ROZEAL. (American, b. 1966) has an extensive education, beginning with a Bachelor of Sciences in Kinesiological Sciences from the University of Maryland in 1991. She studied at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, NY, starting in 1996, and later attended the San Francisco Art Institute, earning her BFA, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the late 1990s. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at Yale University in 2002. She has a deep musical background, trained in classical guitar from ages 7-19, and began to DJ professionally during her time at Yale University. Her interest in Japanese youth lead to recognizing their appreciation of hip-hop culture as well as the phenomena known as Burupan and Ganguro, styles of make-up, tanning and fashion whereby Japanese youth crimp their hair and darken their skin. She has received numerous accolades for her signature a3 works, a name signifying Afro-Asiatic allegories. Also known as the blackface paintings, this series explores the appropriation of American hip-hop culture by Japanese teenagers (mostly girls) in the late 1990s as part of the ganguro fashion trend that involved darkly tanning skin.ROZEAL’s color and cross-cultural subject matter merges folklore traditions, contemporary pop culture autobiography, gender studies, and art history into a singular fantastical narrative. Her figurative paintings bear references ranging from JRR Tolkien to Erykah Badu to Adinkra symbolism to the artist’s childhood in Washington, D.C., during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The artist combines disparate elements into an elaborate allegory that feels both otherworldly and universal.