Mickalene Thomas

Episode No. 358 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Mickalene Thomas.

"Mickalene Thomas: I Can't See You Without Me" opens at The Wexner Center for the Arts on Friday, September 14. The exhibition features fifty artworks, including paintings, sculptures and installations, around the theme of four of Thomas's most significant muses: her late mother Sandra; her former girlfriend, Maya; her current partner, Racquel; and Thomas herself. The show was curated by Michael Goodson and will be on view through December 30. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Wexner. Amazon offers it for $40.

The exhibition will premiere Thomas's Je t'aime trois, a multichannel video set to music by Terri Lyne Carrington. It was enabled by a Wexner Center Artist Residency Award. On October 4, Thomas will perform entrepe, a live, improvised DJ set as a response to Carrington's work.

Thomas's work is also featured in "People Get Ready: Building a Contemporary Collection," at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The show presents work that addresses issues ranging from identity to social justice and environmentalism. It was curated by Trevor Schoonmaker and will be on view through January 6, 2019.

Thomas's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions all over the world, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the ICA Boston, the former Santa Monica Museum of Art, New York's Aperture Foundation, the Aspen Art Museum, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and more.

Thomas was previously a guest on Episode No. 30 in 2012.