Michaela Yearwood-Dan: A Woman of Will
29 October - 12 December 2026
Marianne Boesky Gallery
509 West 24th Street

In her upcoming exhibition A Woman of Will, the lush, mixed-media abstraction of Michaela Yearwood-Dan (b. 1994, London) takes on new meaning with a fresh exploration of her Catholic upbringing as it relates to queerness, colonialism, and feminism.

Yearwood-Dan attended an all-girls convent school in London throughout her formative teenage years, and Catholicism—the rites and rituals, the opulent aesthetics, the teachings of sacrificial love embodied in the term "agape"—profoundly impacted her. At the same time, the young artist was also learning how to analyze and critique literary, historical, and religious texts through a profoundly feminist lens. 

Rigorously educated in large part by nuns (the Faithful Companions of Jesus, whose Ignatian values emphasize education and social justice), Yearwood-Dan began to grasp the disconnect between the church’s teachings on love and acceptance and its actions, particularly with regard to its legacy of colonialism and the erasure of women and queer people. In response to this contradiction, Yearwood-Dan searched biblical texts for evidence of an inclusive, community-oriented practice of love, one that dignified women and queer people. She found this evidence in the creation of the myth of Mary Magdalene, a trusted apostle and respected leader in the early church who was later reimagined by male clergy as a repentant whore; in the queerness implied in the relationship between Jesus and the apostle John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved;” and in the lives and stories of the saints.

For A Woman of Will, Yearwood-Dan conjures the cool, sacred atmosphere of a cathedral. A suite of 13 small paintings—one for each of Jesus’ apostles, including Mary Magdalene—line the walls of the gallery’s small front room, evoking the intimacy of a side chapel. Throughout the airy gallery, large-scale paintings—lush, gestural abstractions in vivid cobalts, gold, and maroons—evoke sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows. Diaristic meditations and small objects (ceramic petals, glass beads, glitter, gold leaf, paper scraps, and neatly-tied ribbon) adorn the paintings’ surfaces. Throughout the space, ornate, ceramic-tiled wood benches—made in collaboration with sculptor and furniture designer Theodore Vass—serve as pews, offering respite for quiet contemplation.

Casting the Bible as a literary text and its writers as unreliable narrators, Yearwood-Dan creates for herself new possibilities for contemporary spirituality. Calling on Mary Magdalene, one of the original women of will, the artist invokes a host of willful voices (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Nina Simone, Charlie xcx, Bonnie Raitt, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, as well as her own), embedding their words into her paintings.

—

More information is in the above-linked press release, and a preview of works on view is below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Artwork information is in each image’s file title. Image reuse must be exclusively in association with press coverage of the exhibition, with the credit line “copyright of the artist and courtesy of Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen”