An exhibition of detailed and luminously colored paintings in the Renaissance style has taken the art world by storm. Thankfully, they’re now on display at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Harmonia Rosales’ “Master Narrative” could not be more timely. On display through June 25, the 21 paintings and one sculpture installation take us on a journey of exploration of human commonality in a world that thrives on exploiting differences.

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By intertwining the tales from the West African Yorùbá religion, Christianity and Greek mythology, Rosales’ images point to the common origins of our beliefs. And by using religiously and racially diverse images in the context of artistic techniques and frameworks seen in canonical works of Renaissance art, she enables us to see their multi-dimensional meanings.

Rosales told me she started painting to better explain this world to her children. Perhaps that, in part, is the source of her artistic power. Born to a Cuban-born father and a Jamaican-Jewish mother, she struggled with racial identity and gendered societal expectations on her path to self-discovery and becoming a professional artist. But the birth of her first child, a daughter, for her truly highlighted the lack of diversity in the art collections of the great museums. She wanted to share her love of art with her child, but the images, projecting mainly Western aesthetic ideals, were unrelatable.

In Lucumí, the African diasporic religion Rosales grew up with, she found the framework for her artistic expression. Developed in Cuba during the late 19th century, Lucumí amalgamated the traditional Yorùbá religion of West Africa with Catholicism and Spiritism. Through the stories of Yorùbá deities, orishas, Rosales explores commonalities with their Western counterparts. She explains that this was the key to their survival as the people of the African diaspora identified their deities with the Christian saints they were forced to worship and hid them within. From the creation of Earth and humankind to the horrors and ultimate triumph over the transatlantic slave trade, the stories of orishas are both new and familiar.

The “Master Narrative” was built around the Brooks’ first purchase of a work by Rosales, her “Migration of the Gods (2021)” painting. This work of tremendous emotional power depicts the Middle Passage while recalling Michelangelo’s representation of the Great Flood in the Sistine Chapel. The image shows orishas being brought to strange new lands with enslaved Africans. In our conversation, Rosales spoke about the gods themselves surviving because of the people who carried their beliefs with them. The ships transported the people, and the people transported the gods.

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Upon entering the exhibition that sprawls across four connected galleries, the eye is drawn to “Yamaya’s Ascension into the Waters (2019).” Yamaya is a water deity and the mother of all orishas. She is particularly significant in the context of the perilous journey of the transatlantic slave trade as she gives herself to the water and becomes the ocean to protect her children worldwide. In this painting, her figure is framed by waterlilies, roses, peonies and chrysanthemums. The ethereal mood here is unmistakable. Yamaya appears in several works throughout the exhibit, including her incarnations as biblical Mary and Eve.

The “Creation Story (2021)” follows “Yamaya’s Ascension into the Waters.” Here, Obatala, the creator and a gender-fluid orisha, mimics the pose of God in Michelangelo’s “The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants (1511)” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. According to the Yorùbá tradition, in the beginning, the earth was water. The look in Obatala’s eyes is intense as he is charged with the first act of creation — the making of land. On the left, Yamaya is reminiscent of Titian’s female nude “The Venus of Urbino (1534)”. Not only do we see here a male and a female figure both present at the creation of the world, a pointed departure from biblical accounts, but Yamaya, mother of all and goddess of water, appears interrupted and perhaps annoyed by the arrival of Obatala.

“Still We Rise (2021)” again engages with the Sistine Chapel by reimagining Michelangelo’s vision of the “Last Judgment (1536–1541).” Here the themes of survival and perseverance replace those of sin and salvation. The hell below is the reality of slavery, with the slave ships, whips and a slave auction block. Above them, we see the enslaved people helping each other rise. We see a ladder and a burning Confederate flag in place of the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment.” At the top, there are figures carrying a pair of flying crosses as the rainbow serpent, Osumare, looks on. Osumare originally signaled the completion of the world, and perhaps here, it points to the end of suffering.

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If she had to choose one work that is her favorite, Rosales told me, it would be the “Master Narrative (2022)” itself — her own version of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Hovering over the visitors in the last gallery of the exhibition, the installation represents the hull of an overturned slave ship populated by fabric prints of her paintings. Black figures here replace the white ones originally occupying Michelangelo’s fresco, as the artist masterfully invites us to view the world through the lens of the African diaspora.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world,” Alan Alda once said. “Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

In this “Master Narrative” exhibition, Harmonia Rosales guides us brilliantly as we break free of the limitations of our own assumptions. Highly recommended!