Mickalene Thomas: All About Love : The Hayward Gallery

The Hayward Gallery presents Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, the pioneering artist’s first solo presentation in a UK public art gallery from 11 February to 5 May 2025. Thomas is a trailblazer of portraiture and collage, widely renowned for her large-scale paintings of Black women posed against boldly patterned backgrounds embellished with rhinestones. As an artist who fearlessly transcends creative boundaries, her artworks have also adorned album covers (Solange’s EP True, 2013) and emblazoned fashion runways (Dior, 2023). Thomas has redefined beauty and identity through her vibrant and dynamic compositions. Her work, characterised by a unique blend of colour, pattern, and subject matter, challenges societal norms and provides a powerful counter-narrative to mainstream depictions of beauty and identity.

The exhibition’s title, All About Love, reflects the artist’s expansive and empowering definition of the term love - encompassing family love, self-love and romantic love. On this, Thomas says: ‘my gaze is the gaze of a Black woman unapologetically loving other Black women’. Throughout her work, Thomas draws on the tenets of Black feminist theory in writing by authors and academics such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Collins and bell hooks, to whose internationally acclaimed 2000 book All About Love: New Visions the exhibition title pays homage. All About Love showcases Thomas’s extensive practice across painting, collage, print, photography, video and immersive installations. Visitors are introduced to Thomas’s unique visual language developed in work across the last two decades, exhibiting her myriad of influences - from 19th-century European ‘masters’ like Courbet, Ingres, Manet and Monet, to the fashion and interior design of 1970s America to present day social political events. At the heart of the exhibition are Thomas’s spectacular mixed-media paintings - grandly scaled and embellished with rhinestones in the artist’s signature style - depicting Black women from the artist’s circle of friends, family, lovers and models. These works centre on repose, rest and leisure which, in Thomas’s handling, are shown to be radical acts. The exhibition also showcases Thomas’s distinctive tableaux installations which transport viewers into domestic settings of the artist’s 1970s and 1980s childhood, creating an affecting homage to the artist’s mother, her first and most abiding muse. Thomas creates celebratory and affirming images of Black women, whilst critically examining the history of Black and female representation within the Western art canon. The exhibition shows how Thomas has redefined contemporary portraiture, using pattern, colour and glittering ornamentation to imbue her sitters with beauty, glamour and style. In this way, All About Love expands audiences’ understanding of what turns a portrait into a vivid, profound and powerful work of art. Mickalene Thomas, says: “I am incredibly grateful and excited to present All About Love in the cultural epicentre of the UK art community - the Hayward Gallery, which will be a key milestone in my career as an artist. This presentation uniquely navigates the nuances of my work while cohesively investigating notions and topics at the core of my artistic practice.

Rachel Thomas, Roden Chief Curator at the Hayward Gallery, says: “The Hayward Gallery is delighted to lead the first major UK solo exhibition of pioneering artist Mickalene Thomas. The exhibition will explore how Thomas's art articulates a complex and empowering vision of womanhood while subverting common notions of beauty, sexuality, fame and more. We are excited to join forces with other leading organisations to bring the exhibition to audiences internationally, sparking new thinking and dialogue in London and beyond.

Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, says: “The Hayward Gallery has a long tradition of introducing the work of major painters of our time, and it is thrilling to be able to add Mickalene Thomas’ compelling and powerful portraits to this history. In pairing Mickalene’s exhibition with Linder: Danger Came Smiling, the Hayward Gallery is dedicating this season to two masters of contemporary portraiture whose work springs from collage and the provocative, multi-leveled thinking about identity that it makes possible. All About Love reflects the Southbank Centre’s commitment to champion unique and remarkable artists from around the world.

All About Love is the first major international tour of Thomas’s work, co-organised by the Hayward Gallery and The Broad, Los Angeles, and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie Toulouse. This showing at the Hayward Gallery is the first European stop in the artist’s series of independent presentations before a showing at les Abattoirs (13 June - 9 November 2025).

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an interview with the artist by Hayward Gallery Roden Chief Curator, Rachel Thomas, and is followed by essays from Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Darnell L. Moore, Claudia Rankine, Ed Schad, Renée Mussai and Christine Y. Kim, which cover Thomas’s distinct visual vocabulary, drawing on themes of intergenerational female empowerment, autobiography, memory and tenets of Black feminist theory. This exhibition supports the Southbank Centre’s commitment as an engine of creative practice to producing new productions and exhibitions. It is curated by Hayward Gallery Roden Chief Curator, Rachel Thomas, Assistant Curator, Thomas Sutton, and Curatorial Assistant, Felix Choong.