When Calida Rawles was a student at Spelman College in the late 1990s, she watched as the ribbon was cut on a brand-new museum on campus and imagined one day having her work on those walls. Decades later, that moment has arrived.
Rawles, a Spelman alumna who graduated in 1998, is the subject of “Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides,” an exhibition now on view at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. The show, which opened March 27 and runs through Sept. 5, 2026, features recent acrylic-on-canvas paintings alongside a large-scale video installation exploring natural environments and the cultural history of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood.
“I remember coming into the place, and I thought, as a student, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to show my work here,'” Rawles recalled. “And they were like, ‘No, no, this museum isn’t…’ And my feelings were hurt. But now I get to show.”
The exhibition originated at Pérez Art Museum Miami in May 2024 before traveling to several venues across the country. Spelman serves as the final stop on the national tour, a detail Rawles said carries deep meaning.
Internationally recognized for her hyperrealist style and use of water as both visual subject and historical metaphor, Rawles built the works in this exhibition through a collaborative process with residents of Overtown, a historically Black Miami community whose cultural and commercial life has been steadily eroded by gentrification and displacement. The project included photoshoots at Virginia Key Beach and the public pool at Theodore Gibson Park, with subjects ranging from a 10-month-old baby to senior citizens.
The works interrogate the Atlantic Ocean’s history as the site of the Transatlantic Slave Trade while also centering water as a space of healing and belonging for Black Americans. Rawles said she hopes the paintings spark a sense of cultural pride in the face of erasure.
“I hope they’re taking pride in their culture, recognizing that we need to be visible and to speak on topics about our history and not allow us to be erased,” she said of Spelman students encountering the work.
Spelman Museum Executive Director Dr. Liz Andrews said she knew from the moment she saw the exhibition in Miami that it needed to come to Spelman. Andrews noted that Rawles, trained as a painting major at Spelman, is now among the most prominent artists working today, with her work shown in London, Los Angeles, New York, and beyond.
“I hope that they see themselves in her, whether they are artists themselves or curatorial studies or even business,” Andrews said, “just seeing that persistence, honing your talents, doing your research, those things can pay off really beautifully.”
The exhibition also carries a personal dimension for at least one member of the Spelman community. Skye Rawles, the artist’s daughter and a junior art history major and curatorial studies minor at Spelman, who also works at the museum, said seeing her mother’s work displayed on campus is a convergence she did not fully anticipate.
“It’s a whole combining of worlds for me right now,” she said.
Growing up surrounded by her mother’s art, Skye said the decision to attend Spelman, where Calida Rawles graduated in 1998, felt like a natural one. She has been attending Spelman homecomings her whole life, and the school’s art history program, one of the strongest in the country, sealed it.
“I’ve been raised around a lot of art, and that’s always been something I’ve been really interested in and familiar with,” she said. “I love history, and I love art, so it felt like the perfect combination.”
Skye said she plans to encourage her peers to visit the exhibition, even those who do not typically seek out art galleries, because the work speaks to something larger than aesthetics.
“It brings up important history about Black history,” she said. “Even if you were not really familiar with art or go to exhibits very frequently, it’s something worth checking out for so many other reasons.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog featuring curator Maritza M. Lacayo of Pérez Art Museum Miami, alongside collaborators Regina R. Robertson, Christine Y. Kim and Enuma Okoro. The presentation at Spelman is organized by Andrews with support from Dr. Brandy Pettijohn, Curator of Exhibitions, and Ming Washington, Roy Lichtenstein Post-Baccalaureate Fellow.
For Rawles, the exhibition closing out its national tour at her alma mater feels less like an ending and more like a full-circle moment she quietly willed into existence decades ago.
“It feels so good to be home,” she said.