In Conversation: Harmonia Rosales with Cbabi Bayoc & Damon Davis

Join Chicago-born, Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales in conversation with St. Louis-based artists Cbabi Bayoc and Damon Davis as they discuss their individual practices and ongoing work in reshaping where the Black figure belongs in art. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Amber Howlett-Bayoc.

There will be a book signing with Harmonia Rosales immediately following the artist talk. Copies of Rosales' debut book, CHRONICLES OF ORI: An African Epic, will be available for purchase.
About the Panelists:
Cbabi Bayoc is an internationally-known visual artist and illustrator residing in St. Louis. His subjects include family, children, music with the belief that art has the ability to educate, to spark contemplation and inspire the introspection of the viewer. Bayoc has created murals throughout St. Louis in schools, libraries, and publicly accessible spaces, drawing inspiration from personal experiences, community engagement, and world issues. His most recent project, Remember Me, presented by STLPR and The Marshall Project is a community-centered art installation and reporting project that honors the lives of victims of unsolved homicides in St. Louis.
Damon Davis is a post-disciplinary, Emmy Award willing artist who works and resides in St. Louis. In a practice that is part therapy, part social commentary, his work spans a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. He is well known for his solo exhibition, Darker Gods in The Garden of Low Hanging Heavens, which premiered in St. Louis in 2018 and went to Art Basel Miami later that year. The exhibit explored the surrealist manifestations of Black culture by constructing new mythologies in response to tropes of Blackness.
Through her work artist and author, Harmonia Rosales centers the visibility and empowerment of Black women in Western art. Growing up visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosales was captivated by Renaissance painting – but years later, her daughter’s simple observation that “they don’t look like me” exposed the exclusion at the heart of that tradition. That moment sparked Rosales’s artistic journey: reimagining Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces with Black protagonists and centering West African spirituality. Since 2017, her work has visualized the Orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition, and explored the survival of their stories across the Middle Passage. With bold, uncompromising imagery and prose, Rosales challenges Eurocentric ideals of beauty, power, and divinity, reshaping both art history and cultural consciousness.

Rosales has previously been the subject of exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; the Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; the Wright Museum, Detroit MI, among others. In September 2025, Rosales unveiled her first public sculpture Unbound (2025), a commission for King’s Chapel in Boston, MA. Her work is held by numerous public and private collections across the United States, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, Washington D.C.; Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, and others.

Info: Mix and mingle at 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis with light bites and beverages available.

Info: Dr. Amber Howlett-Bayoc moderates a conversation between artists Harmonia Rosales, Cbabi Bayoc and Damon Davis as they discuss their individual practices and ongoing work in reshaping where the Black figure belongs in art.

Info: There will be a book signing with Harmonia Rosales immediately following the artist talk. Copies of Rosales' debut book, "CHRONICLES OF ORI: An African Epic", will be available for purchase.

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