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Home>Research>Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts>Publications>Center Report>Center 43>Research Reports>Sacha Reid

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**Sacha Reid**Center 43

# Sacha Reid

Exploring Portraiture

Rozeal. (formerly known as iona rozeal brown), *SONG OF SOLOMON 5:16 – BE BEEWORLD: BE B BOY B GIRL (after “Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Gueifei playing the same flute,” by Kitagawa Utamaro)*, 2014-2016, mixed media on wood, Gift of Giorgio Furioso and William A. Clark Fund, 2021.19.1

While portraiture is defined as depicting a figure’s likeness, it can reveal so much more about the subject’s or artist’s race, identity, and culture as well as a history of race, identity, and culture. This is especially evident when discussing Black portraiture.

My tour began with Henri Matisse’s anatomical exaggerations of Venus’s figure in *Figure décorative* (1908), which, though differently titled, appears similar to his depiction of the Black body in works such as *Deux Négresses*(1908). Together, they visually reflect the history of reducing Blackness to the body and sexuality. While viewing *SONG OF SOLOMON 5:16 – BE BEEWORLD: BE B BOY B GIRL**(after “Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Gueifei playing the same flute,” by Kitagawa Utamaro)***(2014–2016) by Rozeal (formerly known as iona rozeal brown), I discussed her “combining of cultures,” highlighting the appropriation of Black and hip-hop culture and its reduction to an aesthetic. Lastly, with Amy Sherald’s *They call me Redbone but I’d rather be Strawberry Shortcake*(2009),**I discussed how the artist’s experiences of being a young, light-skinned Black girl impacted her views of Blackness and innocence as well as how those experiences influenced her work, removing the idea of “color-as-race.”

Interdisciplinary Humanities major and Painting minor, Howard University Howard University Undergraduate Intern, 2022–2024

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