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About the artist: american artist Tschabalala Self (b. 1990) is originally from Harlem, New York, and continues to work in the tri-state area. She first studied Studio Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, where she obtained her BA in 2012, Self obtained her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2015. Although the painting and printmaking are two integral facets of Self’s practice, their transformation and evolution into multimedia works exemplify the technically experimental and exploratory nature of his work. Throughout Self’s work, the black body and black life are both central themes and subjects; created from a personal perspective and for an audience within the same community, Self’s work uses a diverse range of materials to create compositions that connect external perception with self-understanding. A 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award recipient and grantee of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Self has had two dozen solo exhibitions since graduating in 2015.
What do you want to know: Represented by Gallery Eva PresenhuberSelf is currently the subject of his first solo exhibition at the museum, “Tschabalala Self: Upside Down», held at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland. The exhibition explores both the technical and thematic range of the artist’s practice, with more than two dozen works, including sculptures, multimedia paintings and single-channel video, Resonance box (Performa Commission) (2021), documenting a performance Self presented at the Performa festival in New York in 2021. Curated by Gianni Jetzer and on view until June 18, 2023, the exhibition illustrates the central themes of the practice of Self, centered on the social aspects and cultural, historical and contemporary. ideas surrounding the black body: “Collective fantasies surround the black body and have created a cultural niche in which exists our contemporary understanding of black femininity. My practice is devoted to naming this phenomenon.
Why we love it: Although clearly rooted deeply in the tradition of painting, the mixture of materials and techniques in Self’s two-dimensional compositions defies easy categorization. Highly specific, the (often literal) patchwork of mediums offers an intriguing entry point to symbolic readings or stylistic interpretations – both of the works as physical objects and of what they represent. Focused on bodily representation, the figures invite the viewer to reflect on their perception of the black body, most often female, on a personal, cultural and societal level. The figures are singular and specific, but they are far from the traditional portrait. Instead, they’re an amalgamation of what Self called a “pantheon of made-up characters.” Conceptually and compositionally, they exist in space between realism and abstraction, conveying through Self’s own artistic lexicon the complex and dynamic mythologies and lived experiences to which the black body is subject.
See the interior of the exhibition and the works presented below.
Installation view of “Tschabalala Self: Inside Out” (2023) at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. Photo: Stefan Altenburger. Courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich/Vienna.
Tschabalala Self, No (2019). Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich/Vienna, and Pilar Corrias, London.
Tschabalala Self, Solitaire 2 (2022). Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich/Vienna, and Pilar Corrias, London.
Tschabalala Self, Morning (2022). Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Evan Presenhuber, Zurich/Vienna, and Pilar Corrias, London.
Tschabalala Self, Vanity (2020). Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Evan Presenhuber, Zurich/Vienna, and Pilar Corrias, London.
“Tschabalala Self: Upside Downis on view at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen until June 18, 2023.
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