Sahara Longe: 10 Artists to Discover at ART X Lagos 2021

"In Sahara Longe’s paintings, figures lounge in the nude and share quotidien moments, oftentimes gazing past the viewer. Painted in a flat, soft-edged style, the oil-based portraits reexamine work by Old Masters as the artist chooses to swap in Black bodies in place of the models who historically dominated the period. Drawing inspiration from  Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez, Longe continues her experiment of conjuring new visual hierarchies in each of her delicate still lifes. This past October, Longe’s work was featured in the group exhibition “Bold Black British,” curated by Aindrea Emelife, at Christie’s in London, as well as Artsy and W1 Curates’s public art exhibition “Young Black British Artists from London Galleries.”