Tschabalala Self on Her New Exhibition and Taking Up Space Through Her Artwork
When you look at Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s paintings, you are seeing, in no uncertain terms, her worldview. “My work has evolved a lot,” the 30-year-old artist, who’s been showcasing her work since 2015, tells Vogue via Zoom. “Ultimately, I’m using my own identity politics and lived experiences to tell larger, humanistic stories about desire, power, the potential for existentialism, and what that can mean for an individual or community,” Self says. “I focus on my individual experience because that’s the perspective I know the best.”
These experiences are detailed in her new exhibition entitled “By My Self,” on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art from March 28 until September 19. The show (and its name) are both inspired by Self’s exploration of loneliness, which was heightened over the course of the pandemic. “It’s a play on my last name and also my way of thinking about this year of solitude,” she says. “Whether it’s loneliness in terms of being by oneself, or even the concept of feeling lonely within a household or group.”
While the events of the past year have shaped the show, a number of the pieces predate the pandemic (some of her work dates back to 2016). The show itself was a bit of a long-term goal. Curator Cecilia Wichmann first approached Self with the idea of showcasing at the Baltimore Museum of Art after seeing her 2017 exhibition, “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” at the New Museum. “I was really excited about the opportunity,” Self says. “We’ve been trying to pull together a narrative to compile existing works and new works that respond to my overall practice as a whole.” The Baltimore Museum is also home to the largest Matisse collection in the world, which plays a key role in her show.
Self created a visual response to the Matisse piece Two Women, formerly known as Two Negresses. This sculpture is based on a photograph, named Young Tuareg Girls, from a 19th-century French erotic magazine, which Self says fetishizes the African female body. “The image is pseudo-pornographic and designed for a white male gaze,” says Self. “I think that Matisse was attempting to complicate that dynamic in the sculpture, but it wasn’t fully complicated. It’s perhaps his way of giving them individuality. But it still copies the aesthetics of the original work. And in a way, the scale of the sculpture makes them diminutive.”