A member of the vanguard of artists who are upending the white-male-dominated art scene, Christina Quarles’s art is often considered in relation to her identity as a queer, ciswoman of mixed race. Her large-scale, exuberantly colored paintings reflect both the ambiguities of these identities as well as the constraints that such labels enforce. This book features paintings and drawings from throughout Quarles’s career. Working mostly in acrylic, Quarles populates her canvases with polymorphous figures that reference her background in life drawing, but with an expressionist spin all her own. Her figures’ disconnected arms and legs break through a surface punctuated with bold patterns, textures, and staccato markings.

Curator Grace Deveney’s illuminating insights into Quarles’s work reinforce its power and vitality and illuminate why this young painter is making waves in the contemporary art world.

Purchase Online

The exhibition Christina Quarles is presented at the MCA March 13, 2021–January 23, 2022.

About the Contributors

Grace Deveney is a curator with Prospect New Orleans. Previously, she was an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is currently a PhD candidate in art history at Northwestern University. She has also served as a curatorial researcher at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Mark Godfrey is a British art historian, critic and curator. He was previously a senior curator for Tate Modern, where he cocurated the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.

Uri McMillen is an associate professor in the departments of African American Studies and English at UCLA.