Debra Cartwright is an artist interested in depicting the relationship between the black female body and American medical history. Themes around her work include re-embodiment, myth creation, violence, theft and intimacy. She explores a critical understanding of the past while also proposing an examination of the present American healthcare system.
Cartwright (b. 1988, Annapolis, Maryland) currently lives and works in New York. She received her BA in Art History from the University of Virginia in 2010 and her MFA in Painting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2023. Cartwright was a resident at the Wassaic Project in 2024 and at Silver Art in 2025. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Montclair Art Museum AACC Founders Fellowship.
She has held solo exhibitions at Welancora Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze LA, Montclair Art Museum, and BODE Projects. She has participated in group exhibitions at The Delaware Contemporary, TERN Gallery, Swivel Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Untitled Art Fair Miami, New York Academy of Art, Sotheby’s, Westbeth Gallery, forMAH Gallery, Allouche Gallery, and CFHILL. Her works are in the collections of the Raclin Murphy Museum at Notre Dame University and the Montclair Art Museum.