Teyah Zoe Daniel

Through painting subjects in close relationship with me, my work strives to reflect on concepts of beauty and the intimacy between painter and subject that has consequences for women of colour. Working with brown skin, and people I am closely connected to has enabled me to create representations based on intimacy and shared experience while ensuring the subject’s agency. As a fifth-generation South African Indian who moved to New Zealand as an 11-year-old, I severely struggled with seeing beauty in my brown skin. I now realise the impact imagery has had on my thinking and ideas. The work in my project Sweet Rich Melanin, explores an avenue of representation that was missing in the environments I developed in.

Growing up in a pre-digital space I was immersed in conventional images of the ideal female beauty that emanated from movies, billboards, TV advertisements, and women’s magazines. This toxic diet led to me becoming interested in the political and representational consequences of the images of women that circulate as I became older. Creating my project Sweet Rich Melanin is my own way of pushing against and building upon a history of portraiture that often devalued black and brown bodies. I feel a responsibility to rework the world of imagery so that the beauty of brown skin, hair, and noses are made invisible and valued. I find myself pondering on the irony that I am drawn to portrait painting, yet badly want to change it.