Viewing Michaela Yearwood-Dan: No Time for Despair at Hauser & Wirth

London-born artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan is one of the UK’s most exciting and promising young artists. At 31, this is her first solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, having joined the gallery in 2024 and participated in a residency at the gallery’s Somerset studios. Yearwood-Dan has become sought-after for her dreamy, large-scale and luscious paintings, semi-abstract meanderings through her personal world.

This all-new body of work is in part inspired by an article Toni Morrison wrote for The Nation responding to the re-election of George W Bush, “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilisations heal.” Finding startling similarities with today’s political context, Yearwood-Dan’s work set about imagining, creating, collaborating, comforting.

There’s an emotive, breathtaking new 11-metre work, with an accompanying sound piece made in collaboration with Alex Gruz, benches made in collaboration with Homewrk Design, plinths made in collaboration with Theodore Vass, and new ceramic pieces that have become part of Yearwood-Dan’s work in more recent years. All of these works insist and don’t let go of the idea, – the sustained belief – in beauty, in joy, and in coming together. Yearwood-Dan will be in conversation with Ekow Eshun on June 6 from 6pm.