OCHI is pleased to present She who sits, an exhibition of paintings by Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Adrienne Elise Tarver. The works on view originated as Tarver's debut solo commission with Public Art Fund, first presented across roughly 300 transit shelters and newsstands in New York, Boston, and Chicago in 2024. She who sits will be on view at OCHI, located at 605 N. Western Ave in Los Angeles, CA, from September 12 through October 10, 2026. A public reception will be held at the gallery on Saturday, September 12 from 6–8pm.

The paintings in She who sits explore the centrality of the Black matriarchal figure, framing the posture of sitting as a site of self-contained power and agentic rest. The works center on Vera Otis, an invented figure Tarver has spent the past decade shaping after discovering an anonymous woman in a secondhand photograph. Through Otis, Tarver examines Black female identity, connecting her personal family history to broader questions of belonging and memory. Inspired by mid-century Black actresses like Dorothy Dandridge and Eartha Kitt, Otis rejects the mandate to entertain, remaining unhurried and self-possessed. Seated in intimate environments both interior and outdoor, an ordinary pose of rest becomes a quiet, public claim on presence and reclamation of selfhood.

Tarver draws on an extensive collection that brings together personal snapshots, found imagery, and media archives, including clippings pulled from vintage copies of Ebony and Jet magazines. By layering material from different eras, she roots Otis’s invented biography in real historical texture, linking the past to the present. The resulting paintings sit at the intersection of portraiture and myth-making, using color and interior space to hold both the specificity of a single imagined life and a broader meditation on rest as a form of agency.

Commissioned by Public Art Fund for Adrienne Elise Tarver: She who sits, an exhibition on 300 JCDecaux bus shelters and newsstands across New York City, Chicago, and Boston on view from August 14 – November 24, 2024.

Adrienne Elise Tarver (b. 1985, New Jersey, US) received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Boston University. Tarver's work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT; Brattleboro Museum of Art in Brattleboro, VT; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, GA; Wedge Curatorial in Toronto, Canada; A-M Gallery in Sydney, Australia; Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD; Hesse Flatow, Wave Hill, Hollis Taggart, Dinner Gallery, and BRIC Project Room in New York, NY; and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA and Sun Valley, ID. Tarver is the recipient of awards and residencies including a 2022-2023 Silver Art Projects Residency, 2023 Artshack Ceramics Residency, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University, and a 2022 Nancy Graves Visual Art Grant. She has been awarded commissions for projects with New York Metro Transit Authority, Public Art Fund, Google, Art Aspen, and Pulse Art Fair. Tarver's work has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, Forbes, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtNews, ArtNet, Blouin ArtInfo, Whitewall Magazine, Hyperallergic, and the Woman’s Art Journal. Tarver is an Assistant Professor in the department of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Tarver lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by OCHI.