You're Gonna Give Me the Love I Need

Best known for her large and vibrantly colored, mixed-media paintings, Mickalene Thomas addresses the identity and representation of Black women in urban America. Created from photographs, her compositions depict female subjects in lavishly decorated domestic interiors, recalling Western art historical traditions like the reclining Venus. The brilliant fabrics that decorate Thomas’s interiors and adorn her subjects function as markers of personal identity. Based on a painting of the same name, this collage incorporates handmade, fabric-patterned papers as well as actual cloth to achieve a tactile effect. Black glitter is substituted for the rhinestones that embellish the opulent surface of the larger work. Produced at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University, this work was part of an edition produced to benefit Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art.