Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, NJ) lives and works in New York. One of the most influential artists today, her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Awards nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. While embarking on her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums. Thomas’s work has become an undeniable force within the contemporary art world and an indispensable inspiration to younger generations of artists.

Thomas earned her BFA in painting at Pratt Institute in 2000 and her MFA at the Yale University School of Art in 2002. Her work has been exhibited worldwide at significant institutions including Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Aperture Foundation, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; George Eastman House, Rochester; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Santa Monica Museum of Art; and La Conservera Contemporary Art Centre, Ceuti, Spain, among others.