Mickalene Thomas, All About Love7 Images
In the introductory texts for her new solo show All About Love at London’s Hayward Gallery, Mickalene Thomas establishes the notion that she is talking back to the Old Masters. To ‘talk back’ to the authoritative canon of art history is an intriguing act, and one that is increasingly popular within contemporary art practices. Artists may use unexpected materials, draw from decolonial theory or look beyond European references to move away from Eurocentrism.
Thomas’s perspective on talking back is, however, not as oblique. She confronts the canon head-on, reimagining famous paintings such as Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” in her painting from 2007 titled “A Little Taste Outside of Love”. “I learned much later in my life that these famous artists had included the Black model in their work, but patrons and historians had rewritten their histories for their own benefit,” Thomas shares with me on the morning of the exhibition’s preview. “When you’re left out of the canon, you’ve got to look, find those areas that are missing and understand why certain bodies were left out. You realise that there are many reasons why they want to keep you out; it’s a way of distracting and disenfranchising people and creating a narrative of artifice and untruth. For me, it’s crucial to look back at these moments and insert myself in them because there’s a narrative here that has been disrupted and needs to be told.”
Much like “A Little Taste Outside of Love”, the show at the Hayward is abundant with mixed-media works that reference old masters and Western art traditions, while featuring Black women in repose. Alongside these grandly scaled paintings, All About Love explores the breadth of Thomas’s oeuvre, which includes photography, installation, collage and video work. A subversive impetus drives through each aspect of her practice: the collages are invested in ideas of beauty and desire while questioning the eroticisation of the Black body; the video work subverts the omnipresence of white angels in Christian art; her installations are concerned with the domestic as a site of belonging.
The domestic is a crucial physical and theoretical space for Thomas. For this exhibition, she recreated two living rooms inspired by her childhood in the 70s and 80s. “So much happens in these domestic spaces and around the kitchen table, specifically in Black families,” the artist shares.
During our chat, Thomas and I sit across from each other in one of her carefully constructed living room installations as jazz plays. We are surrounded by lampshades, a side table with a handheld mirror, a patchwork sofa with patterned cushions and Thomas’s mother’s Crocs that she had cast in bronze. It’s a perfect vantage point to absorb the gallery. The scene is purposefully sentimental, designed thoughtfully by Thomas to unlock memory and elicit a sense of belonging. “I tried to approach each section of the exhibition differently. Here, I lowered the lights so that you feel a sense of warmth the minute you look at it. I want the visitor to feel comforted by the space, but I am also interested in how playing with elements such as sound and light can engage the senses and trigger memories”.
While Thomas would prefer for visitors to experience every aspect of her installation, due to museum guidelines and insurance policies, some of her work, such as the living rooms, cannot be entered. “It frustrated me that I was limiting my audience to a full engagement, so I created other tableaus in the space, such as where Angelitos Negros is screened, where the visitor can sit with my work for a long period of time,” she explains. “I was insistent on this aspect of the work because I want people to access and engage with this work. I know people can’t touch the paintings, but they can sit on the ottoman while watching the video, sit on a lounge chair, look at photographs, or even go to those spaces to close their eyes and rest. I want my audience to see the exhibition as a place that is accessible to them and that of leisure.”
Mickalene Thomas‘ new exhibition, All About Love, is showing at the Hayward Gallery until 5 May, 2025.
