As a generation, Gen Z seems entirely exhausted by the state of the world. In the wake of Trump, Brexit, COVID-19, the ever-worsening climate emergency, and widespread political upheaval, young people are often seeking stability and are unafraid to make plain personal beliefs and ideologies.
But what does this mean for the future of contemporary art, specifically painting? As painters born in 2000 and onwards begin to gain institutional and market recognition, some trends emerge. In most instances, young artists’ practices are looking inwards, examining their own lives, identities, and experiences, while attempting to situate themselves within a volatile and at times frightening world. Many present clear statements regarding the need for collective empathy, urgent climate action, and a new understanding of gendered and racialized experiences.
In the case of Alejandra Moros, Bobbi Essers, and Chiderah Bosah, friends and family of the artists become the subjects of their work. For others, a concern with the body is paramount: In the work of Elsa Rouy, Emil Urbanek, and Vanessa Liem, we see anxious and intense depictions of bodies that rarely conform to societal expectations. These artists also imagine alternative futures or revisit cultural legacies by venturing into the territory of the surreal. Like many young people, they are excavating routes to belonging in the face of dissatisfaction with the world they have come to inhabit.
Here, we profile 10 Gen Z painters making a name for themselves, despite it all.
Vanessa Liem
B. 2002, Singapore. Lives and works in London.
At the heart of Vanessa Liem’s practice is the act of looking and being looked at. She paints figures who are intensely aware that they are on display, alien-like women who refuse to be objectified. Featuring rolls of fat, freshly shaved skin, protruding nipples, and almost ironic stares, these are not the types of bodies traditionally depicted in paintings. For example, Head in a Shower Head and Stranger Danger (both 2023) feature smooth, almost uncanny subjects in the middle of perceiving themselves, presenting distorted impressions of self-observation.
Currently a student in the BA painting program at Camberwell College of the Arts, Liem’s star has been rising since 2019, when she won gold in the prestigious UOB Painting of the Year’s “Emerging” category. She has presented two previous solo shows with Cuturi Gallery in Singapore and was also part of the National Gallery of Singapore’s 2022 benefit auction.
