Mickalene Thomas: All About Love: Grand Palais, Paris

All About Love is a monographic exhibition by the American artist Mickalene Thomas (1971, New York), the first African-American artist to be honoured with a major solo exhibition at the Grand Palais.

 

Recognized worldwide for her bold, multidimensional practice, Thomas explores the visibility and representation of Black women in art, history, and popular culture. Through a vibrant synthesis of painting, collage, photography, video, and installation, she reimagines classical portraiture with a distinctly queer and Black feminist perspective.

 

At the core of Thomas's work is love - as a force of liberation, self-affirmation, and joy. Drawing inspiration from bell hooks's seminal text All About Love: New Visions (1999), the exhibition celebrates love's power to transform both personal and collective life.

 

Featuring more than 70 works spanning over two decades, All About Love honors the agency, beauty, and resilience of Black women. Thomas's subjects - friends, family, lovers, and cultural icons - are depicted with confidence, sensuality, and grace, reclaiming the spaces from which they have historically been excluded. Her lush, rhinestone - studded compositions invite viewers into worlds where pleasure becomes political and representation becomes radical.

 

Thomas's practice often reinterprets and disrupts of canonical moments in European - and particularly French - art history. Works referencing masterpieces such as Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) and Ingres's La Grande Odalisque (1814) are reimagined through a contemporary lens of empowerment, positioning Black women at the center of the narrative

 

All About Love, invites audiences to enter a universe of love, leisure, and liberation - spaces where beauty, intimacy, and self-possession redefine the art historical gaze.

 

Following acclaimed exhibitions at The Broad (Los Angeles), The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Hayward Gallery (London), and Les Abattoirs (Toulouse), this retrospective is the most ambitious presentation of Mickalene Thomas's work in Paris. 

"I am deeply humbled and profoundly honored to present my work at the Grand Palais - an institution that holds such an important place in the history of art. To stand here as a Black queer woman, and to share All About Love in this space, is both a personal and collective moment of triumph. This exhibition is a testament to the power of representation, resilience, and love."
Mickalene Thomas 

 

 

- -
Exhibition produced by GrandPalaisRmn, Hayward Gallery, London, and Les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie Toulouse

Curators : Rachel Thomas,Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery ; Lauriane Gricourt, Director at the Musée des Abattoirs de Toulouse and Erin Gilbert, independent curator

Scenography : Scénografiá, Nicolas Groult et Valentina Dodi