Mickalene Thomas is a force. The New York-based artist, whose practice Whoopi Goldberg affectionately described as “expansive,” is a woman who talks the talk and walks the walk. Her protean work—spanning portraiture, collage, and installation—exists in dialogue with the western canon, not ceding to its selective narratives but dismantling its hierarchies and rewriting its history. Through her large-scale paintings, in which riotous colour and glittering rhinestones bring tableaux to life, she presents visions of beauty and power through a Black feminist lens. In conversation with hube, Thomas describes her practice to a “philosophical act” that asks who gets represented, how meaning is constructed, and how an image can reshape what we perceive as real. “Artists are radical by nature,” she tells us. “For me it isn’t an obligation, but a choice. Breaking boundaries is part of truth-telling, but the real power is in deciding when, how, and why to challenge—to make the work that speaks to you.”
hube: Beauty is often understood as a social phenomenon. Prosperity, culture, education, ethics, economics, and technology all shape what we perceive as beautiful. Do you think beauty can exist completely independently of people and society?
Mickalene Thomas: Beauty is never separate from people orsociety. It’s shaped by culture, power, history,lived experiences, and who gets seen orvalued. But it isn’t fixed. When we choose tosee beauty where society has erased it, we’reable to redefine what beauty can be. For me,where beauty comes to power is when it isembodied through the personal.
