Self Portrait

AMANI LEWIS (B. 1994)  

Self Portrait  

acrylic, pastel, glitter and digital collage on canvas  

47 x 70 inches (119.4 x 117.8 cm)  

Executed in 2022.

PROVENANCE:  

Private collection, New York

NOTES:  

Born in 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia, Amani Lewis is a contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores identity, community, memory, and self-representation through painting, collage, and mixed media. Drawing upon personal experience, popular culture, archival imagery, and the visual language of youth culture, Lewis creates richly layered portraits that celebrate the complexity and individuality of Black life. Their work often incorporates unconventional materials, vibrant color, and fragmented compositional structures, producing images that feel simultaneously intimate and expansive. Through a practice rooted in care, visibility, and storytelling, Lewis examines how personal identity is shaped through both individual experience and collective cultural histories.

Executed in 2022, Self Portrait offers a powerful example of the artist’s deeply personal and materially inventive approach to portraiture. Combining acrylic, pastel, glitter, and digital collage on canvas, the work constructs identity through accumulation rather than singular representation. Layers of image, texture, and mark-making coexist across the surface, creating a portrait that feels fluid and multifaceted. Rather than presenting the self as fixed or fully knowable, Lewis embraces complexity, allowing different visual elements to overlap, obscure, and reveal one another.

The incorporation of digital collage introduces a contemporary dimension to the work, reflecting the fragmented ways identity is constructed through memory, media, and lived experience. Glitter and pastel contribute moments of luminosity and tactile richness, while painted passages anchor the composition in the traditions of portraiture. The result is a work that moves between vulnerability and self-possession, balancing introspection with celebration. In Self Portrait, Lewis transforms the genre of self-portraiture into a space for examining the layered realities of Black identity, embodiment, and self-definition.

Lewis’ work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and has attracted significant attention for its innovative fusion of painting, collage, and community-centered storytelling. Their work is held in important public and private collections and has been featured in exhibitions that foreground emerging voices in contemporary figurative practice. Through a visually dynamic and deeply personal approach, Lewis continues to expand the possibilities of portraiture as a vehicle for representation, affirmation, and cultural memory.