“You want to see diversity? It’s not enough to change Superman to be Black.”

Harmonia Rosales

Known for re-creating Renaissance paintings with Black characters, the artist is now making her authorial debut to preserve African myths for future generations

By Elena Clavarino

In 2017, the artist Harmonia Rosales posted a picture of one of her paintings on Instagram. It was a reproduction of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, except all the figures were Black. “I was just posting my progress,” she tells me over coffee. “What I didn’t expect was the reaction.” The image went viral and drew a range of responses. One comment read, “The bastardization of European culture has got to stop.” Another fan tattooed the image onto his body.

Rosales unveiled her first solo show later that year, at the Simard Bilodeau Contemporary gallery, in Los Angeles. There, she presented reimaginings of works by da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Botticelli—including The Birth of Venus, which she renamed Birth of Oshun, after a goddess from the Yoruba religion of West Africa.