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Mickalene Thomas at the Grand Palais: an ode to love and black beauty!
It’s happening today! The exhibition All About Love opens its doors. With flamboyant portraits, self-assured bodies and bold expressions of femininity, Mickalene Thomas celebrates the beauty of Black women at the Grand Palais. A joyful and committed retrospective, on view until 5 April 2026.
Portrait de Mickalene Thomas
A declaration of love to Black women
Born in the United States in 1971, Mickalene Thomas has long taken an engaged and deeply personal approach to the place of Black women in art, history and society. Her work draws on a thorough knowledge of classical portraiture and art history, whose codes she reimagines through a Black feminist and queer aesthetic.
Painting, photography, collage, video and installation: her practice is free, bold and multidimensional. Often monumental in scale, her compositions weave together materials, patterns and references, questioning traditional notions of beauty and femininity while celebrating their diversity.
My work, like my art, emerges from a space of love.
Mickalene Thomas, Clarivel Face Forward Gazing, 2024
Defining beauty, shifting the gaze
Inspired by 1970s aesthetics, African textiles, popular culture, personal narratives and art history, the artist creates compositions rich in texture and color. These works pay tribute to the autonomy, beauty and resilience of Black women.
Mothers, lovers, friends, admired singers or writers: Mickalene Thomas’s models meet our gaze with confidence. Their bodies relax, assert themselves, exist fully. Set with rhinestones, enamel and luxuriant textures, these portraits unfold within domestic interiors or landscapes designed for leisure. Here, pleasure becomes political, and representation radical.
The exhibition also engages in dialogue with key moments in European, particularly French, art history. Mickalene Thomas reinterprets iconic works through a contemporary lens of emancipation, placing Black women at the very center of the narrative.
With All About Love, step into a world of love and liberation, where beauty and intimacy redefine the historical gaze on art.
