Mickalene Thomas

In her multidisciplinary practice, Mickalene Thomas presents an expansive vocabulary of Black queer identity to study the presence and legacy of Black women in modern global visual culture. Mickalene Thomas’s portraits explore the spectrum of Black female beauty and sexuality while interrogating the images of femininity and power.

Thomas’s representations of Black queer women play on and oppose approaches used by European “old masters.” She often uses rhinestones, which, she says, offer a different use of light from that of Caravaggio or Edward Hopper. While she considers herself a painter, her painted works play with an illusion of collage, bringing together disparate elements that, from afar, look distinct and layered but which all occupy one painted plane. She presents her subjects in lush domestic interiors. They stare directly at the viewer with a sense of self-assuredness. Expressions of pleasure recur throughout her practice, as she centers Black queer femme desire and subjectivity as foundational, rather than rare. She has also incorporated imagery from archival materials, such as Jet magazine and Nus Exotique, into her work.