About Streets
These works explore the destabilization of traditional sacred iconography within contemporary visual culture. Drawing from inherited religious symbolism, the paintings dislocate these symbols from their historical and institutional frameworks and recontextualize them within a visual field shaped by graffiti lineage, pop aesthetics, child archetypes, and oversaturated American consumer culture.
At its core, the work confronts the tension between symbol as image and symbol as lived reality. The canvas becomes a space where reverence and irreverence coexist, challenging collective blindness to the sacred embedded in moments of visual noise and inviting viewers to examine how power, trauma, and cultural memory shape what is seen as holy, real, or worthy of care.
Central to this practice is the concept of witnessing as resistance. In a media-saturated environment that encourages desensitization, to see the Divine, even in suffering, is to resist cultural amnesia. These paintings function as both witness and intervention, asking the viewer to reconsider what we have been conditioned not to see.
about Portraits
EACH FACE IS BORN FROM AN UNDERPAINTING OF SYMBOLS, A HIDDEN LANGUAGE THAT SHAPES THE CHARACTER OF THE FINAL PORTRAIT. THIS LAYERING SERVES AS A METAPHOR FOR CULTURAL MEMORY - A PILING ON OF HISTORY THAT ULTIMATELY RESULTS IN COLLECTIVE AMNESIA, SHIELDING US FROM THE THINGS WE CANNOT BEAR TO SEE.
IN THESE WORKS THE PAINT ACTS AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE. SACRED ICONOGRAPHY, CHILD ARCHETYPES, AND IMAGERY FROM OVERSATURATED AMERICAN CONSUMER CULTURE ARE INTEGRATED BENEATH THE LINES OF THE FACE, INVITING THE VIEWER TO EXAMINE THE LAYERS OF meaning BURIED BENEATH THE MASKS WE RECOGNIZE. ULTIMATELY, THE CANVAS BECOMES A SITE OF WITNESSING, PROVIDING THE SPACE TO EXPLORE HOW WE SEE OURSELVES, AND TO REEXAMINE WHAT WE HAVE BEEN CONDITIONED NOT TO SEE.
Lauren Banuvar
all inquiries
together@haveanicedave.com
Lauren Banuvar is a painter interested in what shapes us long before we're consciously aware of it- the inherited beliefs, half-remembered stories, and quiet conditioning that sit just below the surface of a moment, just underneath a person's outward identity. Her work often returns to a central question: how do we assign meaning to what we look at, and what have we simply stopped seeing? Through layered, intuitive processes, she builds paintings that hold contradiction without resolving it, treating the canvas as a place where opposing truths can sit side by side rather than compete or cancel each other out.
Lauren believes deeply in art's capacity to heal. She's drawn to how a piece of visual work can reach a viewer faster and more honestly than words - loosening old patterns of thought and making room for something new to take shape in the world of the viewer. Her practice explores the physical and psychological charge colors impart, and shapes are often built through color relationships rather than value. Asking the eye to see form in this way enhances creativity and encourages a different kind of visual literacy. Thematically, Lauren returns again and again to the push and pull between structure and bliss, instinct and order, light and dark, the parts of ourselves we can name and the parts we can only feel - a tension she considers less a problem to solve than a rhythm worth paying attention to.
Her paintings have been featured in Condé Nast's World of Interiors and exhibited internationally in New York, Paris, Venice, and Milan, with work held in private collections across the United States and Europe.
Alongside her painting practice, Lauren works as a writer, director, photographer, cinematographer, and award-winning editor, bringing a multidisciplinary approach to branded storytelling for clients including the Onassis Foundation Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, and artists including Danny Elfman and Daniel Lanois. She is deeply committed to the healing power of art and the creative process, and regularly volunteers her talents for nonprofits advancing consciousness and empowerment practices. Lauren also facilitates meaningful personal transformation by combining art with her work as an Equus Coach® and a Masterson Method® Advanced Practitioner in Training.
private collections
Sedona, Arizona. Los Angeles, California. San Diego, California. London, England. Kansas City, Missouri. Jersey City, New Jersey. New York, New York. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Charlotte, North Carolina.
EXHIBITIONS
2025 LAUREN BANUVAR:STRUCTURE VERSUS BLISS, MILANO, ITALIA. CURATOR: STEFANIA CARROZZINI, MYMICROGALLERY. 1-22 MARCH 2025.
2024 MICROCOSMOS OF WONDER, LOVERSO STUDIO, VENEZIA, ITALIA. CURATOR: STEFANIA CARROZZINI, MYMICROGALLERY. 26 OCTOBER-9 NOVEMBER 2024.
2024 GÉOGRAPHIE ÉMOTIONNELLE, ESPACE SYLVIA RIELLE, PARIS, FRANCE. CURATOR: STEFANIA CARROZZINI, MYMICROGALLERY. 8-21 JULY 2024.
2024 THE HEALING GAZE, MONTSERRAT CONTEMPORARY ART, NEW YORK, NY. CURATOR: STEFANIA CARROZZINI, MYMICROGALLERY. 1-30 MAY 2024.
2023-2024 7TH BANNER SERIES, CELEBRATING CORONADO ARTISTS. CORONADO, CA. CURATOR: CORONADO CULTURAL ARTS COMMISSION. APRIL-JUNE 2023 AND SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 2024.
PUBLICATIONS
ROSSI, SERENA. “MOSTRA DI ARTE CONTEMPORANEA STRUCTURE VERSUS BLISS DI LAUREN BANUVAR.” IL PENSIERO MEDITERRANEO, ILPENSIEROMEDITERRANEO.IT.
“ARTISTIC IMPRESSIONS.” CONDÉ NAST: THE WORLD OF INTERIORS. FEBRUARY, 2024. P. 137.
