Mickalene Thomas: All About Love : Les Abattoirs
"Mickalene Thomas: All About Love" is the first major exhibition in France devoted to the work of this pioneering artist. Les Abattoirs is the final stop in an international tour of the exhibition, following The Broad in Los Angeles, The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Hayward Gallery in London.
The exhibition "All About Love" presents over two decades of Mickalene Thomas's career through a display of vibrant works celebrating love and the power of Black women. Paintings, collages, photographs, videos, and installations offer an unprecedented exploration of her work, which boldly highlights Black power, love, and femininity. Whether engaging in dialogue with canonical works from art history or from popular culture, her opulent portraits-embellished with colorful patterns and rhinestones-offer a vision of beauty and desire articulated through a sensual Black feminist perspective. The exhibition borrows its title and several of its themes from one of the landmark texts by American feminist author bell hooks, in which love becomes a tool for care and collective emancipation, capable of breaking free from patterns of domination.
Born in 1971 in Camden, New Jersey (USA), Mickalene Thomas earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art in 2002, after which she completed a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003. Shortly thereafter, she gained recognition for her monumental acrylic paintings depicting Black women in moments of leisure and rest, adorned with rhinestones-a material that has become central to her practice and symbolizes the complexities of femininity. Her models are often shown in domestic interiors where she celebrates African American life, asserting women's authority while deconstructing the canons of art history. Mickalene Thomas's photographs, collages, and figurative paintings recontextualize famous works by 19th-century French painters such as Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet, challenging the subjugation and oppressive narratives upheld and disseminated by archives, cultural institutions, and Western systems of representation.
Curators for Les Abattoirs:
Lauriane Gricourt, Director
Tatiana Rybaltchenko, Curator
Tour - Previous Venues:
The Broad, Los Angeles (May 25 - September 29, 2024)
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (October 20, 2024 - January 12, 2025)
Hayward Gallery, London (February 11 - May 5, 2025)
Exhibition organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, curated by Rachel Thomas, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery.
