To celebrate one year as our Lead Curator, Laurel Bouye selected five women artists on Rise Art that you should know about, support, and collect. Explore personal practices and unique concepts from noteworthy artists, including Dawn Beckles, Li Shan Chong, and Javiera Estrada.
By Laurel Bouye | 01 Jul 2024
It’s been one year since I joined Rise Art and in that time, I have collaborated with artists whose practices and creations are nothing short of inspiring. Moreover, I have discovered a wealth of female artists whose works I would not only love to own but whose practices are so personal and unique, that I wanted to share them with you here. To celebrate one year down, here are five female artists you should know about, support, and collect.
Javiera Estrada
Photographer and multimedia artist, Javiera Estrada was born in Mexico and now lives and works in Los Angeles. Her artistic practice is carried out through a lens of reverence and exaltation for the sacred beauty of the physical and spiritual worlds around us. Bathed in ultra-saturated colours, Javiera’s photographs serve as a nod to the landscapes and spiritual rituals she encountered throughout her childhood in Mexico. With a deep deference for the sacred and divine, her work never ceases to captivate me.
Dawn Beckles
Dawn Beckles masterfully blends painting, collage, and screen printing to create vibrant interpretations of classic still lifes. Her work juxtaposes exotic flora inspired by her native Barbados with high fashion and bespoke interiors, celebrating the intimate relationship between items and their owners. Through her colourful depictions of orchids, birds of paradise, and elaborately crafted roomscapes, Dawn invites viewers to explore the stories behind the objects and the people who cherish them.
Li Shan Chong
Li Shan Chong‘s intimate, small-scale paintings poignantly explore the fragility of human emotion, focusing on vulnerable female subjects often depicted with a wistful or remote presence. Her poetic and melancholic titles, along with her illustrative style, magnify these tearful scenes into surreal narratives, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.
Karolina Zglobicka
Fragmented glimpses of Karolina Zglobicka’s childhood memories can be seen throughout her canvases. These paintings, often taught with tension between subconscious bias and symbolism, explore themes of moving, transitioning and what comes with us when we move versus what stays behind. As someone who grew up in the 1990s, I recognise lots of the imagery in Karolina’s paintings – they feel like watching someone else’s home videos, taken with something we used to call a “camcorder”. Repeating layers and motifs that eventually disappear into one another call into question the figurative nature of her work. It’s both complex and comfortable, which only pulls me in further.
Piper Olivas
Piper Huntington Olivas is an up-and-coming LA-based artist who creates mixed-media photographic work. Carried out on a large scale, her up-close, semi-abstract pieces are largely centred around nature and the female form. Drawing inspiration from classical prose, her largely monochromatic shots are moody and a little offbeat. For example, in her series, The Body is the Heaviest Burden, she captures parts of the female form in an almost metaphysical way. Her ability to make something feel so sterile yet intimate has kept me coming back to her work and asking to see more.