Art Fact Friday #30 Mickalene Thomas
- William Mandela Matthews
- Feb 17, 2024
- 2 min read
A mixed media artist working in paint, collage, photography, videography , and installation. Using intricate compositions in an effort to expound on how social identity is acquainted with, representation in art and popular culture. A signature of rhinestones adds value and emphasizes specific elements of each painting. Drawing inspiration from 19th-century French painting as well as 1970s Blaxploitation films, the artist reimagines popular culture. This artist has received a multitude of recognition, including the USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellowship; Anonymous Was A Woman Award; Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award ; and the Timehri Award for Leadership in the Ar, the BOMB Magazine Honor, MoCADA Artistic Advocacy Award, AICA-USA Best Show in a Commercial Space Nationally, First Place, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant Audience Award: Favorite Short, Second Annual Black Star Film Festival Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Awar Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award and Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.
Born January 28, 1971 in Camden, NJ; Mickalene Thomas received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn 2000, and an MFA from Yale University 2002. While working in the law field she exhibited nationally and internationally in exhibitions, and held several residencies, notably the Versailles Munn Artists Program in Giverny, France and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 2000 to 2003. Thomas's work is inspired by art movements, for example Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance.
Thomas was selected to produce the first individual portrait of a First Lady Michelle Obama in 2008. The piece was later exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery's Americans Now show. Left Behind 2 Again was created in 2012, now in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Her painting and print edition entitled Sleep: Deux femmes noires exhibited in 2012 and 2013. In 2017 her solo exhibition "Mentors, Muses, and Celebrities" opened at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Thomas worked with Dior in 2020 reimagining their iconic 1947 bar jacket shown in Marrakech. In 2023 Dior's creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri hired Thomas to create the stage design for the haute couture show at the Musée Rodin. Her work was featured in Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 2022.
Thomas has held a number of residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, Colorado; Studio Museum in Harlem; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; and Yale Norfolk Summer of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut.
International, public and private collections now hold the Thomas's work, namely The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; MoMA PS1, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, CT; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.Thomas currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
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