Lisa Brice

Lisa Brice (b. 1968) is a South African-born painter whose work reclaims and reimagines the representation of women in art history. Raised in Cape Town, she studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, graduating in 1990, and later moved to London in 1998. She also spent formative years in Trinidad, co-founding the influential Caribbean Contemporary Arts (CCA7) space alongside artists such as Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, a context that broadened her visual vocabulary and deepened her engagement with postcolonial narratives.

Brice is known for her vivid use of ultramarine and vermilion tones, and for her spectral depictions of female figures often seen in states of self-possession. Her compositions draw upon the art historical canon — quoting, inverting and destabilising iconic works by Manet, Degas and Courbet — to interrogate the male gaze and challenge tropes of femininity in visual culture. In her solo show LIVES and WORKS at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris, 2023), Brice reimagined historic tableaux with women not as passive muses but as autonomous subjects, including a provocative inversion of Courbet’s L’Origine du monde.

She has held solo exhibitions at Tate Britain (2018), KM21 in The Hague (2020) and Charleston Trust in the UK (2021), and is represented in major collections including Tate, the Hammer Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Brice’s practice reflects a sustained inquiry into gender, power and visibility, positioning painting as a site for revision and resistance.