The Bold and the Beautiful
Cassi Namoda, Anousha Payne, and Cha Yuree reinterpret stories, real and mythical, through the eyes of strong female influences. Their art balances the harshness of reality with the beauty within women and world around them through the interplay of color, symbolism, and storytelling.
Cassi Namoda
Mozambique-born artist Cassi Namoda is a self-taught painter who explores colonialism, exoticism, femininity, and the mystical world. Namoda brings beauty to complex layered histories of places that would otherwise feel uncomfortable. She fills her canvas with empathy and curiosity through her colors and figures, that make it feel beautiful and “digestible”. In an interview with Naatal Magazine, Namoda mentions “Through color I develop a narrative and create duality within my works”.
Namoda’s recent exhibition, “Tropics of Depression” at Xaiver Hufkens, demonstrates her balance of these opposites perfectly. The name is inspired by her experience painting the exhibit while sick in Africa and experiencing the destructive forces of nature. Her images depict strong black women with strained red eyes often in arms of a loosely traced white man. The background of her paintings in this series are all soft pastel colors, giving a veneer of light within the presented darkness. For her exhibition, she also pulled references from Western artists, including Bob Dylan’s song Mozambique (“all the couples dancing cheek to cheek, it’s very nice to stay a week or two, there’s lot of pretty girls in Mozambique) and Manet’s 1863 Olympia for Self loathing in 100 percent humidity, but in this case the black woman is the feature, not a slave.
In Namoda’s show at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, “Life Has Become a Foreign Language”, she similarly explores rewriting history based on the realities faced by black women. This time her palette is bolder, eliciting a stronger sense of pain and anguish in the women depicted.
Early next year, Namoda will be joining the Albers residency at Thread Senegal where we expect another layer to be peeled back and history to be revisited through Namoda’s eyes.
Anousha Payne
Anousha Payne is an Indian-Irish artist, exploring her cultural identity and heritage through her evolving portfolio of work. Her art spans painting to ceramics and sculptures, linked by the mythical Tamilian stories passed through generations.
The sculpture “Shall I show you my real face” is made of textured ceramic tiles including “hair” she made by putting clay through her grandmother’s murukku (crunchy fried snack from Tamil) press. As told to Indigo + Madder for her 2020 exhibit there, she shared that the piece was inspired by a Tamil story of the same name where a woman who marries a tiger disguised as a man and is saved from him by her family. Payne reframes the story with the woman saving herself, who transforms into a tiger as shown in the piece. Her most recent show at Public Gallery with Middle Eastern artist Lailah Tara H features vessels based on Tamil stories, but again reimagined through the voices of the women in her life.
Growing up, Payne practiced classical Indian dancing, Bharat Natyam, which inspires her work today as well. Bharat Natyam is an expressive dance form known for its storytelling. In Payne’s piece, “Growing between her fingertips as the moon slowly rises”, she references Bharat Natyam hand gestures for the moon to demonstrate the power of femininity, nature, and creativity. Payne’s work harnesses fluidity between the real and mythical, leaving the viewer mesmerized and searching for more.
Cha Yuree
“I’m not trying to explore the Korean experience or the American experience. I come from a perspective of someone who doesn’t fully belong in neither here nor there. My hope is that people who view my works find comfort in being in the middle.” - Cha Yuree (@cha.yuree) from June 2021 interview with It’s Nice That
Cha Yuree’s latest exhibit, “Sunnyside Up” at Over the Influence gallery in Los Angeles is bright, bold, and whimsical. Her pieces tell the story of the quiet strength of the women in her life and their connection to nature.
Yuree started her career as a graphic and product designer for a decade before returning to her passion for illustration. Through her art, she explores connecting to her Asian heritage. In “Lucky Day”, two women in traditional braids and dresses are shown with multiple glowing ladybugs, symbols of good luck. “Korean Pears”features classic packaged fruit in a styrofoam tray, is about “how a plate of cut fruit and a Korean drama would always bring the family together”, something most Asian cultures can identify with.
Yuree balances stories of her past with a modern interpretation using a vivid, poppy palette inspired by Korean and Japanese children's shows, and graphical forms. Her art is deeply personal - both reverent to her family’s history and true to her own world and experiences.