Mickalene Thomas
Femmes Noires
Mickalene Thomas's vivid paintings, collages, and photographs explode off the wall. Their larger-than-life women stare back and down at the viewer, confronting them head on. Over the course of her prolific career, Thomas has created a body of work that expands notions of beauty, gender, sexuality, and race, offering a complex vision of what it means to be a Black woman.
In Femmes Noires, Thomas moves breezily between pop culture and the long history of Western and African art, inserting images of Black women into iconic paintings. At times she poses them nude; at other times, she draws on elements as diverse as 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women, Edouard Mamet's odalisque figures, the mise-en-scène studio portraiture of James Van Der Zee and Malick Sidibé, and her own collection of personal portraits and staged scenes. Her ability to detect and contain contradictions and to wrestle with stereotypes translates into powerful, self-possessed depictions of Black women that confront and subvert stereotypes.
Femmes Noires is a bold examination of Thomas's work and her artistic practise at an important moment in history. It blends writing from iconic Black writers and essayists (Alice Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edwidge Danticat, and Lorraine O’Grady) with 120 reproductions from Thomas's oeuvre (collages, paintings, film stills, and photographs). Original essays by Andrea Andersson, visual arts curator of the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans; Julie Crooks, curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario; and writer-art critic Antwaun Sargent complete the book.
Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires accompanies an international touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Contemporary Art Centre in New Orleans..
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"[Thomas] boldly undoes art history’s canon of white, European representation through her juxtaposition and manipulation of images." — Canadian Art
"Forces you to stop and wonder why you’ve never seen anything like it before." — NOW Toronto
"That is Mickalene Thomas's superpower: making visible the women who have not only been historically forgotten and marginalized in the history of Western art but also remain excluded from contemporary art institutions." — CBC Arts
Andrea Andersson is visual arts curator of the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans.
Julie Crooks has served as a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario since 2017. Over the course of her tenure, she has led numerous exhibitions and collection installations, contributed to a range of publications, participated in international panels, and maintained a strong academic presence. Crooks holds a PhD in the History of Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, U.K. Her areas of expertise include vernacular photography from West Africa and the African diaspora, as well as contemporary art. In 2020, Dr. Crooks founded the AGO’s department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, an initiative aimed at addressing historical omissions and underrepresentation of Africa and its diasporas through focused programming, exhibitions, and acquisitions.
