Re-Narrating the Feminine African American Experience in Contemporary Visual Arts: Comparing the Practices of Women Artists Mickalene Thomas and Tschabalala Self

Year 2025, Issue: 63, 63 - 78, 30.06.2025

Clémentine Tholas

Abstract

Standing for centuries at the remotest margins of American society, the Black woman was presented as a “locus of confounded identities” (Spillers) whose story was marked by commodification and dispossession of her true-self. If as early as the Harlem Renaissance, Black women artists paved the way for reclaiming self-determination, this paper will nevertheless focus on two contemporary artists contributing to the re-appropriation of the Black female body: Mickalene Thomas and Tschabalala Self. Considering that today Black artists are finally taking control of the Black image, this article will analyze how they both offer counter-narratives for the Black female body, playing with European codes of representations, racial and gender stereotypes, and the redefinition of intimacy and domesticity. Working on figurative representations, Thomas and Self also interrogate the paradoxical use of sensual and erotic portrayals as an alienation of the self and as a call for empowerment.

Keywords

Contemporary visual arts , women artists , Black female body , historical revision , self-representation

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