Mickalene Thomas’ Total Engagement

Mickalene Thomas’ shimmering, tactile collage portraits aren’t just pretty faces. Exploring themes of self-love, black female sexuality, beauty, power and exploitation, the works are as multilayered as the artist’s process, which combines painting, drawing and photography, paper and textured and patterned fabric, and embellished with rhinestones and Swarovski crystals. The artist, whose work encompasses a variety of mediums — including video, film and performance — is nimble enough to segue between fine art, editorial, advertising, commissions and even products. Thomas in the last two years has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Dayton Art Institute and Wexner Center for the Arts, but she hasn’t forgotten the challenges of forging a career in the art world, and agreed to be one of three judges of Absolut’s Creative Competition, a global search to find “the next bold creative voice of the brand.” “You graduate from art school and your hope is to get a gallery,” she says. “You want a commercial presence and an institutional presence. That can also put up walls in terms of who has an opportunity to engage with that work.” She wants to break down those walls. “For me those possibilities are great. I did a shoe

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Read More...

from WWDWWD http://bit.ly/2ISTXMF