Christina Quarles explores questions about racial and sexual identities, gender, and queerness through a beautiful and intricate body of work. On vibrant, monumental canvases and intimate paper formats, she constructs complex compositions with the human body as the ubiquitous starting point. In her work, the body is ambiguous and constantly undergoing transformation, never locked into a rigidly defined form.

Quarles' personal experiences, where she has felt that inhabiting a mixed-race, queer body is fundamentally different from observing that same body from the outside, have been defining for her work. Her ability to depict the body in its complexity and defy ingrained notions of race, gender, and sexuality has made her a significant voice in contemporary art.

Christina Quarles (b. 1985) lives and works in Los Angeles. She holds a Master's degree from the Yale School of Art (2016). Quarles has had numerous solo exhibitions and was prominently featured in the critically acclaimed exhibition The Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Among her recent solo exhibitions are those at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2023); MCA Chicago, Chicago (2021); and South London Gallery, London (2021).

Picture: Glad Ta See Ya Here, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist, Pilar Corrias, London, and Hauser & Wirth.