Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? at MOCA

MOCA presents Mickalene Thomas, an exhibition of new and recent work by New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas. Best known for her work in portraiture and still life, Thomas moves between and across photography, painting, collage, film, and installation. Her lush, large-scale interiors and landscapes are vibrantly colored. Thomas plays with perspective, layering fractured geometric forms that reference early cubist compositions as well as the later, midcentury collages of Romare Bearden. Her images also draw on 19th- and 20th-century portrait painting (Gustave Courbet, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres), the work of Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, as well as the now-iconic Blaxploitation films of the 1970s (Pam Grier as Foxy Brown). The voluptuous African American women that populate the artist’s work are often draped in richly hued swaths of fabric, reclined with arms and legs extended, atop sofas embellished with layers of animal prints, oversized flowers, and checkerboard patterns. This embellishment extends to the surfaces of Thomas’s paintings, which often incorporate rhinestones, acrylic, oil, and enamel. At times applied to the contours of her subject’s body—the nape of a neck, a collarbone, the crease of a shirt—or in large, lavish all-over fields, the rhinestones also illuminate the penetrating gaze of women who look back. More recently, the artist has created elaborate architectural installations that reimagine 1970s domestic interiors.

Monday  |  CLOSED

Tuesday  |  11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Wednesday  |  11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Thursday  |  11 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Friday  |  11 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Saturday  |  10 a.m. – 8 p.m.

Sunday  |  10 a.m. – 6 p.m.