To create the works in her latest solo exhibition, “Je t’adore,” at Yancey Richardson in New York, Mickalene Thomas turned to research—and her own upbringing—to reimagine the Black female form. For more than a decade, Thomas’s mixed-media practice has examined the subjects of Blackness and identity, and this show is no different.
During her childhood in New Jersey, Thomas’s parents were avid collectors of the Black publication Jet magazine, an archive that Thomas has retained to this day. It became a focal point of “Je t’adore.” “I started on this journey of thinking about the Beauty of the Week”—a Jet series highlighting contemporary Black women from all walks of life (be they part-time models, nurses, typists, or lawyers) in swimsuits—“and how, for me as a young girl, it was so validating seeing a woman that wasn’t a professional model or a celebrity [in the magazine],” Thomas tells Vogue. ”It was this everyday girl who was beautiful.”
In “Je t’adore,” Thomas’s large-scale collages—featuring photographs mined from both Jet and Nus Exotique, an old erotic French magazine devoted to Black women—show women carefully guarding their nudity but hardly shying away from the camera: They are powerful in their poses, bold in their facial expressions, and totally comfortable in their skin. Each image is also embellished with Mickalene-isms, including her signature appliquéd gemstones, Pop art–like coloring, and nods to varied prints and patterns that don’t distract from the vulnerability of each figure so much as artfully emphasize it. “I think it is powerful when we see ourselves in powerful images that are sensual and sexy,” the artist says.
One image, titled November 1977, shows a woman smiling while kneeling on what appears to be a mattress, surrounded by drawings of…
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