Hauser & Wirth will now represent Artsy Vanguard 2022 alum Michael Yearwood-Dan. It will co-represent the British artist with New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery.
Yearwood-Dan will be the gallery’s new artist-in-residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, with her tenure set from October to November 2024. The gallery will also present a solo presentation of the London-based artist in 2025 at its London gallery. A series of color-soaked abstract paintings by Yearwood-Dan is currently featured prominently in the Dallas Museum of Art’s exhibition “When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History,” running until April 13, 2025.
Born in London in 1994, Yearwood-Dan first pursued creative arts such as drama and music. However, after she was passed over during an audition for a prestigious performing arts school, she refocused on painting. She received her B.A. in painting from the University of Brighton in 2016. In the years following her graduation, she participated in group exhibitions across the U.K. at galleries such as Unit in London and Limbo Gallery in Margate, Kent. Her abstract work, rich with personal and cultural narratives, explores themes of identity through botanical motifs, textual elements, and lush coloration.
Often incorporating elements of Blackness, queerness, femininity, and healing rituals, her paintings serve as canvases for diaristic meditations. She layers abstract forms and textures with text pulled from various sources, including song lyrics, poetry, and her own reflections, to create depth and meaning. “There’s a vulnerability and a strength to being a woman, a Black artist, and a queer artist talking about subjects like love in a very personal and diaristic form, and making that a stronger factor than all the larger political identifiers that the wider art world would probably want you to talk about—trauma porn to everyone else apart from those living it,” she told Artsy in 2022.
In response to the lockdowns of 2020, Yearwood-Dan began working with clay, a medium that allowed her to maintain creative momentum. These small-scale sculptures are now installed alongside her paintings, creating immersive gallery exhibitions. This exploration is evident in her public artwork, Let Me Hold You (2022), a 10-foot-tall curved mural at Queercircle in London, which opened as a cultural hub for the LGBTQ+ community. This piece was presented with colorful, functional benches and stools.
“Accessibility and community have been a powerful component of her practice for many years, which resonates with our gallery’s longstanding commitment to learning and artist-led programs, said Manuela Wirth, co-president of Hauser & Wirth. “She has consistently presented her work with a deep consideration of the architectural environment viewers are invited into, and the formal qualities of text and visual cues in her art provide multiple access points for the work. In this way, Michaela is reinventing the role of abstraction as something that can speak to an ever-wider range of audiences.”
Yearwood-Dan presented her first New York solo debut, “Be Gentle With Me,” at Marianne Boesky Gallery in 2021. Later that year, her painting Coping Mechanisms (2021) achieved remarkable success at auction, fetching £239,400 ($312,500) at a Phillips auction in London—surpassing its lower estimate nearly twelvefold. Meanwhile, the artist mounted solo exhibitions at Tiwani Contemporary in London in 2022, “The Sweetest Taboo,” and “After Euphoria” in 2019. Earlier this week, David Zwirner also announced the co-representation of Sasha Gordon, another Artsy Vanguard 2022 alum who is also represented by Matthew Brown.
