Mickalene Thomas’ recently unveiled mid-career retrospective All About Love is, in a sense, all about Sandra Bush — not only the artist’s late mother, but also her first muse. The model, affectionately known as “Mama Bush,” appears in several of the nearly 100 works that comprise the exhibition, on-view at The Broad in Los Angeles until September 29. Her alluring likeness is rendered in the triptych, Lounging, Standing, Looking. Some of her favored objects — from coasters to crocs — speckle the show, cast in bronze. Even Bush’s ’80s-era mirrored living room is recreated as an installation, complete with a functional turntable spinning Nina Simone. The effect is palpable, a shrine to motherly love and its power to fuel not just a practice, but a life.
“I started being an artist by thinking about my love for my mother,” Thomas tells me over the phone. “So I felt like the title was really rooted in my own trajectory, my own trajectory as an artist.”
Consisting of pieces produced over a 20-year period stretching back to Thomas’ MFA days at Yale, the exhibition reflects the 53-year-old artist’s decades-long multimedia study in the beauty, the range, and the cultural necessity of Black women. She may be best known for her photographs of heroes from Michelle Obama to Miss Major to Brittney Griner, but her painted portraits, glimmering with the elegance of an affectionate gaze, present equally forceful reflections of the artist’s love. Other totems of reverence, including books by Baldwin, Lorde, Morrison, and more, are placed throughout the multi-room show. But one text is given extra special treatment, and that is, of course, bell hooks’ seminal 1999 book of essays, which directly inspired Thomas’ title for her own inventory of love in its many forms.
“I read All About Love many years ago before rereading it and deciding to use it as a title,” says Thomas. “I had to have something that was reaffirming of my own relationship with love, from the familial, to the romantic, to myself.”
Those layers are on full display at the retrospective, where Thomas renders her muses — a mix of longtime friends and cultural workers — in moments of leisure, struggle, contemplation, and classical repose. In one of the show’s most resonant images, Thomas lenses her friend and mentor Carrie Mae Weems, whose legendary Kitchen Table Series inspired a 17-year-old, freshly out Thomas to be an artist. When I ask for a few words on Weems, Thomas offers only one: “Incomparable.”
With All About Love up in Los Angeles and poised for stints at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and London’s Hayward Gallery, I spoke to Mickalene Thomas about expanding definitions of the canon, James Baldwin, and the unique textures of Black queer love.
What's on your mind today?
What’s on my mind is the state of the world. I’m thinking about my [11-year-old] daughter's future and my own future, about how far we’ve come as a humanity, but how far we haven't come. It’s mind-boggling. We don’t support each other, we don’t celebrate each other enough. We don’t uplift each other. It's like we thrive on ripping each other apart and destroying each other.
That’s all too true, Mickalene. Thank you for sharing. I want to talk about your recent exhibition, All About Love, which is currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles. The show features nearly a hundred works spanning some 20 years of your career. What was it like seeing all of those pieces in one place for the first time?
It reminds me of my journey and where I was at those particular moments when I made these works. That makes me feel very excited, because I look around from some of those earlier works and then look at the works that I’m making today and I notice how much I’ve grown as an artist. It’s also exciting to see the conversation between the works, and the transformation of my process — moving from a direct photographic image to allowing my collage element to start taking shape. Even though there are a hundred works in the show, it’s still just a nod to my full practice. Really, I could have filled the whole museum.
Of course, the exhibition gets its name from the beloved book of essays by bell hooks. What inspired you to title this show after All About Love?
I’ve always been a huge fan of bell hooks and always wanted to study under her and never had the opportunity. I read All About Love many years ago before rereading it and deciding to use it as a title. I had to have something that was reaffirming of my own relationship with love, from the familial, to the romantic, to myself. And I realized a lot of my practice comes from that place; that I started being an artist by thinking about my relationship and my love for my mother. So I felt like the title was really rooted in my own trajectory, my own trajectory as an artist.
I wanted to ask you a question about love. So much of your work navigates the particular textures of Black queer love. What in your view makes this kind of connection unique?
One of the most vital qualities [of Black queer love] for me is that you feel that that person knows you without speaking. There’s a deeper understanding of your experience when you are with someone that similar. Sometimes there’s just a connectivity of spirit. For me, it’s always been about wanting to feel safe. But it takes the right person. That’s what I've learned — that it may seem like it’s the right person, but the timing may not be aligned. And it’s not that you're a bad person or they’re a bad person; it’s just that sometimes you’re only going to grow with that person up to a certain point.
Another theme that comes up quite a lot in your work is the canon. I’m curious how your relationship to the canon has evolved over your career — a time in which you have become a part of it yourself.
When I think of the canon, I hope that I’ve created a conversation that has shifted how we look at art, how we think about materials within art, and how we approach the social practice of art. When you think about the Western canon, most of those artists were very siloed. They were more myopic in their practice. The canon is changing, where that no longer exists. Now you have artists that have used their own resources to create space for others that really enriches their practice. You think about a Lauren Halsey or a Derrick Adams or a Theaster Gates or a Titus Kaphar, and all of these Black artists that have created their future as creators. I hope I’m a part of that canon.
Whether through painting or photography, your work makes powerful use of muses from across culture. For my next few questions, I’d love to mention some names and see what these figures bring up for you today.
Okay.
Great. First up: Brittney Griner?
Strength, resilience.
James Baldwin?
Enlightened.
Beautiful. Carrie Mae Weems?
Incomparable.
Solange?
Avant-garde.
Miss Major?
Ah, Miss Major. Poetically beautiful, a powerhouse.
Last one: Nina Simone?
A soul sister.
Last question, what’s something you're looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to where we’re going to be in 2026, what that’s going to be like as a society and who we’re going to have running this country. I often think about James Baldwin, how he would speak and give us inspiration.What would he be saying right now? We need a leader like that. We need someone who can speak clearly to all of us no matter who we are. Where we land will tell us a lot about who we are as a society.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
All About Love is on-view at The Broad in Los Angeles until September 29, and will be at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (October 20, 2024–January 12, 2025), then London’s Hayward Gallery (February 11–May 5, 2025).
