Shanna and Sita

CHE LOVELACE (B. 1969)  

Shanna and Sita  

signed with the artist's initials and dated 'CL 21' (lower left); signed again twice, titled and dated ''SHANNA + SITA' 2021 CHE LOVELACE Che Lovelace' (on the reverse)  

acrylic and dry pigment on board panel  

60 x 50 inches (152.4 x 127 cm)  

Executed in 2021.

PROVENANCE:  

Private collection, New York

EXHIBITED:  

Brussels, Almine Rech, Resting Point of Accommodation, April-May, 2021.

NOTES:  

Born in 1969 in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, Che Lovelace is a celebrated painter whose exuberant, deeply atmospheric works explore the spiritual, social, and sensory dimensions of Caribbean life. Trained at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de la Martinique, Lovelace draws upon the landscape, rituals, festivals, and vernacular culture of Trinidad to construct richly layered compositions that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. His paintings are distinguished by their rhythmic use of color, dense material surfaces, and immersive treatment of space, transforming scenes of everyday life into emotionally and mythically charged environments. Across his practice, Lovelace approaches the Caribbean not as subject matter to be interpreted for outsiders, but as a complete visual and cultural language with its own internal logic, symbolism, and history.

Shanna and Sita is organized around the abundance of a Caribbean market stall: pineapples, watermelons, plantains, bananas arranged in vivid, near-surreal profusion. To the centre of the composition two figures emerge, half-framed, seemingly gazing at one another with the ease of deep familiarity. Lovelace works in acrylic and dry pigment on board; his treatment of the natural landscape is inseparable from his sense of national identity. For Lovelace, Trinidad is not backdrop but grammar, the generative centre of form, colour, and myth from which is painterly language emerges.

The composition hovers between the domestic and the celebratory, between painting and tableau. Lovelace does not translate Caribbean life for an external audience; he treats it as a complete visual world with its own laws. The alternation between naturalistic and near-abstract rendering of the food – lush, mouthwatering, abundant – creates an intimacy that is entirely Trinidadian, and entirely his. Through this balance of abundance and intimacy, Shanna and Sita becomes both portrait and atmosphere, capturing the sensual immediacy and cultural specificity that define Lovelace’s work.

Lovelace’s work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Almine Rech, where Shanna and Sita was exhibited in Resting Point of Accommodation in 2021. His paintings are held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut. In 2025, Lovelace was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, recognizing his significant contribution to contemporary art and culture.