Iona Rozeal Brown

Brown was born in 1966, Washington, DC and currently live and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2002. Brown uses her large-scale acrylic paintings to wryly comment on the ductile and ever-changing essence of cultural identity, most often by creating visual mash-ups of two disparate but in fact subtly harmonious subcultures: the samurai and geishas depicted in traditional Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking and the contemporary world of hip-hop. Trained in the art of ukiyo-e herself, Brown pursues a transcultural aesthetic in both her imagery and her technique, mixing the racial, gender, and class issues in her subject matter with the deftness of a DJ. The artist’s paintings have been widely exhibited, and she received a solo show at Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010. In 2011 she was commissioned to create a performance for the Performa biennial.