The Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada in Toronto has a few great shows on at the moment (including the last weekend to catch the Anthropocene exhibition), but the one that caught our eye that is on through March 24, 2019 is the Mickalene Thomas show, Femmes Noires. Her works, known for their use of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel, have been making the museum circuit in recent years, and the NYC-based artist has a series of paintings and installations on view in Toronto.
From the museum: Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires upends and overturns familiar representations and monolithic notions of black women today.
This exhibition, developed in a creative partnership between the AGO and the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, presents a bold collection of Thomas’s vibrant and politically charged paintings, silkscreens, photographs, time-based media and site-specific installations exploring how black women are represented in art and popular culture.
The exhibition also highlights Thomas’s collage work and the inspiration she takes from art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance.
Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires is the first large-scale solo exhibition by this African-American contemporary artist to be staged in Canada. It will spark timely and urgent conversations about race, representational politics, black celebrity culture and sexuality as seen from a black queer feminist perspective.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.
