The Divide, 2022
Lumin Wakoa (b. 1981, Ashland City, TN; d. 2025, New York, NY) received a BFA from the University of Florida in 2005, and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010. Her work has been the subject of solo and two-person presentations at Harper’s, New York (2024 and 2022); Various Small Fires, Seoul and Los Angeles (2024 and 2023); Taymour Grahne, London (2023); Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland (2022); Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn (2021 and 2018); George Gallery, Brooklyn (2019); and Present Company, Brooklyn (2017). Most recently, Wakoa participated in group exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery, New York (2024); Almine Rech, online (2023); Harper’s, East Hampton and Los Angeles (2023, 2022, and 2021); Gaa Gallery, Provincetown (2022); Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome (2022); Hesse Flatow, New York (2021); Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland (2021); and James Fuentes, online (2020). Reviews of her work appeared in Artnet, Brooklyn Rail, and Vogue, among other publications.
Her work bridges figuration and abstraction, often focusing on landscape elements, skeletal forms, floral motifs, and temporal atmospheres. Wakoa’s process is built on layering – painting en plein air or from observations, then refining, revising, sanding, revisiting surfaces over time. Her works evoke memory, perception, and the shifting passage of time: the warmth of light, textures of nature, the interplay of presence and absence. Solo and group exhibitions from Los Angeles to Rome have showcased her evolving visual vocabulary, which invites viewers to dwell within uncertainty and sensory imprint rather than literal description.