NEW YORK, NY.- Hauser & Wirth announced today that the gallery now represents artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan, in collaboration with Marianne Boesky Gallery.
Based in London, Yearwood-Dan’s multidisciplinary practice yields large-scale paintings, sculptural works, drawings and murals in sensuous palettes that invite viewers along on the artist’s journey of personal introspection through abstraction. Yearwood-Dan employs a range of techniques to conjure coruscating color and energetic form, drawing on personal experiences and her British Caribbean heritage to explore her own identity, without falling back upon a set of fixed signifiers. The surfaces of her canvases are dense with generous swathes of lavish pigments and textures, with intricate embellishments that include gold leaf, Swarovski crystals and acrylic nails, punctuated by diaristic inscriptions quoting text conversations, song lyrics, poems and familiar phrases. In its fusion of historical and pop-culture references, as well as a range of mediums and forms, Yearwood-Dan’s work suggests a dismantling of cultural hierarchy and an invitation to unbridled human connection.
In recent years, Yearwood-Dan’s practice has expanded to include sculpture. Joyful and richly adorned vessels, benches and stools have become pathways for extending her visual vocabulary. She encourages the viewer to move around each work, shaping the experience of surrounding space and atmosphere. With their luxuriant tropical shades and decorative flourishes, Yearwood-Dan’s sculptural works enrich an oeuvre alive with individuality.
Manuela Wirth, Co-president, Hauser & Wirth, commented, ‘We are thrilled to be joining Marianne Boesky in collaborative representation of Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Michaela’s abundant botanical allusions and richly layered compositions embrace feminine beauty as a part of her exploration of socio-political and cultural references and ideas. Accessibility and community have been a powerful component of her practice for many years, which resonates with our gallery’s longstanding commitment to learning and artist-led programs. She has consistently presented her work with a deep consideration of the architectural environment viewers are invited into, and the formal qualities of text and visual cues in her art provide multiple access points for the work. In this way, Michaela is reinventing the role of abstraction as something that can speak to an ever-wider range of audiences.’
Yearwood-Dan will take up post as artist-in-residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset from October – November 2024, ahead of her inaugural exhibition with the gallery in London in 2025.
Yearwood-Dan is included in ‘When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History’ on view at Dallas Museum of Art, US, until 13 April 2025—a group exhibition featuring 50 artists, aiming to broaden official histories to allow for richer representations of those who have been traditionally excluded or erased. An exhibition of new paintings and drawings by the artist was recently on view at York Art Gallery, UK, made in response to Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond,’ as part of the National Gallery’s bicentenary celebrations ‘National Treasures.’
Throughout paintings, works on paper, ceramics and site-specific mural and sound installations, Michaela Yearwood-Dan (born 1994 in London, UK) endeavors to build spaces of queer community, abundance, and joy. Yearwood-Dan’s singular visual language draws on a diverse range of influences, including Blackness, queerness, femininity and healing rituals. Moving freely between media, Yearwood-Dan embeds botanical motifs and diaristic meditations within abstract forms and heavy drips of paint. From the monumental scale of her paintings to the more intimate scale of her ceramics and works on paper, Yearwood-Dan’s practice frequently reflects an inviting domesticity. Resisting any singular definition of identity, the artist explores the possibilities of creating spaces—physical, pastoral, metaphorical—that allow for unlimited and unbounded ways of being.
Lush and brightly hued, Yearwood-Dan’s work is at once personal and political. She often engages colors and materials for their symbolic associations—from the hints of the oranges, pinks, purples and blues of the lesbian and bisexual pride flags mingling through the compositions to the queer histories of the ceramic carnation and pansy petals collaged into her recent paintings. Language intertwines with botanical motifs throughout Yearwood-Dan’s work: abstract habitats teem with painted plant life while live houseplants grow out of wall-mounted ceramics. Within the paintings, she inscribes lines of text—pulled from song lyrics, poetry, or her own diaristic writings. These meditations, appearing at various scales and degrees of legibility, are insightful and funny, confident and questioning. Her words beckon the viewer into a vivid, welcoming world of paradox, play and contemplation formed within an atmosphere of swirling forms and brilliant chromaticity.
Yearwood-Dan’s work has been shown at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati OH; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas TX; Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy; and the Museum of Contemporary African Art, Marrakesh, Morocco, among others. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Speed Art Museum, Louisville KY; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham NC; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento CA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami FL, among others. In 2022, she produced her first public mural installation for Queercircle, London, UK. She has participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including the Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy, and Bloomberg New Contemporaries in Partnership with Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation, London, UK. The artist received her B.A. from the University of Brighton in 2016. Yearwood-Dan lives and works in London.
