Galerie Nathalie Obadia is pleased to present a new exhibition of Mickalene Thomas in Paris, reinforcing the artist's rising institutional profile in Europe. Following her acclaimed 2023 exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris), Thomas is currently the subject of a major solo show at Les Abattoirs - Musée Frac Occitanie Toulouse, part of the international exhibition Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, which began at The Broad in Los Angeles, continued at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Hayward Gallery in London before arriving in France.
This new exhibition unveils eleven previously unseen works drawn from series inspired by JET and Nus Exotiques-publications known for their portrayals of 'exotic' nudes. Drawing from archival imagery, Thomas reassembles these sources into spectacular new collages, deploying formal richness to articulate a powerful critical discourse. For over two decades, Thomas has developed a bold, politically engaged practice shaped by the intersecting dynamics of gender, race, and power. A Yale School of Art graduate (2002) and former artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2003), she is recognized as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American art. "I define my work as both a feminist and political act-because I am a Black, a woman and queer. You don't have to explicitly claim it, but for a woman, the very act of making art is inherently political and feminist."¹ Thomas asserts. Each image, each collage, each motif becomes a space for rewriting, reconfiguring, and reclaiming visual and cultural iconographies.
The Jet series-seven works created specifically for this exhibition- reimagines one of the most iconic features from Jet magazine, a cornerstone of Black American popular culture since 1951. A major weekly in the Black American press, it combined political and social news, portraiture, and cultural coverage. Jet Beauties of the Week, highlighted a young Black woman in a swimsuit each week, photographed according to codified poses. This recurring feature, later adapted into an annual Jet calendar, played a significant role in shaping collective imaginaries around Black beauty in the United States.
While Jet provided vital visibility for Black beauty, it also imposed restrictive aesthetic standards, favoring slender silhouettes, light skin, and straight hair. While such images could symbolize emancipation, they also reinforced a gaze shaped by dominant, gendered, and heteronormative norms. Thomas's contemporary reinterpretations, such as Jet Calendar Back Cover 1977 (2025), subvert the original imagery by isolating and fragmenting figures, recomposing them within lush settings of retro wallpaper, rhinestones, textiles, and motifs from the Black domestic sphere. Blurred and pixelated passages evoke memory and introduce a critical distance, allowing Black female subjectivity to emerge as complex, active, and plural.
Thomas's work situates itself within an alternative history of collage, where fragmentation becomes a gesture of memory, repair, and care, building on the legacy of artists like Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold. Rather than confronting stereotypes head-on, Thomas employs a nuanced strategy of critical hospitality, appropriating and reorienting visual codes to open new perspectives and readings. Her aim is not to celebratethe African American visual heritage, andt redefine it with subtlety and power.
The NUS Exotiques works extend this reflection to erotic representations of racialized female bodies, transforming them into icons of a renewed gaze, liberated from conventional objectification. Thomas often collaborates with models from her personal circle, grounding her images in relationships of trust and reciprocity. Even when working from archives, her approach aligns with relational aesthetics, foregrounding human connection over staged representation- a perspective resonant with bell hooks's vision of love as an active ethic: a means of making visible, of honoring the complexity of lived experiences, and of opening a space for autonomy².
Thomas's practice is fundamentally about metamorphosis-bodily, social, and visual. Her art of transformation becomes a symbolic weapon against dominant norms of gender and beauty. "There's a deep desire in people to alter themselves-but it's also an art of transformation. I'm fascinated by the artifice, by how we're able to reshape ourselves. There's something profoundly creative in that.There's a great desire for people to alter themselves, but it's also the art of transformation. The artifice interests me - how we're capable of altering ourselves. There's a creative element that's very intriguing,"³ she notes.
Through these new works, Mickalene Thomas intensifies her exploration of Black bodies, feminine beauty, and the power of images. Every medium and context becomes a site for creation and self-assertion. In an era of profound social and aesthetic transformation, her work stands as a manifesto for metamorphosis as an act of freedom. As Roxane Gay observes, Thomas's visually striking art captivates with its ambition, audacity, and its subjects "that stare into the lens-as they do at the viewer-and demand to be seen"⁴.
¹ Mickalene Thomas, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, Distributed Art Publishers / Hayward Publishing, 2024, p. 186; source of the quotation p. 237.
² bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions, New York, Harper Collins, 2000, p. 87.
³ Mickalene Thomas, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, Distributed Art Publishers / Hayward Publishing, 2024, p. 201; source of the quotation p. 237.
⁴ Roxane Gay, Wild and Somewhat Disruptive, in Mickalene Thomas, Phaidon Press, 2021, p. 8.
