Band of Vices welcomes Monica Ikegwu back for Read in Red, her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Monica first exhibited with Band of Vices in 2018 as part of & Introducing. Since then, she has participated in several BoV exhibitions, including We’ve Always Been Here (2019), Masterpiece (2020), GAZE with Tommy Mitchell (2021), They Might Be Giants (2022), Duo (2023) and New Growth (2025).

For Read in Red, Ikegwu presents 43 portraits rendered almost entirely in shades of red.

“For these works I wanted to know what happens when others see Black people not for their race, but just as a person,” Ikegwu says. “No focus on skin color, just the person.”

By moving away from natural skin tones, Monica removes one of the first visual distinctions we often use when looking at another person. “You can’t see who has dark skin, who has light skin, all you see is their face,” she says. 

Red then takes on another role. For Monica, the color carries a wide range of emotional associations. “Red is one of the few colors that has a vast spectrum of emotion,” she explains. “Love to hatred, passion to anger.”

Many of the subjects are presented with restrained or neutral expressions, leaving room for viewers to bring their own associations to each face.The exhibition consists primarily of intimate 5.5 × 4 inch oil paintings on wood panels, along with three larger oil-on-canvas portraits. Together, the works create a series of individual encounters connected through a single palette.

“We’ve known Monica’s work since 2018, and it has been meaningful to see how her practice has developed over the years,” says Terrell Tilford, Founder and Creative Director of Band of Vices. “There has always been a strong sense of discipline in the work. With Read in Red, she is approaching portraiture from a slightly different place and asking us to think about what we see first when we look at another person.”

Ikegwu earned her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Cincinnati Art Museum and Art Gallery of Toronto.

Her work is also held in the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Petrucci Foundation and Muskegon Museum of Art.

“With these 43 portraits, we hope you are able to experience these individuals not through the lens of race, but through the full range of emotion found in color.”

Read in Red is presented concurrently with the group exhibition, Hey, Sis.