Lisa Brice

While some museums are closed again due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibitions will include shows at institutions that remain open as well as digital projects providing virtual access to art and culture.

Painted in vivid blue, Lisa Brice’s enigmatic depictions of women – richly layered, though often sketchily rendered – work to unsettle the genre of the female nude. While their poses often make oblique reference to canonical Western works, their faces are generally turned from the viewer, absorbed in activities that range from the everyday (gazing in the mirror; smoking a cigarette) to the mysterious. The use of the colour blue is in part a reference to the Trinidadian carnival character of the ‘Blue Devil’, and reflects Brice’s interest in the way that masks and disguises can serve as a form of liberation. Brice was born in Cape Town and divides her time between London and Trinidad; her first museum show in the Netherlands at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art in The Hague includes a new painting exploring the work of the Dutch painter Charley Toorop, whom she first came across in the collection of the adjoining Kunstmuseum (21 November–5 April 2021). Find out more from the GEM website.

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