Press Release
Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires upends and overturns familiar representations and monolithic notions of Black women today.
This exhibition, developed in a creative partnership between the AGO and the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, presents a bold new collection of Thomas’s vibrant, colourful and provocative paintings, silkscreens, photographs, time-based media and site-specific installations exploring how Black women are represented in art and popular culture.
The exhibition also highlights Thomas’s collage work and the inspiration she takes from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance.
Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires is the first large-scale solo exhibition by this African-American contemporary artist to be staged in Canada. It will spark timely and urgent conversations about race, representational politics, Black celebrity culture and sexuality as seen through a Black queer feminist perspective.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.