Feels Like Summer

2025 CHAW Resident Artist – Yewande Kotun Davis

January 3rd – February 22nd, 2025

CHAW Art Gallery

Yewande will use her time as the 2025 CHAW Resident Artist to develop a new body of work, titled “Feels Like Summer.” Inspired by the work of authors, Nayyirah Waheed, Tricia Hersey, and EbonyJanice Moore, among others, this body of work will expand on Yewande’s social practice rooted in community care, and is in many ways, a response to the palpable collective grief and heaviness that has overtaken her and our daily lives. Through narrative portraiture, contemporary still life-like imagery, and curated micro-installations, Yewande invites viewers to slow down, embrace the lightness of summer as a feeling rather than a season, and imagine a world where our bodies— her body— can finally embrace rest, ease, joy, and play. 

Biography

Yewande is an American Nigerian visual artist, curator, and social practitioner using her creative practice as a means for community care. While her first career as a healthcare administrator lends to her expertise at the intersection of health and wellness and racial justice, her Nigerian heritage and Southern upbringing lend to her love of storytelling. As such, Yewande’s work celebrates, reframes, and even reimagines narratives that have been inadequately or falsely delivered in the past. Through direct social and community engagement, which often informs her work, Yewande typically centers the layered experiences of Black folks— most often women and children— highlighting joy, resilience, and shared humanity. Within her work, Yewande marries first-hand narratives with vibrant colors, reimagined yet familiar imagery, and attention to naming in order to highlight our connectedness and drive meaningful dialogues that promote healing and redefine the human experience.