Since 2017, Harmonia Rosales’s paintings of West African deities and Yoruba culture have engaged and empowered audiences. Using the frameworks of Greco-Roman mythologies and Renaissance art, Rosales recovers the stories of Yoruba gods and goddesses called Orishas through her work. In doing so, her paintings invoke the deep histories of the African Diaspora, portray Black female empowerment, and challenge audiences to consider new perspectives of beauty, strength, and the Black figure. For example, in The Birth of Oshun (2017), the Orisha of love, fertility, and desire floats toward the viewer on a seashell with caramel-brown skin and short hair framed by three other black figures, similar to the composition of Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli’s, Birth of Venus (1485). 

Transformations: The Rise and Fall of the Orishas delves into the ancient stories of the Yoruba. This is an epic tale about the origins of the Orishas, whose identities and stories have been masked by Christianity for over 500 years. These works, which are inspired by Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 A.D.), are the artist’s way of creating a visual narration for stories that primarily live in one’s ancestral memory.