Avocado
Date2021-2022
MediumOil and gold leaf on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 33 × 27 × 2 inches (83.8 × 68.6 × 5.1 cm)
Canvas: 30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm)
Credit LineMuseum Purchase, with funds provided by the Gari Melchers Collectors’ Society
Object number2023.11
Copyright© 2024 Elizabeth Colomba / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextElizabeth Colomba was born in France and trained as a painter in Paris. Her oil paintings update historic subject matter with autobiographical and narrative references to her French upbringing and Caribbean heritage. In 2016, she began a series of still lifes centering fruits and plants native to her ancestral Martinique. Avocado incorporates the iconographic language of 17th-century Dutch still life vanitas paintings―such as the decaying fruit and insects―as reminders of life’s transience. Colomba reframes these traditional tropes to focus on the history of exploitative relationships between colonialism, commodities, and Black labor in the West Indies.
