Tschabalala Self - Editions & Works on Paper New York Wednesday, February 12, 2025 | Phillips
  •  “My work is very anecdotal, it’s based on experiences, hearsay even.”
    —Tschabalala Self

    In her textile multiple Out of Body, pioneering multi-media artist Tschabalala Self transforms richly hued and patterned fabrics into abstract modes of figuration that explore and articulate new forms of humanity, while capturing the quotidian social exchanges of urban daily life. Self’s figural depictions, often of black women, connect a variety of artistic traditions and are considered by the artist to be avatars rather than direct representations of people. By highlighting various body parts through exaggeration and further isolating this anatomy with distinct textiles, Self reflects on her own experiences and attitudes towards racial and gender stereotypes. By drawing the eye to specific parts of the form, Self intends to evoke our human inability to take in an entire person at once. Rather we tend to focus on specific elements of a person first, with those taking precedent in our mind’s eye over the entire human form.

     

    Throughout her life, Tschabalala Self has been steeped in the tradition and community of Harlem, growing up in the neighborhood and, as an adult, serving as the artist in residence at the Studio Museum Harlem from 2018-2019. Self found inspiration in the prior generations of trail-blazing black artists like fellow Harlem-resident Faith Ringold, whose painted “story quilts” pioneered a genre at the intersection of art, feminism, and the Civil Rights movement. Like Ringold, Self’s work goes beyond the traditional female-dominated craft of quilting and once Self began to think of canvas as a textile, she was able to make the mental leap to using applique elements to form her compositions.

     

    Faith Ringgold "Tar Beach 2" Quilt, 1990, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with funds contributed by W. B. Dixon Stroud, 1992, Artwork: © Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York - Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York. 

    Out of Body’s imagery was drawn from a unique work by the same name executed in 2015. When Self spoke her 2015 work, she expanded on the work’s title saying, “I fantasized about liberating myself from conversations around my otherness. I sought to transgress the idea of a gendered and racialized body. So that’s one half of the double entendre—out of body…The other part of the titles refers to an imagining of my figures’ inner lives, spirituality and sentimentality. ‘Out of body’ usually refers to a spiritual or transcendent experience. The subjects of my paintings have both existential and political concerns.”i The artist used Out of Body as the exhibition title for her solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston in 2020, which was her largest exhibition to date, having previously exhibited smaller selections of work at museums in Seattle, Shanghai, and Los Angeles. The use of this title for a momentous moment in her career signifies the importance of this concept within her practice. This Out of Body multiple captures the questions of Black female identity and iconography at the center of Tschabalala Self’s oeuvre, where variously textured fabrics are layered with meaning and intricately sewn lines secure the ephemeral nature of daily exchanges in an urban environment, thus allowing the viewing to grapple with notions of Black femininity in our contemporary culture.

     

     

    i Lousa Buck, "Tschabalala Self: 'What Information Is Needed For One's Body To Become Gendered and Radicalised'," The Art Newspaper, online.

    • Provenance

      Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Artist Biography

      Tschabalala Self

      American • 1990

      Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self combines sewing, printing and painting in a singular style that speaks to her experience of contemporary black womanhood. Despite her extensive use of craft methods, Self considers herself to be a painter above all else. Her work is known for exaggerated colors and forms, allowing the personages within to “escape” from society’s narrow perceptions.

      Explaining her practice, the artist stated: “I hope to correct misconceptions propagated within and projected upon the Black body. Multiplicity and possibility are essential to my practice and general philosophy. My subjects are fully aware of their conspicuousness and are unmoved by the viewer. Their role is not to show, explain, or perform but rather ‘to be.’ In being, their presence is acknowledged and their significance felt. My project is committed to this exchange, for my own edification and for the edification of those who resemble me.”

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Out of Body

2020
Appliqué fabric multiple.
46 3/4 x 39 1/2 in. (118.7 x 100.3 cm)
Signed, dated '19' and numbered 12/30 in black marker on a fabric label stitched to the reverse (there were also 5 artist's proofs).

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$8,000 - 12,000 

Sold for $9,525

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 12 February 2025