Lisa Brice is a 51-year old contemporary artist born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her art is versatile as she experiments with color and design, however; her use of the human figure remains consistent and can be used as an "identifier" for her work. Brice's work has been seen in a number of exhibitions such as Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, South African High Commission, and the South African Gallery in her very own hometown of Cape Town. Despite her numerous international features, her first solo exhibition took place in the 2018 "Art Now" collect at Tate Britain; a second solo exhibition is scheduled for this fall London's Stephan Friedman Gallery. Evidently, Lisa Brice is a popular artist with immense talent and success but what does her art mean?
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Untitled (Well Worn 10), 2015.
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While some of her paintings do exhibit her stunning use of color, Lisa Brice typically gravitates toward muted, dull tones such as ones used in her piece Untitled (Well Worn 10), 2015. In this painting you can see a naked woman staring at herself in her vanity mirror. The significance of this painting is that Lisa Brice has painted a nude woman that does not resemble the nude portraits from years before. For decades, men have painted women in the nude and their depictions of these nude women widely differs from Brice's style. As opposed to the woman staring out at the spectators, she is staring at herself and letting her own eyes wander over her own figure; taking ownership of herself and stripping it from the spectators (though they never had ownership of her anyway). The painting radiates confidence and vulnerability simultaneously and the presence of a woman surveying her own self is relatable to others observing Brice's work. A woman's body is typically shamed by society and only appreciated by the scrutinizing gaze of fevered men but with her art, Lisa Brice is trying to reclaim the woman figure for itself.
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