The work of Calida Rawles may seem simple at first glance and easily described. The Delaware-born, Los Angeles-based painter’s canvases broadly feature portraits of black folks in and around water. Some float on its surface, others are obscured beneath it, with only body parts visible. In every work, the artist uses the same photorealistic style to capture the play of light against the water and the people in the paintings.
Yet like many facets of African American life, the juxtaposition of those two elements – water and Black people – is riven with meaning.
“People see water and they may think of leisure, relaxation, pools. But a lot of African Americans, when they see water, it’s a fear, and it’s a memory of a lot of history where we didn’t have access to it,” Rawles says. “Or we can even go deeper, in that the connection of all African Americans, per se, starts with the Middle Passage.”
(Marten Elder)
"Away with the Tides," 2024, by Calida Rawles. Acrylic on canvas. 120 x 96 inches.
Investigating the Black connection with water is just one goal of “Away with The Tides,” Rawles’ show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami now through Feb. 23, 2025. Both the artist and the museum are using the show as an opportunity to discuss the systemic racism that city, state, and federal governments have enacted against Black Floridians, centered on the experience of Overtown, the landlocked, historically Black neighborhood just north of downtown Miami.
““I was very interested in working with Calida,” Maritza Lacayo, the show’s curator, says. “We acquired one of her works back in 2021, which is still on view. And when we started talking about doing a solo show, I think both of us were thinking about, or at the very least reflecting on Florida and Florida politics and everything that was happening here in the state. And we felt that there was definitely a story that could be told.”
(Lazaro Llanes)
Calida Rawles painted Overtown residents for her latest series of paintings.
That story is rooted in the mid-20th century destruction of Overtown’s community. Once a major entertainment district considered the “Harlem of the South,” it was torn apart by the construction of Interstate 95, becoming a victim of “racism by design” that swept across the country at the time. Several works in the show allude to this history: “Hallowed Be Her Name,” a pastel drawing, shows a mother and her child floating against the silhouetted interchange in the background. Another work showing a subject’s legs splayed out in water, while the video work “We Gonna’ Swim,” a collaboration between Rawles and filmmaker Laura Brownson, features footage of Black folks swimming, dancing, and spending time juxtaposed with the demolition of homes and overhead photos of highways.
(Martin Elder)
Artist Calida Rawles is the subject of PAMM's latest show.
Segregation was also in effect at this time, even regarding water access. Until the early 1960s, nonwhite Miamians were limited to the use of one beach, today’s Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Before its establishment in 1945, Black residents were prohibited from using any of the city’s beaches. Programming around the show has highlighted these struggles. A documentary shown on opening night, “Wade in the Water,” by filmmaker Cathleen Dean, showed the Civil Rights Movement’s fight to gain ocean access for “colored” Floridians. Incidents discussed include Dr. Von D. Mizell and Eula Johnson’s campaign to desegregate beaches in Broward County, as well as the Monson Motor Lodge protests of 1964, during which the white owner of a St. Augustine motel poured acid into the whites-only pool that anti-segregation protesters had taken over. Miami itself also hosted civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., whose room at the Historic Hampton House in Liberty City is preserved as a museum exhibit.
(Lazaro Llanes)
An installation view of "Calida Rawles: Away with The Tides" at Pérez Art Museum Miami.
“There are all these really beautiful photos of Malcolm X at Virginia Key and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Overtown,” Lacayo says. “All of these images, they live in the world, but I was never taught those things in school, even though I was born and raised in Miami. So, to me, this was like, wow, I get to learn about my own city. And we also get to tap into the current moment. And it felt like the right bridge, at least for me, curatorially speaking and on behalf of the institution.”
But there’s more to the show than simply raising awareness. The subjects of Rawles’ paintings in the show are “towners,” residents of Overtown, sourced from the community with the help of an unexpected connection.
“I was very lucky, my husband's cousin happened to work at the Overtown Community Center,” Rawles says. “I asked her if she could help me gather people, for models. So, she ended up doing a lot of searching, taking pictures of people in the community, asking if they would be interested.”
Rawles then visited Miami for two weeks in December 2022 to meet the models and to shoot photos that would be used as source material for the artworks. They shot photos at a local pool as well as at Virginia Key Beach Park, a first for Rawles who had never worked with a natural water source before. The difference can be seen in the color of the water in each painting, where some have the clean azure color of a chlorinated swimming pool while others take on a more greenish hue.
“When I talked to most people in Overtown, they don't swim,” she says. “Because of segregation laws, people didn’t really have access to swimming pools and water. And now that whole element is taken away from them, the idea of swimming for leisure. They’re saying, like, it’s not theirs. Even today, we’re still living in it. We’re like, oh, segregation ended a long time ago. But mentally, it’s still taken away from that community as an option.”
Rawles found that many of her subjects had never swum before, were not skilled swimmers, or were nervous around the water, bucking the stereotype that Floridians and Miamians are adept swimmers but sadly confirming a cultural bias towards swimming with roots in systematic oppression. Yet her work has already inspired some to change that.
“I get a lot of messages like ‘I went scuba diving because of you,’ ‘I took swim lessons because of you,” she says. “They see agency in the water, a possibility of being okay, feeling comfortable, and enjoying it. Sometimes you’ve got to see it to believe it’s possible.”