ART CITIES:Brussels-Mickalene Thomas

Brooklyn artist Mickalene Thomas depicts black female beauty and sexual identity with images of power and femininity in a 1970’s setting. Known for her rhinestone encrusted works, Thomas takes cues from Romare Bearden, Gustave Courbert, Edouard Manet and others with her portraiture, landscapes, still lifes, installations, and female nudes.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Nathalie Obadia Archive

For her first solo exhibition in Belgium, Mickalene Thomas, one of the most multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker on the contemporary American scene, alongside a selection of her most recent paintings, photographs, and collages, Thomas has chosen to showcase works by a number of international artists linked together by elective affinities. This “tête-à-tête” in her words, begun in 2012. Her new exhibition continues to explore one of her favourite themes: femininity, in particular that of black women. Her embrace of this theme often questions the canonized history of painting, which has long spurned and mocked negritude. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from one of the most famous texts by Audre Lorde, an emblematic figure in black American literature. The subtitle of the anthology of Lorde’s works “Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities” offers an insight to the author’s concerns, who was black, female and lesbian. These identities, shared by Mickalene Thomas, served as the foundation for Lorde’s collection of prose written in post-segregationist America that helped to advocate revolution and change. Mickalene Thomas’ artistic universe makes direct reference from 1950 to the present day which are synonymous with the Black Power movement and the assertion of the Afro-American socio-cultural status in America. The latter quickly became codified by a blazing, high-spirited Afrocentric aesthetic that is immediately recognizable in the backdrops of Mickalene Thomas’ photographs, collages and paintings. In these re-imagined domestic environments, she places her muses centre stage, whose empowered bodies are skilfully set in vintage decors characterized by mixed media and rhinestones. Thomas then directs her models to resuscitate motifs from some of the most famous precedents in art history to idealize her contemporary vision of the American woman. Her points of reference include paintings by Courbet, Manet, Matisse, Balthus, and even Ingres with his La Grande Odalisque. Her paintings are the outcome of iconographic research that borders on archaeological precision. Along with the historical references she pulls from such prominent Impressionist and Realist paintings, she is also interested in the large numbers of motifs that are found in cult Afro-American magazines from the ’60s, such as Ebony and Black Tail, as well as the 18 volumes of “The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement”, a bible of interior decorating in America published in 1971. The idea of “tête-à-tête”, came about in 2012 following MoMA’s “Conversations Among Friends” between Mickalene Thomas and Clifford Owens, Derrick Adams and Xaviera Simmons. Now in its fourth iteration, «tête-à-tête» features works by eight artists of African or Afro-American descent that deal with various representations of black bodies. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of black identity and narratives, reflecting not only American history as a whole and all of its socio-cultural currents, but also the experiences of the people, muses, artists and friends by whom Mickalene Thomas is surrounded.

Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 8 rue Charles Decoster, Ixelles-Brussels, Duration: 19/11/15-16/1/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 14:00-18:00, www.galerie-obadia.com