Cassi Namoda’s expressive portrayals pay homage to her cosmopolitan roots as the daughter of a Mozambican mother and an American father, who spent most of her childhood traveling around the world. Now based in Los Angeles and New York, she infuses her paintings with dream-like elements and folkloric references that, taken together, lend a distinct, cinematic feel to imagined moments largely set in post-colonial Mozambique. Her work has been featured on the front cover of Vogue Italia (January 2020), and is held in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Studio Museum, Harlem; and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Nude Maria Combing Her Hair depicts a woman seated before a vanity table. Although her face is obscured by her posture away from the viewer’s vantage point, the main character—skillfully rendered with intimacy and care—commands attention from the center of the pictorial frame. Facing a male suitor bearing a bouquet of red flowers, Namoda’s subject, surrounded by objects such as an open lipstick tube and strewn undergarments, projects an air of confidence that proclaims power in femininity.

Cassi Namoda

Nude Maria Combing Her Hair, 2021

24 x 16.75 inches unframed

Archival pigment print
Signed and numbered by Cassi Namoda

Limited Edition of 50 with 4AP

ART FOR CHANGE will donate a portion of proceeds to the International Rescue Committee in support of humanitarian aid in the wake of the devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey for the duration of 5 Years: An Art For Change Survey on view through March 25, 2023. As in all series, the artist will receive 50% of the net proceeds of print sales.

Cassi Namoda, Nude Maria Combing Her Hair, 2021; Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Print