September 14, 2017–January 15, 2018
Christina Quarles
(b. 1985)Christina Quarles paints bodies that respond to the weight and gravity of the physical world, expressing her experience of the complexities of her identity as a queer, cis, multiracial woman.
Christina Quarles
Magic Hour, 2016, printed 2021Biography
Born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles by her mother, she took art classes from an early age and developed a passion for lifelong drawing through after-school programs and drawing classes at the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts.
She started her career working in graphic design before becoming immersed in drawing. Quarles’s engagement with the human body began with her early works on paper that brought together written phrases and displaced figures. While in graduate school at the Yale School of Art, she used phrases, puns, and patterns to both anchor and displace the figures in her compositions.
Her current practice has shifted the text from the work itself into the titles; many of her titles are inspired by overheard phrases. In her large-scale works, Quarles sketches figures onto the canvas, photographs them, and then digitally maps out the backgrounds and structures that surround her figures. Reversing the typical layering on a composition, Quarles allows her figures to precede and dictate the environment that they inhabit. These result in fantastical, other-worldly images with kaleidoscopic perspectives. Additional work by Quarles has focused on more overtly political subjects, such as the brutal familial separations taking place at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Quarles holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She completed a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in 2016 and was the inaugural recipient of the Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize in 2019. Her work first entered the Studio Museum’s collection in 2021.
Exhibitions and Events
Past Exhibitions and Events
Christina Quarles
(b. 1985)Christina Quarles paints bodies that respond to the weight and gravity of the physical world, expressing her experience of the complexities of her identity as a queer, cis, multiracial woman.
Christina Quarles
Magic Hour, 2016, printed 2021Christina Quarles
Magic Hour, 2016, printed 2021
Magic HourDigital archival print on Moab Entrada 290 gsm paper26 x 18 5/8 in. (66 x 47.2 cm)
Frame: 33 x 25 x 1 in. (83.8 x 63.5 x 2.5 cm)The Studio Museum in Harlem; gift of an anonymous donor2022.20.2
Biography
Born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles by her mother, she took art classes from an early age and developed a passion for lifelong drawing through after-school programs and drawing classes at the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts.
She started her career working in graphic design before becoming immersed in drawing. Quarles’s engagement with the human body began with her early works on paper that brought together written phrases and displaced figures. While in graduate school at the Yale School of Art, she used phrases, puns, and patterns to both anchor and displace the figures in her compositions.
Her current practice has shifted the text from the work itself into the titles; many of her titles are inspired by overheard phrases. In her large-scale works, Quarles sketches figures onto the canvas, photographs them, and then digitally maps out the backgrounds and structures that surround her figures. Reversing the typical layering on a composition, Quarles allows her figures to precede and dictate the environment that they inhabit. These result in fantastical, other-worldly images with kaleidoscopic perspectives. Additional work by Quarles has focused on more overtly political subjects, such as the brutal familial separations taking place at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Quarles holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She completed a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in 2016 and was the inaugural recipient of the Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize in 2019. Her work first entered the Studio Museum’s collection in 2021.