In her stunning first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, international and award-winning artist Kokeb has captured on canvas what we know deep in our hearts: beautiful Black faces, each immersed in their own serene gazes, adorned with sunflowers and marigolds, some looking straight at us, others immersed in a tenderness so pure, it almost feels like an intrusion to look at them.

Kokeb, who often paints in response to poetry collections, has long preferred to depict Black figures who seem to possess the kind of knowing that we don’t. Their serenity seems to come exactly from that, and they look, and look, and look, unbothered, bejeweled, at times bursting from an explosion of hues, other times captured in dimmed, intimate moments.

The current show, Within the Black Frame, I Find contains several earlier pieces, including work commissioned through different poetry collections.