As soon as the Zoom call starts, Mickalene Thomas’ smile fills the screen. She greets me with a warm “Hello”, immediately followed by “Sorry, but this is going to be a bit on the move”. She is on the phone in her house, preparing to get in a car to reach her next appointment, due in a little more than an hour. I see she is busy, yet I feel I have her total attention. While her body moves around – gets the jacket, looks for keys – her voice is calm. Focused. Welcoming. In my mind I picture her as Durga, a major Hindu goddess associated with strength, protection and motherhood, but also destruction, so as to empower creation.
I am reminded of something Pulitzer Prize winner Salamishah Tillet wrote in a text accompanying Thomas’ work in Foam Magazine a couple of years ago. The text opens with Tillet describing a visit to Thomas’ studio, where she asked Thomas about a recently made collage opening the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. In response, Thomas opened her file box and started pulling out bits and pieces of images, fragments of old photos, large quantities of remnants kept in case they might come in handy, but all pieces that had contributed to the making of her collages. In that moment Tillet understood how Thomas’ practice, that restless, continuous collection, disruption and rescuing of traces and fragments, betrayed “the secret of her genius”. “So you actually think in collage, don’t you?” she asked.