'I hope to correct misconceptions propagated within and projected upon the Black body […] 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.' —Tschabalala SelfComposed of fantastically vibrant contrasts of block blues, earthy tones, and a joyfully patterned sunflower fabric rhythmically arranged against a marigold ground, Carma is an immediately arresting and strikingly three dimensional portrait by American artist Tschabalala Self, one of her few works to incorporate padding in the construction of her figure here. Included in Self’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom hosted by Parasol Unit in 2017, Carma is a commanding example of the artist’s highly expressive and inventive approach to materials and figuration for which she has become so well known. Combining textiles, acrylic, vinyl paint, and pastel, Self deconstructs and refashions the Black female body here, exposing and amplifying certain historically entrenched ideas or fantasies related to Black femininity and sexuality that continue to persist in contemporary attitudes.

 

Dominating the large-scale composition, the women here turns dramatically back over her shoulder to face the viewer directly, her dynamism and agency challenging assumed power dynamics operating between viewer and subject. Playing with ideas related to the performance of gender and voyeurism, Self’s multi-dimensional woman exudes confidence and self-possession here, defining herself on her own terms. A woman who meets our gaze, but is not constrained by it, she belongs to Self’s panoply of characters who delight in their exaggerated features, ‘fully aware of their conspicuousness and are unmoved by their viewers […] In being, their presence is acknowledged and their significance felt.’ⁱ

 

Tschabalala Self discusses her artistic process with Dr. Ziba Ardalan for Parasol Unit ahead of her 2017 exhibition

 

Building an Image

 

In describing her practice, Self frequently returns to the idea of her images as built constructions, encapsulating both the nature of their execution and more complex notions of identity formation. Readymade elements that introduce diverse textures, forms, and colours, Self’s cutting, shaping, and stitching together of fabrics draws profound parallels to the complex intersections of our own histories and sense of selfhood.

 

Charged with autobiographic significance, the materials that she uses include hand-printed and sewn scraps of found textiles, pieces of her own canvases cut up and recombined, and – most poignantly – pieces of patterned fabric that had belonged to her mother. An avid sewer during her lifetime, Self’s mother amassed an enormous collection of patterned fabrics, a resource that the artist turned to after her death. Deftly interweaving the personal with the political, Self draws on her own life and the entrenched associations of textiles to women and ‘women’s work’ in order to create highly charged objects that eloquently explore attitudes to race and gender in the 21st century. In this respect, her highly textured paintings recall Faith Ringgold’s painted story quilts, and their powerful combination of personal narratives, politics, and history – an artist who Self cites as a particular formative influence growing up in Harlem.

 

Like her contemporary, Mickalane Thomas, Self approaches the intersections of gender, sexuality, and representation head on, using a wide variety of materials to problematise questions of representation and ‘opening up new paths into thinking about Black life.’ⁱⁱ As the artist explains: ‘The fantasies and attitudes surrounding the Black female body are both accepted and rejected within my practice, and through this disorientation, new possibilities arise. I am attempting to provide alternative, and perhaps fictional explanations for the voyeuristic tendencies towards the gendered and racialized body; a body which is both exalted and abject’.

 

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• Having exhibited works in major international art centres including London, New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles, Tschabalala Self was the subject of a major solo exhibition in 2020 – her largest to date – at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. Her work is currently included in the group exhibition Women and Change at the Arken Museum in Denmark and in The Condition of Being Addressable at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles.

• Examples of her work can be found in the collections of the Rubell Museum, Miami, the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. New York institutions include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the New Museum.

• Phillip’s introduced Tschabalala Self to auction in our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in March 2019.

 
ⁱ Tschabalala Self, quoted in ‘Tschabalala Self’, artist website, online. 
ⁱⁱ Ruth Erickson, quoted in Robin Pogrebin, ‘With New Show, Tschabalala Self Explores Black American Identity’, New York Times, 2 November 2020, online.