I am pleased to annouce that I am a finalist for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. My work, along with the other finalists, will be presented in “The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today,” a major exhibition premiering at the National Portrait Gallery from April 30, 2022, through Feb. 26, 2023, before traveling to other cities in the United States. A press preview will be held April 29, 2022, at 10 a.m.
Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the museum. The 42 finalists in this year’s edition were selected from more than 2,700 entries. The first-prize winner, to be announced in the spring, will receive a cash award of $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the museum’s permanent collection.
The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition encourages artists living and working across the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands to submit work that challenges traditional definitions of portraiture.
Kira Nam Greene’s work explores female sexuality, desire and control through figure and food still-life paintings, surrounded by complex patterns. Imbuing the feminist legacies of Pattern and Decoration Movement with transnational, multicultural motifs, Greene creates colorful paintings that are unique combinations of realism and abstraction, employing diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil. Combining Pop Art tropes and transnationalism, she also examines the politics of food through the depiction of brand name food products, or junk food. Recently, Greene started a figurative painting series spurred by the 2016 Presidential Election, Women’s March, #metoo movement and ensuing crisis of conscience, this new body of work aspires to present the power of collective action by women.