Cynthia Erivo is giving us life with her Met Gala manicure.
The British actress and singer stepped up her nail game for Monday night’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”-themed Met Gala in New York City. With the help of iconic nail stylist Gina Oh, Erivo recreated the famous Michaelangelo Sistine Chapel painting “The Creation of Adam” with black women. (Pause for snaps, people.)
The illustration can be seen spread across three nails on Erivo’s right hand. Her middle finger depicts the historic part of the painting in which God is about to touch Adam’s finger.
“Creation of Adam,” added to the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512, portrays God giving life to man. In Erivo and Oh’s version, God is a black woman and Adam, the first man to walk the earth according to the Bible, is also a black woman.
Oh, who also counts Nicki Minaj as a client, told HuffPost that Erivo was inspired to include the image on her nails after she stumbled across an artist named Harmonia Rosales. The Afro-Cuban American artist re-created “The Creation of Adam” painting with black women last year, naming her version “The Creation of God.”
“Cynthia really wanted to incorporate this image with her nails,” Oh said. “The recreation was very meaningful because it was two women and they were African-American. It made this moment very personalized.”
Rosales told HuffPost in an interview last year that paintings like “The Creation of Adam” really “helped to define” her understanding of the world.
“It was only later when I realized that the frame that was set by the masters excluded so much more than it included,” Rosales said. “What was included was a Eurocentric view of the world, and in this case, the heavens. What was excluded was all the rest of us.”
Scroll below to see more of Erivo’s Met Gala look.
