Documenting Experience and the Feminine: Art of Tschabalala Self

The figure of the woman in the work “Confessions”, her form, legs and arms, torso are modeled from fabric and acrylic paint. She floats through space like an acrobat in flight, her long black arms with long thin fingers rest on her knees, legs are splayed open wide; she is striped patterned cropped top that reveals her rounded breasts and nipples, the pant legs mirror the red striping in the shirt, the bodice patterned with flowers. And in the center of her wide opened legs is layers of diamond shaped fabric, pinks, and reds–it is her genitalia, front and center. Like a peep hole, you view in.

Tschabalala Self is a young, black artist who depicts “ample, powerful, and self-contained figures to explore cultural attitudes toward race and gender. Simultaneously embracing and rejecting stereotypes and fantasies that revolve around black women’s bodies in particular, her lively and spirited portrayals propose new forms of representation that are empowered and celebratory.” She says about her work, “I’m making the work to leave a document of my experience, to leave a document of the experience of people who are like me.” People like Tschabalala Self, a young (she was born in 1990), Black woman? And yet, how I relate to Self’s visual vocabulary of the feminine from the perspective and within the body of a middle aged, white, Italian-American woman! I am planning to expand my exploration of this work in an upcoming podcast episode with a special focus on the “voyeuristic tendencies In this blog I am introducing Self as I explore and examine the attitudes surrounding the female body through the lens of race in context of the Black woman with a special focus on the “voyeuristic tendencies towards the gendered and racialized body; a body which is both exalted and abject.” Visit her website to learn more about Self and her evocative works on the female figure by clicking the link: http://tschabalalaself.com