Spelman College Museum Celebrates 30 Years with Spring Exhibition, "Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Media Contact: 
Brijea Daniel, brijeadaniel@spelman.edu 

Alumna Calida Rawles, C'98, Returns to Spelman with Immersive Exhibition

(ATLANTA) — Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is pleased to present "Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides", an exhibition featuring recent works alongside a novel large-scale video installation reflecting natural environments and the rich cultural history of Miami, Florida’s Overtown neighborhood. "Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides" will open to the public on Friday, March 27, 2026, and will be on view until September 5, 2026.
 
Internationally recognized for her intricate and delicate acrylic on canvas paintings, Spelman alumna Rawles, C'98, blends hyperrealism with poetic abstraction and situates her subjects in dynamic, undulating spaces. Her recent work utilizes water as a vital, organic, and multifaceted element—as well as a historically charged space that concomitantly represents racial exclusion and individual healing. "Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides" bridges the past and present, delving into the experience of Black people in America. Rawles partnered with Pérez Art Museum Miami and members of the historically Black community of Overtown in Miami to discover the interwoven narratives of place, memory, and belonging that animate her practice.
 

Spelman Museum Executive Director, Dr. Liz Andrews, remarks, “This wonderful exhibition is part of our signature Spelman Museum 30th anniversary programming. Calida Rawles was trained as a painting major here at Spelman College, and we are proud to serve as the final national tour venue for her first solo museum presentation. Her work shows depths of historical research in paintings with beautiful blues depicting water. This is an opportunity to celebrate her artistic gifts and the many generations of students, scholars, and artists who have contributed to the arts at Spelman. As the museum looks back on three decades, we uplift the radiant art of a Spelman alumna.” 

Rawles’ collaborative process for the works in this exhibition began with a series of preliminary photoshoots in Virginia Key Beach and the public pool at Theodore Gibson Park in Overtown, which then informed the subject matter for the lifelike paintings on view. Ranging from a 10-month-old baby to senior citizens, the portraits provide representation for those who call Overtown home while capturing the generational shift the community has undergone and giving shape to an American experience that is often overlooked. With residents as the subjects of her paintings, it became evident that the exhibition would be a transformative experience—for some, it would also be their first time at a museum, emphasizing the silos Miami still struggles to navigate despite geographical proximity.
 
Furthermore, by photographing Black individuals in natural waters for the first time, Rawles interrogates the Atlantic Ocean’s history as the site of the supremely exploitative Transatlantic Slave Trade. As a result, the finished work critically engages with Miami’s water-entwined climate, while connecting to larger histories of beauty, oppression, and persistence in contemporary American life.
 
Calida Rawles describes the works in the exhibition as a tribute to people who have endured: “Away with the Tides’ emerged as a tribute to the community of Overtown, a once-vibrant Black neighborhood in Miami, Florida, whose cultural and commercial brilliance was steadily eroded through gentrification and mass displacement. As I delved deeper into its history, it became impossible to ignore that Overtown’s story is not isolated; it echoes across the nation. Communities from Miami to our beloved Atlanta, Georgia, and cities across the nation have endured similar injustices under the banner of ‘urban renewal.’ With this work, I seek to honor those who suffered these losses and ensure that their experiences, our shared history, are neither forgotten nor washed away. ‘Away with the Tides’ stands as a testament to remembrance, resilience, and the enduring spirit of the communities that shaped us.”
 
"Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides" is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, the most in-depth volume to date on Calida Rawles’s art and practice, featuring exhibition curator Maritza M. Lacayo, and collaborators Regina R. Robertson, Christine Y. Kim, and Enuma Okoro. The national tour of Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides is presented with lead individual support from Allison and Larry Berg.
 
"Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides" is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) Maritza M. Lacayo, Associate Curator, with the support of Fabiana Sotillo, Curatorial Assistant. The presentation at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is organized by Dr. Liz Andrews with the support of Dr. Brandy Pettijohn, Curator of Exhibitions, and Ming Washington, Roy Lichtenstein Post-Baccalaureate Fellow.

 
ABOUT Calida RAWLES
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 Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN (2025); Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL (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 Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2024); Ordinary People - Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA (2024); L.A. Story, Hauser & Wirth, West Hollywood, CA (2024); Story Generation*. Jugend trotz(t) Krise, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany (2023); Rose in the Concrete, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2023); 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2022); Black American Portraits, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2021), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2023); A Shared Body, FSU Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL (2021); View From Here, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Art Finds a Way, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2020); Visions in Light, Windows on the Wallis, Beverly Hills, CA (2020); Presence, Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA (2019); With Liberty and Justice for Some, Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Sanctuary City: With Liberty and Justice for Some, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA (2017); and LACMA Inglewood + Film Lab, Inglewood, CA (2014).
 
 
ABOUT SPELMAN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF FINE ART
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is the only museum in the nation dedicated to art by and about women of the African diaspora. The museum is located on the campus of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. The Museum has encouraged intellectual growth and curiosity as a vital resource for the Spelman community, the Atlanta University Center, and the general public since it opened in 1996. The Spelman Museum presents exhibitions, public programs, and has a growing permanent collection of works of art.
 
For more information, please visit museum.spelman.edu and @spelmanmuseum on social media.