Mickalene Thomas ‘All About Love’ at Hayward Gallery review

Heading from Embankment station to the Hayward, our visit to the gallery was a freezing stroll with a bitterly cold wind blowing over the Thames making one wonder why we bother to leave the house at all. But from grey London to the grey brutalist architecture of The Hayward Gallery we are taken to a happy place with Mickalene Thomas’ All About Love exhibition, showing key pieces of her work from the last two decades. Love here is shown in a positive light, with no tangible heartbreak in sight.

Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

This travelling exhibition is Thomas's first major international tour organised by the Broad Museum, Los Angeles,the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, the Hayward Gallery, and Les Abattoirs Museum, Toulouse.

The artist’s expansive and empowering definition of the term love – encompasses family love, self-love and romantic love. “My work is rooted in self-discovery, celebration, joy, sensuality, and a need to see positive images of Black women in the world”, with that her works unashamedly show the beauty of black women’s form.

As a visual artist her career has flourished, branching out into creative spaces with a presence in fashion, being commissioned by Dior’s’ artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri to create 13 photo collages of path breaking black female role models who inspire her such as Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker and Nina Simone. They lined the walls around the Dior runway. Her commissioned portrait of Solange Knowles was used for the cover of the R&B singer’s 2013 EP True. She also created the first artistic image of Michelle Obama entitled Michelle O (2008) a pop art style screen print which was a nod to Andy Warhol’s vision of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (also known as Jackie O).

Thomas brings with her dazzling, vibrant, rhinestone-adorned portraits of Black women, collages, photographs, installations and sets in which she photographed her muses to London. Her selection of female subjects comes from family members, her circle of friends and ex-partners ensuring we see through the gaze of her sitters the love between them.

Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. Din avec la main dans le miroir et jupe rouge, (2023). Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

The first part of the exhibition places women and the black body at its centre. You will instantly notice the shimmer of rhinestones embellishing her enormous portraits. Beginning as an undergrad she worked with untraditional materials when affordability of paints was a challenge hence her work began using collage. One day, when searching for felt she came across a bag of inexpensive acrylic rhinestones and began incorporating them in her work. Their use complemented her interest in aboriginal dot paintings/pointillism. As her success grew, so too did her materials, the rhinestones are now crystal born from a collaboration with Swarovski. Growing up in the 1970s, Thomas drew inspiration from the bright colours and patterns of her childhood, and with her bringing together of bold materials, in very unexpected ways, she has created pictures that are exuberant and extremely intimate.

Ascending to the upper level, there is a heart-warming quote from bell hooks, a feminist icon and a writer of influence on Mickalene’s work and life. It offers a welcome point of reflection during a time when the world if feeling like an increasingly unkind place.

'To truly love we must learn

to mix various ingredients -

care, affection, recognition,

respect, commitment, and

trust, as well as honest and

open communication.’

- bell hooks

Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

On the upper level, two immersive living rooms capture the expanse of her personal history—I Was Born to Do Great Things (2014) had me smiling, as they exude so much joy. In this installation, the artist reconstructs living spaces from two significant periods of her early life. On the left, a room from the late 1970s represents Thomas’s childhood in New Jersey, serving as a heartfelt tribute to her late grandmother. The right side recalls a room from her teenage years in the 1980s, as seen in pair of polaroids of her mother placed within the installation. The scene is resplendent with furniture in deliciously mismatched patterns, books and objects all while soulful songs play on a record player with the likes of The glow of Love featuring Luther Vandross evoking a sense of nostalgia throughout the room.

She created these sets in her studio for her sitters, aiming to make them feel comfortable in those spaces, leading them to exude both ease and elegance in their portraits, which seems to have worked. In several portraits the women luxuriate in pose with a sense of fullness of their being.

Her work also engages modern art history, drawing on influences of Roman Bearden, Henri Matisse, Robert Rauschenberg and Pablo Picasso. She talks back to old masters by loosely keeping the composition and poses but reclaiming the space by changing the figures to black woman giving them the representation they deserve in the art world. In Sleep: Deux femmes noires she recalls Le Sommeil (The Sleepers) (1866), a painting by French artist Gustave Courbet depicting two White women in a sensual embrace. Thomas's reinterpretation of the scene presents two Black women Iying in a collaged landscape of lush green trees and peachy sunsets. While the women in Courbet's painting are depicted in the privacy of the bedroom. Thomas integrates her subjects into the landscape, reflecting her desire to portray love between Black women as natural and without shame.This occurs multiple times in her work where she reclaims black identity as well as queer identity. Her subjects often look you right in the eye showing a combination of pride, resilience and strength mixed in with a sense of ease with who they are.

Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. A Little Taste Outside of Love, (2007). Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

While the exhibition has a predominately positive energy it isn’t all rosy. Me As Muse video, is a mixed-media immersive installation which is presented as a self-portrait on 12 monitors that depicts the artist reclined in the nude includes Eartha Kitt’s interview from the Terry Wogan Show, 15 November 1989. Eartha explains her struggles being a light skinned black person unable to be accepted by either black or white communities and never feeling truly loved.This installation is perhaps here to remind us of our need and right to a sense of belonging. Kitts influence also features in Angelitos Negros. A recent series of paintings in the last room centre on the Civil Rights activism from the 1960 to now including a central painting serving as a memorial to Black men and women who lost their lives to law enforcement or while in custody.

Installation view of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love. Mama Bush: (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me), Higher and Higher, (2009). Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

Books are featured throughout her exhibition—on side tables, piled on the floor, and scattered around the recreation of the artist’s personal mood board, The Shrine. A closer look at the titles reveals a carefully curated selection that reflects the inspiration behind Thomas’s art and the themes she explores. Books such as Family, The Wedding, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Democracy Matters, Faith in Black Power, Roots, A Black Gaze, and The Autonomy of Pleasure offer insight into her influences.

The exhibition beautifully inhabits the space, and hopefully, Thomas’s work continues to challenge people’s perspectives, allowing visitors to leave with a stronger sense of self while embracing their own strengths and vulnerabilities.

Date: 11 February - 5 May 2025. Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Price: from £19, concessions available. Book now.

Review by Natascha Milsom