In honor of Black History Month, revisit some of the magazine’s best features with artists over the course of the past 10 years, including the likes of Faith Ringgold, Henry Taylor, Titus Kaphar, and Bisa Butler.
Artist Mickalene Thomas Opens Up Her Home and Studio
Spread across 12 television monitors, Mickalene Thomas's figure appears bit by bit in her 2016 installation Me As Muse—first her feet, then her breasts and left hand, her upper legs, torso, and head. Eventually her full form, in the pose of a classic reclining nude, stretches across the monitors.
Known for her iconic rhinestone-studded portraits of Black women, this was the first piece in which the artist incorporated images of her own body alongside historical references, allowing current questions about representation and bodily autonomy to echo throughout.
“I thought it would be interesting visually to place these images in relation to my own body because these are the images I grew up looking at—these notions of beauty,” Thomas said in 2017.
