Who Are the 5 Fastest Rising Young Female Artists in 2022?

The art world continues to rebound from the shock of Covid and its inevitable impacts on the cultural sector, with spending cuts, jobs at risk and exhibitions cancelled or postponed. But 2021 still saw record-breaking sales for some young contemporary artists in the Primary and Secondary markets and the return of most major art fairs, providing emerging artists with some glimmers of hope after a difficult couple of years! This has been especially clear with the rise of some young female artists, but what does the data tell us about who’s really driving the trend?

Using Limna’s Momentum feature, which tracks artists’ recent activities to link their career evolution to their future trajectories, here we take a look at the 5 female artists under 30 whose stars are rising fastest as we go into 2022.

Somaya Critchlow (United Kingdom): +39% Momentum

The fastest rising young female artist in our database, with an astounding +39% Momentum, is Somaya Critchlow, whose work applies Renaissance and Rococo painting traditions to depictions of powerful, Black, female figures. Her paintings are sensual, her subjects strong, her paintbrush guided by the female gaze. She participated in various shows in 2021, but particularly important to her Momentum was the group exhibition “Mixing It Up: Painting Today” at London’s Hayward Gallery and her solo show “Blow-Up” at Zurich’s Galerie Gregor Staiger. Despite only having graduated from London’s Royal Drawing School in 2017, she’s rapidly going from strength to strength!

Courtesy of the artist and Maximillian William, London.

Anna Weyant (Canada): +37% Momentum

The masterful use of chiaroscuro, the meticulous brushwork, and the dramatic compositions of Anna Weyant’s paintings call to mind the Old Masters, only with a contemporary and ironic twist. Often autobiographical, she depicts young female characters trapped in tragicomic narratives: a girl stuffing her bra, another doing yoga, or a woman falling in the void. “I have always loved the line in the children’s book Madeline when Miss Clavel says, ‘Something isn’t right ’”, as Weyant herself puts it. She references an eclectic range of art historical influences, from seventeenth-century Dutch painters to contemporary artists and pop culture references like New Yorker cartoons, Bugs Bunny, and the Grinch. Only five years on from her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design, she is taking the New York Art scene by storm. Recent shows at key New York galleries and major institutions like Blum & Poe, Kasmin and The FLAG Art Foundation mean she already has a Cultural Recognition score of 49 alongside her +37% Momentum, despite exhibiting for only five years so far. She also finished 2021 with auctions sales at values ranging from $28k to $37k (depending on the size and medium of the artwork). Impressive stats for an artist still only in her mid-twenties!

“Buffet II”, 2021, Oil on canvas.

“Loose Screw” Installation view, Blum & Poe Los Angeles © Anna Weyant - Photo: Dan Finlayson. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe.

“Loose Screw” Installation view, Blum & Poe Los Angeles © Anna Weyant - Photo: Dan Finlayson. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe.

“Slumber”, 2020, Oil on linen.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (Zimbabwe): +29% Momentum

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s vision of Southern African life lies at the heart of her multi-layered practice. Drawing on her experiences of geographical dislocation and displacement, Hwami often uses family photographs and online images as a source for her paintings, thereby collapsing past and present into bold afro-futuristic visions. Many of her intensely pigmented paintings feature self-portraits and images of her immediate and extended family. Powerful Black bodies raise questions about family roots and colonial routes, spirituality, political power and sexuality. Exhibiting at the 58th Venice Biennale and gaining representation by Victoria Miro helped her make the jump from national renown to global recognition. Limna reveals that the Zimbabwean artist has had a +29% Momentum score over the past year, with her works selling for six-figure sums on the primary and secondary market.

“You are killing my spirit”, 2021, Oil on canvas.

“Family Portrait”, 2017, Oil and acrylic on canvas.

“Sam in Mother’s Factory” (detail), 2017, silkscreen, oil and acrylic on canvas.

“Eve on Psilocybin”, 2018, Oil on canvas.

Samantha Rosenwald (United States): +28% Momentum

Samantha Rosenwald’s surreal work explores female identity as a vessel for external influence and a potential channel for commodification. Rosenwald creates a visual language of recurring and humorous metaphors, allowing the viewer to weave multi-faceted narratives about gender, power structures, and identity. As she explained in a recent interview, “I use humour in my art just like I use it in real life — to knock things down a peg, to shield the more raw emotions, and to just remind myself and anyone that’s listening that everything in life is just an absolutely ridiculous sequence of events that we might as well try to find the humour in”. Rosenwald has been picking up significant Momentum over the last five years, but now she has reached new heights with a score of +28%. Even more career milestones are on the horizon in 2022, with upcoming solo shows planned at Stanley’s Gallery in Los Angeles and JDJ in New York. Today, Limna estimates that a 100x100 cm painting by Rosenwald would cost around $10,000.

“Exquisite Corpse”, Installation View, Arsenal Contemporary, 2021 © Samantha Rosenwald.

“Exquisite Corpse”, Installation View, Arsenal Contemporary, 2021 © Samantha Rosenwald.

“Bad Guy”, 2020, Colored pencil on canvas.

Jadé Fadojutimi (United Kingdom): +27% Momentum

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2017, the British painter Jadé Fadojutimi continues to flourish, with upcoming solo exhibitions planned at renowned art institutions like Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and The Hepworth, Wakefield. Her large-scale canvasses can be seen as complex emotional landscapes, exploring issues of identity. “My works are a reflection of myself”, she told Tate last year (as well as being the youngest artist in their collection); “They become environments. They become spaces for me to exist”. But it was last year, in 2021, that she really took off, thanks to her participation in “Mixing It Up: Painting Today” at the Hayward Gallery London and “The Stomach and The Port” at the Liverpool Biennial; milestones which reflected also on her auction results, reaching $ 1,653,436 for “Myths of Pleasure”, sold at Phillips London in 2021. If you want to stay ahead of the curve all year round, use Limna’s Discovery feature to keep track of other new talents scaling new heights in 2022!

“Birthday: Deathday”, 2020, Oil and oil stick on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth

“Swooooosh”, 2020, oil and oil stick on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth

“Thank you my love, I would never have discovered it without you”, 2020, oil, acrylic and oil stick on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth

“The Luxury of Single Cell Organisms”, 2019, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth

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