Invite Mickalene Thomas to Your Next Pillow Fight

Here’s what you need to know to cuddle up to Mickalene Thomas’sClarivel Centered:

1. Widely admired for her effusive and often rhinestone-encrusted portraits of black women, Mickalene Thomas questions notions of beauty and celebrity in her heavily patterned works that depict figures characterized by their power, equanimity, and subdued, self-assured sexuality.

2. Art history figures heavily into Thomas’s approach—her works have echoes of influences as wide-ranging as the Hudson River School, Henri Matisse, and Pop art, in addition to those of early mentors including Carrie Mae Weems and contemporaries like Kehinde Wiley.

3. In this limited-edition piece—produced in collaboration with the artist by Henzel Studio and available for pre-order exclusively on Artspace—Thomas’s Clarivel collage is rendered as a plush pillow, perfect for adding a splash of color and contemporary-art attitude to your couch or bedroom.

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