Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides (Unsigned)

A Poetic Immersion into History, Identity, and Water. Step into the luminous, immersive world of Calida Rawles—where water becomes a mirror, a memory, and a movement. Away with the Tides is the first museum catalog dedicated to the visionary Los Angeles–based artist whose spellbinding, hyperrealistic paintings have redefined contemporary portraiture. Known for her transcendent renderings of Black bodies submerged in brilliant, flowing water, Rawles merges hyperrealism with poetic abstraction. Her work explores the dualities of water—as a symbol of freedom and oppression, healing and harm—anchored in the cultural and historical weight of racial injustice.

This stunning volume accompanies Rawles’ first solo museum exhibition at our museum, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, where her fluid compositions flow into a deeper, often obscured history of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood and the formerly segregated Virginia Key Beach. For the first time, Rawles photographed her subjects on location, creating a powerful link between her ethereal aesthetic and the lived legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow South, and environmental memory.

Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides is more than a catalog—it’s a reverent archive of beauty, resistance, and resilience. Overflowing with full-color reproductions, thoughtful essays, and intimate insight into Rawles’ process, this book is an essential addition to any collector’s library of contemporary Black art.

Dive deep. Rise renewed.

Details 

• Hardcover
• 152 Pages 
  
• Dimension: 9.5 x 0.7 x 12 inches