Body Language

Over the past few years, with a new focus on figuration, the painting world has been invigorated. The works of the three women artists featured here—Nadia Waheed, Danielle Mckinney, and Apolonia Sokol—present a singular take on the female gaze, capturing women as their subjects. Harnessing the tradition of figuration in modern, thrilling ways, each offers her own bold take on the female body, whether its traversing cosmic realms or in silent repose. The result? An interrogation of human nature that transcends labels as it offers an examination of the other and the self, with an eye toward the sublime.

Mckinney’s paintings are impressive in the profundity of emotion they express. The paintings are cool and assured, just like the women in them. Mckinney says they are meant to be a furtive glimpse into their lives, that the women aren’t aware of the viewer. Mckinney refers to the paintings as “interiors,” and says she starts them by looking at old pictures in magazines or on Pinterest. She adds touches in the background—especially artworks she’s thinking about at the time, like Greek sculptures and Henri Matisse paintings.

“The works focus on these domestic spaces,” she says. “I’ve done some where they’re in nature, but generally they’re on sofas or on beds and they’re doing these leisurely activities. So I think the narrative stays consistent in this domesticity of environments of the home.”

Domesticity is actually a continuation of Mckinney’s childhood works. While growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, Mckinney would craft shoebox dioramas of interior life. Later, her grandmother encouraged her to paint and signed her up for classes. Then, her mother gifted her a camera, and Mckinney quickly caught the photography bug. She built a career as a photographer (a 2013 photo project, The Guardian, got press from HuffPost and the Daily Mail). 

But Mckinney’s photography career had plateaued, and the pandemic gave her a period to rethink her priorities. Though she had maintained a painting practice throughout her adult life, she had kept it private. She began to take painting seriously for the first time in her late 30s and joined a class. Her teacher was encouraging, and she felt confident about the work, so she began to post the images on social media and cold-submitting her portfolio to galleries and institutions. 

Three months passed of “being left on seen on Instagram” and not receiving any replies, when Davida Nemeroff of the trendsetting Los Angeles art space Night Gallery DM’d her and asked her to send samples of the work to the gallery—the pandemic version of a studio visit.

“I sat there and I sobbed,” says Mckinney about Night Gallery’s interest in her work, which also led to a show at Marianne Boesky in October of last year. “I still think about it and sob, because I just appreciated the fact that she was genuine. And she said, ‘This is gonna be crazy. This artist has like 20 followers, but I’m gonna give her a chance. I’m gonna give her a show.’ And that’s how it happened.”

Now officially a late bloomer, Mckinney has her sights set even higher. Her next solo show at Night Gallery in May will feature experiments in oil paint, a departure from the acrylics she’s been using (she says training herself is a “very scary” process). But the quiet moments and the femininity? Those will still be there.

“They have this universal femininity to them, and they express that through their gestures and sometimes through their clothing or the environment that they’re in,” Mckinney says about her subjects. “I definitely feel that they claim this femininity. Not in a way that’s like ‘Look at me, I’m power woman, I’m superwoman.’ But there’s a humbleness to them, there’s a softness to them that I think really alludes to that feminine touch, that soft touch. I try to create that.”

What’s important to Waheed about the aforementioned connection between the spirit and the body is how we can take those narratives and uncork universal truths about the world—experiences that she shares with her group of “brown girlfriends who have struggled with relationships with their bodies,” or experiences with her and her mother being outcast from a patriarchal community after her mother’s divorce.

“All of these allegories that I’m painting in my work are things that I’m experiencing in my life,” she says. “So I’m trying to unpack and process a lot of the questions that I have, trying to parse these complex questions of growing up, maturing, letting go of baggage.”

With this personal narrative-cum-spiritual journey, it cannot be overstated that Waheed is a master painter. Her renderings are beautifully brushed with sumptuous colors and large scale, which lends to them being perfect for big galleries like Jeffrey Deitch—where she’s shown in group shows—and Mihai Nicodim in Los Angeles, where she has a solo exhibition in September. But to Waheed, who says she tends to work on many paintings at once, she’s just trying to get the viewer to feel, well, cosmic.

“It’s the feeling of the sublime: When you look at the ocean, when you look at the Grand Canyon, when you look at the night sky filled with stars, where it’s a feeling of simultaneous connection to everything, but also a knowledge of your own insignificance in a very positive, humbling, healing way,” she says. “I think a lot of my work comes from a desire to convey that type of feeling.”

“In the process of painting, I somehow identify with the person I paint,” says Sokol, who graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2015. “I think about them over and over again, how I relate to their stance in life, or how I recognize myself in their political ideologies. Sometimes my thoughts can be painful. Over time, I became aware of how I behave in the act of painting. As a result, I try to control my thoughts and not let myself completely dive into melancholy. But I usually forget everything when I paint.”

In the early 2010s, Sokol began to feel the limitations of the Lavoir Moderne, which was fighting for its existence. She traveled to New York and met Elizabeth Peyton, who has a history of supporting and mentoring young artists. At the suggestion of Peyton, she found work in the studio of downtown artist Dan Colen, then famous for his paintings of chewing gum and bird droppings. Later she would spend important time in Los Angeles with the painter Henry Taylor.

“Actually I believe his influence is recognizable in my work,” Sokol says. “He gave me the keys to his studio, and I worked there for a time surrounded by his pieces.”

But it was Sokol’s long-standing friendship with Oksana Shachko that proved to be Sokol’s most resounding influence. The Ukrainian artist who had been affiliated with the political group Femen had found refuge in the lofts above the Lavoir Moderne, and the two became close, before Shachko’s death in 2018.

“I have learned so much from Oksana, she taught me to use my art as a political medium,” Sokol says. “Unfortunately, I understood how to do so after her passing on. Oksana was my best friend, and together we lived the most beautiful years of my life, in extreme precariousness. It was tough, but every moment with her was remarkable.”

Much of Sokol’s life as an artist was captured by acclaimed Danish documentary filmmaker Lea Glob, from when they meet in 2009 at the Lavoir Moderne to her more recent sojourns to New York and Los Angeles. Though it’s about her life, Sokol seems to feel a bit of distance from the film, perhaps as one of the people she paints might view themselves on the canvas.

“I’m only the subject of the film and as any piece of art, it’s very much about the artist herself—I mean the filmmaker Lea Glob,” clarifies Sokol. “It’s her carrying [the] vision. The film is now in competition, and it’s in the hands of the audience. I think it’s been received with a lot of love and kindness; for that I’m very grateful.”