The cover for this issue of Artkrush is a detail of Sacrifice #2: It has to last (after Yoshitoshi's "Drowsy: the appearance of a harlot of the Meiji Era"), a 2007 mixed-media work by Iona Rozeal Brown. This year, LA gallery Sandroni Rey brings her provocative portraits of Afro-Asian women to Scope Miami.

Born in Washington, DC, in 1966 and currently working in Maryland, Brown first studied kinesiological sciences at the University of Maryland. Switching directions, she then attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the San Francisco Art Institute, finally earning her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2002. Her work has since been shown at Sandroni Rey in LA, Caren Golden Fine Arts in New York, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Brown forces her viewers to confront stereotypes of both African-American and Asian cultures. In her a3 (aka afro-asiatic allegories) series, almond eyes simmer below dreadlocks and Afros. Signifiers of extravagant hip-hop culture — such as the vixen's press-on nails and Lil' Kim hairdo in Sacrifice #2 — are transferred onto Japanese tableaux. With origami-crisp lines and chrysanthemum tessellations, the artist's compositions reference Edo-era woodblock prints, especially the erotic prints known as shungas. In surprisingly successful harmonies, Brown merges geishas with ghetto-fab. (LM)