Namoda’s subject, surrounded by objects such as an open lipstick tube and strewn undergarments, projects an air of confidence that proclaims power in femininity.