CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/17/2016

Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs

"The amazing thing that you've done, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, is that you've stepped out and reclaimed an extraordinary space for black women to live in," Carrie Mae Weems says to Mickalene Thomas in an interview published in Aperture's new monograph. "You work with historical references, whether we're talking about art-historical references or Jet magazine and centerfolds, or pinups, or the sublime nude. All of those things that come up when we decide we're going to look at the body as opposed to thinking about the pathology of the body, which is how blackness has been considered for the most part. Blackness, homosexuality, and otherness—they've been considered as a kind of illness. The thing that the work does so brilliantly, beautifully and importantly is that it usurps the power of all of those strategies that have heretofore hindered us, and gives us a sort of strength and a power to move forward under our own conditions. You've used all of what you know and all of art history to turn art history upon its head, as opposed to reinserting the black body into art history." Featured image is "Don't Forget About Me (Keri)" (2009).