Harmonia Rosales

The phrase, “curiosity killed the cat,” is much older than I realized. The proverb first was written in the 16th century during the late Renaissance by an English playwright, and later adopted by Shakespeare. In its first appearance, it read, “care killed the cat,” and within this olden day context, “care” meant worry or sorrow. Like many words and phrases from this period, it shapeshifted a bit into the phrase we know today. It generally means keep your nose out of business that is not yours, as the outcome may be more perilous than the trouble is worth.

In this contemporary form, “curiosity killed the cat” feels like a message from those in power urging us not to disrupt the status quo. The less we are curious, the less we are going to question; the less we question, the less we push back, accepting what we are told at face value. One thing that has remained true throughout history is that the only way civilization can advance is by questioning—and yet, it seems that anyone who challenges the status quo meets the same fate: resistance.

Harmonia Rosales has built a career on curiosity, reimagining settings from beloved European paintings and replacing our traditionally white saviors with dark-skinned saints and angels. For the first quarter of 2026, Rosales’ brilliant works took over the manuscripts gallery at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. This exhibition centered on manuscripts which told stories of Creation, particularly from the Christian perspective, and the seven days The Bible says it took for God to create the world. Alongside these rare manuscripts were Rosales’ remarkable paintings, which interpreted these same stories through the lens of West African cosmology—a vantage point that many visitors had never encountered before.