Naudline Pierre
b. 1989, Leomister, Massachusetts
Lives in New York
venue
Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University
Woldenberg Art Center #202, Newcomb Circle, New Orleans, LA 70118
Monday, closed
Tuesday–Friday, 10 AM–5 PM
Saturday–Sunday, 10 AM–4 PM
neighborhood
About the project
Don’t You Let Me Down, Don’t You Let Me Go, 2021
Oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York
Naudline Pierre’s paintings employ rich and rigorous worldbuilding to imagine transcendent spaces for community and self. To view her work is to enter a realm ruled by supernatural forces. Suffused with rich color, Pierre’s vibrant worlds accommodate the pleasures and torments of her predominantly femme protagonists as they vie for power, connect with one another, and seek refuge.
Pierre’s largest painting to date, Don’t You Let Me Down, Don’t You Let Me Go brims with fiery winged figures resembling the harpies of classical mythology. Related but distinct moments sit side-by-side within this ethereal scene. For the first time in Pierre’s work, the central protagonist, who represents the artist’s alter ego, appears twice, suggesting both the complex inner lives of the figures and the mutable passage of time. The composition features figures taking to the cloud-laden air and plunging into watery depths, rendered with fine, translucent swirls of indigo. The overwhelming presence of water and allusions to fire recall the connective and transcendent qualities of the elemental forces that shape our reality through experience, movement, ritual, and geography.
about the artist
Naudline Pierre pulls the threads of the fabric of her religious upbringing and her personal history to weave evocative, supernatural visual tales in her paintings, which simultaneously innovate and adhere to the conventions of Western painting traditions. Pierre’s subjects have a mythological quality and often appear to be in the midst of action, but her paintings are infused with ambiguity and viewers may be uncertain if the subjects are arriving or departing, showing affection or engaging in violence, seeking intimacy or protection. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Armory Show, New York; and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, among others. Pierre’s works are in the permanent collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. She earned a BFA from Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Pierre will be an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, through September 1, 2020.
Naudline Pierre, Don’t You Let Me Down, Don’t You Let Me Go, 2021. Oil on canvas, 96 x 120 inches. Installation view: Prospect.5 Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Alex Marks