Painting as a Devotional Practice: “May’REE” by Genesis Tramaine
Written by Nínive Vargas de la Peña for Sotheby’s NY Contemporary Curated. March 2022.
Portraying the inner nature of sitters has always been one of the ultimate ambitions of portraiture, yet few artists have been able to render this spiritual experience as the devotional painter Genesis Tramaine. Focusing on the representation of the American Black Face, Tramaine exaggerates its features to truly portray “the spirited emotions of the untapped, underrepresented soul of Black People”. Seeing her practice as a form of worship and prayer, Tramaine has granted her personal meditations a visual representation that communicates with the viewer through a sense of spiritual closeness. Through the recomposition of faces, provocative use of colors and vigorous brushstrokes, Tramaine’s canvases confer the intimacy of a truthful experience of witnessing the soul in motion.
Tramaine’s unique aesthetic coheres into portraits that are legible as human faces, despite speaking in a visual vocabulary of bold confrontational abstraction. Reminiscent of the deconstructed portraits of Pablo Picasso and Jean Michel Basquiat, facial features are altered in an attempt to subvert structures that are seen as ‘the truth’. Convincing us of our ability to witness the ethereal through painting, Tramaine follows the practice of artists such as Hilma af Klint, Mark Rothko and Remedios Varo. This group of celebrated explored painting as a spiritual exercise that allowed them to become mediums for the creation of a mystical image. As said by Tremaine, “Working a paper or canvas into something beautiful and new is a kind of an anointing.”
“I know that I’m part of a language that is being built […] The same way the elders left messages for us in our braids, in our songs, in our gospel. It is the same eloquence of spirit.”
- GENESIS TRAMAINE
May’REE sits in profile with multiple eyes spread across the figure's face, which look directly at the viewer. She is dismissive of our presence, yet attentive to our movements. Her closed mouth is bordered by suggested teeth, giving us a view into an inner carnal plane. Her weighty nose composed by a structure made of squares, is replicated on her hair and breasts, conferring her an archaic solidity. The outlines of her figure have been carved and scratched with paint, in an expression reminiscent of the rawness of art brut, but with a comprehension of line, space, and color that far surpasses it. The background composed of a glowing gold color shines across her cheek, irradiating the scene with the sanctity of Byzantine iconography. May’REE is the profoundly intimate representation of a black woman, yet Tramaine’s brushwork transcends the individual, granting a collective experience of the ethereal components of humanity.
Genesis Tramaine. May’Ree. 2018. Private collection.Praying Looks
This Brooklyn-born artist has exhibited at prestigious galleries in New York, Paris, Brussels, London, and Shanghai, with upcoming solo shows in New York and Toronto. Her work resides in prominent museum collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami and the Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo.
Like Dancing
PHOTOGRAPHY Gillian Laub
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (HEAD), 1982“It’s a painted language. It surpasses our literal language.”
- GENESIS TRAMAINE