Welancora Gallery is pleased to announce our participation in Art Basel Miami Beach, for the fifth consecutive year, with new works by Debra Cartwright (b. 1988 Annapolis, Maryland) in the Nova section, booth N18. The fair takes place at the Miami Beach Convention Center with VIP previews on December 3 and 4, 2025. The fair opens to the public December 5-7, 2025. On December 4 at 12:00pm, Debra Cartwright will be present in the booth to discuss the works on view and their connection to her evolving body of work.
Our presentation includes a suite of new oils on canvas and small and large scale watercolors on paper. The work is an extension of Cartwright’s ongoing exploration into the history of the American medical industry, with an emphasis on the history of the womb and the ways in which women have served as practitioners and subjects in the advancement of obstetrics/gynecology.
As the daughter of a gynecologist, Cartwright uses abstraction to reconcile with complex histories of Black maternal health and reproductive care. Her work draws from imagery she encountered early in life—medical journals, anatomical illustrations—and later through her own independent research. These references become material for subversion, as she abstracts, inverts, and obscures the physical form, challenging the iconography of women in medicine. Through paint and mixed media, she sculpts a new image of the Black female body with intention, offering viewers a moment of empathetic remembrance. Her oil paintings become a kind of living body themselves; using gauze and scalpels, she strips away, stitching and bruising to build up the foundation, merging painterly gestures with surgical process. From there her subjects are restructured, longing for wholeness. In this new body of work, Cartwright incorporates 1870s gynecological and abortion poses with imagery of the plants that were historically used to induce miscarriages. She builds and subtracts in the work to mirror the layers of discovery in her research process, allowing the physicality of her subject matter to inform her process. Reminiscent of works by Firelei Báez, the women in Cartwright’s paintings navigate colonial histories in liminal landscapes.
Public Days
Friday, December 5, 2025, 11am to 6pm
Saturday, December 6, 2025, 11am to 6pm
Sunday, December 7, 2025, 11am to 6pm
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
Purchase a ticket directly from Art Basel's website here.
