칼리다 롤스

(b. 1976, Wilmington, DE; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is known for her paintings that merge hyper-realism with poetic abstraction. Situating her subjects in dynamic spaces, her work employs water as a vital, organic, multifaceted material and as a historically charged space. At times buoyant and ebullient or submerged and mysterious, Black bodies float in exquisitely rendered submarine landscapes of bubbles, ripples, refracted light, and expanses of blue. For Rawles, water signifies physical and spiritual healing, as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion. She uses this complicated duality as a means to envision a new space for Black healing, reimagining her subjects beyond racialized tropes and insisting on the strength of humanity. In her 2019–20 breakthrough body of work, Rawles reimagines the ancient story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who was demonized for refusing to submit to him. Rawles expands the Lilith legacy and repositions her from a malevolent spirit at the antithesis of womanhood to a sovereign being who drifts to the surface of uncertain waters, becoming a source of inspired rebellion. In late 2024, Rawles’ first solo museum exhibition debuted at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The show traveled to the Memphis Brooks Art Museum in 2025; from there, it will travel to Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, FL and Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. To create this body of work, Rawles partnered with residents of the Overtown neighborhood in Miami—a historically Black community that has experienced widespread gentrification and displacement. In a series of large-scale portraits, which feature Overtown's residents immersed in water to varied degrees, Rawles seeks to depict the history of Miami from her subjects’ perspective. Ranging from a 10-month-old baby to senior citizens, these portraits provide representation for those who call Overtown home. At the same time, the works capture a significant generational shift, giving shape to an American experience that is often overlooked. Rawles’ most recent (2025) paintings explore the human experience, cycles of time, and the transformative nature of identity. As she continues to push the boundaries between hyperrealist figuration and surrealist abstraction, she dives more deeply into color theory, asserting her expertise as a colorist. While watery environments remain constant, detailed faces are absent, moments of suspension take on deeper meaning, and experiments with both color and chiaroscuro define the buoyancy and stagnation that imbibe the bodies that float, sink, and fold into one another. True to form, these choices in color, subjectivity, and rendering of space are connected to broader questions of race, representation, and ethics within both art history and everyday life. Each artwork is based on a photograph or series of photographs that the artist takes herself, and the tertiary colors of her palate signify the liminal space of transformation and existential angst that her figures tread. This alchemical focus on change, disillusionment, and the potential for renewal becomes a blueprint for the future, and reflection thus emerges as a method of both art making and of understanding the sociopolitical conditions that color contemporary life. Rawles received a B.A. from Spelman College, Atlanta, GA (1998) and an M.A. from New York University, New York, NY (2000). Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, Florida (2024); The Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, DE (2024); Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY (2023; 2021); Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA (2020); and Standard Vision, Los Angeles, CA (2020). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including , Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany (2023); , San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2023); , Berlin, Germany (2022); , Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2021), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2023); , FSU Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL (2021); , Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2020); , Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2020); , Windows on the Wallis, Beverly Hills, CA (2020); , Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA (2019); , Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); , San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA (2017); , Inglewood, CA (2014); and , Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY (2002). Rawles created the cover art for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, “The Water Dancer,” and her work is in numerous public and private collections, including Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.