Mickalene Thomas
In conversation with Katie Delmez
Multiplicity artist Mickalene Thomas, known for her multi-media works that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power, discusses her work with Multiplicity curator Katie Delmez from the Frist Art Museum.
About Mickalene Thomas
Mickalene Thomas was born and raised in New Jersey and lives and works in New York. One of the most influential artists today, her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Awards nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. While embarking on her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums. Thomas’s work has become an undeniable force within the contemporary art world and an indispensable inspiration to younger generations of artists.
IMAGE: Mickalene Thomas, Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires, 2013, Mixed-media collage: woodblock, screenprint, and digital print on paper, 38 1/2 x 80 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist
