Whitehot Recommends: Whit Harris at Peninsula

Whit Harris, Installation view, Foreground: When the Grass Touch You, 2024, Oil on Canvas, 68 x 70 in.

By WM October 21, 2024

From the press release:

Peninsula is pleased to present Whit Harris’s inaugural New York City solo exhibition, Best Laid Plans, opening on September 6 from 6-9 PM at 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY. Harris’s most recent paintings further build upon her explorations of the black femme body. In this ongoing series of works, the figures depicted are manifestations of Harris’s own emotional turmoil, formed by being entrenched in a culture of patriarchy, colonialism, and white supremacy.

Whit Harris, Head, 2024, Oil on canvas, 28 x 28 in.

The subjects of these paintings are trapped in varying Arcadian scenes evocative of the classical, European tradition of landscape painting. However, in Harris’s hands, these environments come to represent society’s unrelenting oppressive systems. The femmes’ bodies are in conflict with their settings—twisted, cramped, and in some cases, segmented into pieces. Grass, clouds, rain, and smoke wrap around their forms, contorting the figures into cartoonishly over-extended poses. The sky, ground, and other natural features poke and prod, crush and entangle. These highly exaggerated figures, sharply contrasting with their settings, delve into the complexities of identity and power.

On view through October 19, 2024. WM