Contemporary African-American visual artist Mickalene Thomas has launched her new exhibition titled “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love.” This exhibition is set to be a landmark event, offering audiences around the world the opportunity to witness and engage with her groundbreaking work. The exhibition will showcase more than 80 pieces of her work, providing a glimpse into her powerful portrayal of Black femininity.
Mickalene Thomas, Din avec la main dans le miroir et jupe rouge, 2023. Rhinestones, acrylic and glitter on canvas mounted on wood panel
Debuting at The Broad with over 90 works made by the artist over the last 20 years, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love is the first major international tour of this pioneering artist’s work. Thomas is renowned for her innovative approach, blending various mediums such as painting, photography, collage, rhinestones, and enamel.
Her art captures Black women in powerful and intimate portrayals, celebrating their essence, beauty, and individuality. Through her vibrant and richly textured artwork, Thomas challenges traditional standards of beauty and femininity, addressing themes of identity, sexuality, and history. Drawing on influences from pop culture, art history, and personal experiences, she fosters conversations that resonate with contemporary issues and offers a perspective on the experiences of Black women.
Her work not only highlights the often-overlooked contributions of Black women but also inspires viewers to appreciate the diversity and complexity of their narratives. “AFRO GODDESS Looking Forward” by Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) in many ways is representative of the artist’s practice. Both the title of the painting and its figurative image encapsulate the themes that have recurred throughout her oeuvre over the past two decades. Thomas’s powerful vision centers Black women and celebrates the Black female body.
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Mickalene Thomas, “Afro Goddess Looking Forward,” 2015 (rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel)
The Exhibition: A Journey Through Love and Empowerment
The Broad’s debut of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love reflects some of the artist’s earliest inquiries into visual culture, sexuality, and memory, and move into the present. On view is the early photographic triptych, Lounging, Standing, Looking (2003), a piece which depicts the artist’s own mother, exploring kinship and care. These modes of intimate relations come to inform work such as Portrait of Maya No. 10 (2017) from the Broad collection.
This acrylic and rhinestone work embodies Thomas’s signature ability to apply several layers of material and symbolic meaning into a single surface. At eight feet tall, the subject is empowered, sparkled, and poised, commanding her outward gaze. Unifying these larger-than-life subjects together in the museum’s galleries, the show envelops viewers into the bold and dynamic universe the artist has created, where steadfast love overcomes political strife.
The exhibition shares its title and several of its themes with the pivotal text by feminist author bell hooks, in which love is an active process rooted in healing, carving a path away from domination and towards collective liberation. Through her queries into pop culture and mass media, Thomas offers a reverberating demand for Black women to be seen and understood, and for viewers to become what hooks calls “practitioners of love.”
Thomas draws inspiration for her exhibition from author and feminist Bell Hooks’ book All About Love: New Visions, where Hooks explores the construct and transformative power of love. Hooks proposes that love is not merely a feeling but an action and a practice. As Thomas elaborated in her interview with Forbes, “One of the reasons why I was thinking about love, I was thinking about it in relationship to who I am in the world, the impact that I'm creating, and how I'm inspired by others to make the work that I'm making.”
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She reflects on love in various contexts-whether in romance, family dynamics, or personal growth-all of which require spiritual effort, as Hooks describes. Thomas emphasizes, "Love is something we have to actively put work into." Furthermore, she explains that her artwork expresses love through her intimate relationships with her sitters, capturing and celebrating their essence in portraits and reclining poses. She aims to showcase their beauty, vulnerability, and strength in their fullest light, surrounded by joy, elegance, and desire. Throughout her journey, she has been dedicated to depicting Black women authentically, challenging stigmas and limitations imposed on them.
Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love at The Broad, Los Angeles, May 25-September 29, 2024. Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com, courtesy of The Broad.
Thomas's Artistic Journey
Born in 1971 in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas completed her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2002 and a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003. Soon after, she became well known for her large-scale acrylic paintings of Black women in states of leisure and repose using rhinestones, a central material in her practice that symbolizes the complexities of femininity.
Depicting women with confident and assured expressions, the subjects of her works are often seen in domestic interiors from Black America, claiming the agency of womanhood while deconstructing the art historical canon. Similarly, Thomas’s photographs, collages, and figurative paintings often re-stage scenes from 19th-century French painters such as Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet, pushing back against the subjugation and oppressive narratives upheld by Western archives, cultural institutions, and representation systems.
Her journey began in the early 2000s with explorations in photography, where she initially focused on staged compositions that challenged conventions of identity and representation, particularly within the context of Black womanhood. As her career evolved, Thomas expanded into painting and mixed media, incorporating vibrant colors, rich textures, and elements like rhinestones to create visually dynamic and emotionally resonant artworks. Throughout her career, she has consistently explored themes of beauty, power, and the construction of identity, garnering acclaim for her bold reinterpretations of art historical tropes and her celebration of Black womanhood.
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Mickalene Thomas This is Where I Came In 2006 Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on wood panel
Legacy and Impact
Mickalene Thomas' art is a celebration of Black womanhood, empowerment, and identity. Through her innovative use of materials, she conveys powerful messages and exemplifies love in her art and work. Her distinctive approach, blending vibrant colors, mixed media, and textured surfaces, challenges traditional representations and celebrates the complexity and beauty of Black women.
The rhinestone-embellished painting covers the Summer 2024 issue of Juxtapoz magazine on the occasion of “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love.” The selections span 2003 to 2024. The title of the exhibition is drawn from “All About Love: New Visions,” a critically acclaimed essay collection by bell hooks (1953-2021). The pivotal text was published in 2000, a formative period in Thomas’s academic development.
“Lounging, Standing, Looking” (2003) was among the works featured in Thomas’s show at the end of her residency at the Studio Museum. Thomas’s work illustrates the cover of Juxtapoz. Inside the magazine, Gwynned Vitello conducted an interview with Ed Schad, the curator and publications manager at The Broad, who organized the Los Angeles museum’s version of the show.
The themes of the exhibition extend into a full slate of associated programming developed in collaboration with the artist, including a summer concert series featuring Flo Milli and a tribute to J Dilla, a comedy night under the stars co-curated and hosted by Chaunté Wayans, wellness and healing events with Tai Beauchamp and Angela Manuel Davis, and additional programs and workshops centering women and Black and queer communities.
“Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” is on display until September 29, 2024, at The Broad in Los Angeles. The exhibition will then move to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia from October 20, 2024, to January 12, 2025.
