Tschabalala Self (born 1990, Harlem) is among a generation of powerhouse women redefining Black beauty and Black aesthetics for a contemporary audience. Her bright, bold artworks are figurative and comprised of colorful textile fragments. To build these distinctive sewn assemblage-paintings, Self engages with collaged fabrics and recycled textiles to create intricate layers of patchwork that also reflect complex psychological moods and cultural references, including the practice of West African Batik. Also working in sculpture and printmaking methods, her self-styled blend of painting with collage is an empowered reimagining of female archetypes and the Black body. Self is a graduate of Bard College and the Yale School of Art, and she currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley.
Taliesin Thomas: It is an honor to speak with you, thank you for taking the time! Are you in your studio right now?
Tschabalala Self: I am in my home in Hudson. I live in Hudson but my studio is in Catskill.
Was Hudson the first move upstate for you?
I had been upstate before, I went to Bard College. After graduating I went back home to Harlem for one year before going to graduate school in New Haven. I lived and worked in New Haven for 10 years after graduating from the Yale School of Art. My partner is from Hudson, so he reintroduced me to the area when we started dating. I moved to Hudson first. I am happy to be back in New York state and happy to be in the Hudson Valley.
Please share with our readers a little peek into your studio life.
My studio life is great. I am thankful for peaceful space off of Main Street in Catskill. I can see the creek from the top floor, which is nice. I have a lot more space than I had previously. It’s really simple and I love being in the village of Catskill, it’s a beautiful town and a perfect place for my studio. There are places to get late-night pizza and coffee in the morning, it’s pretty idyllic. That’s what I really need at my studio, to be able to get pizza at 10pm and coffee at 10am.
When I was putting together my notes for this interview a few months ago it was incredible to encounter all your activities: You were shortlisted for the next commissions to grace the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, you were about to have a conversation with Judy Chicago at the New Museum, and you were featured as a “Spotlight” artist presented in conversation with Faith Ringgold at the Flag Foundation, in addition to other projects and exhibitions. Wow, how are you feeling?
Right now, I am feeling thankful to be working and to be able to share my work with new audiences. I am excited for all the projects on the horizon and proud of the projects completed these far. The primary feeling is always gratitude.
How did that conversation go with Judy Chicago?
The conversation was interesting and was primarily about feminism and different generational perspectives on feminism. I think the curator who organized the talk was hoping to have the panelists engage a conversation about intersectionality within feminism, but I am not sure this goal was accomplished—I tried to the best of my ability to explain the importance of the point but the topic was not successfully engaged. Camille Henrot, who I very much enjoyed speaking with, was also on the panel and spoke a lot about motherhood in regard to feminism.
It was an enlightening experience discussing how race, gender, and age, which I think is underestimated with regards to intersectionality, shape various women’s approach to and understanding of feminism. Ultimately, I left the conversation feeling the idea that feminism means many different things to many different people, and it’s really based on one’s own lived experiences. Not all feminists have the same goals, therefore it may not be possible to truly grasp what all is meant by the declaration outside of the general idea of female liberation.
These are loaded topics, and I am curious about this notion of gender with respect to your work and thinking about feminism(s) and this idea about “female agency” in the work that you do.
For me, it’s about liberation first because I think that you cannot have agency unless you are liberated, so that’s the primary function of my practice: to create autonomy for the female figures, for them not to be tethered to reductive expectations or projections placed upon them. My figures seek to liberate themselves from antiquated ideas and expectations, liberating themselves from constraints. That is the main objective of my work. If you can liberate women, if you can educate women, if you can heal women then you can free, teach and heal all people. Is this feminism? I don’t know—I am not sure; but, this is my personal belief which is pro-woman. I do not think any ideology that seeks to liberate a marginalized community should be exclusionary or too rigid in its tenets because it prevents all who can benefit from the philosophy from participating.
I think is important to decenter men in the conversation surrounding female agency. I think it is possible to speak about womanhood outside of its relationship to men and I believe there should be more conversations about feminism outside of the paradigm of patriarchy.
I appreciate your comments about healing the female.
I think that should be the goal, because I think that all women, regardless of their identity politics, have experienced trauma as a result of their gender. I think that the objective in all conversations surrounding woman and femininity should be to center womanhood, all women and all women’s experiences. I think this approach is more productive for everyone, more truthful, more interesting to most.
We are in a new era of how we “biography” ourselves and how we “bio” others, and all of this that you are describing, the very complex, deep, and raw conversation about these meta concepts: feminism, Black identities, female identities. Thank you for bringing your heart and soul to this conversation.
Switching to another topic, your artworks embody your distinct working methods and your use of old paintings, paint, and fabrics to create unconventional collage works. What is the driving force behind the start of a new work: Your engagement with the materials or your desire to express psychological aspect of the human experience?
The materials I use in my work are meant to bolster the conceptual concerns in the painting and works in other mediums. For the paintings in particular, the formal aspects of each work—the materials used and the way in which they are used, speak to my personal philosophy in regard to identity and identity building. One of the main concepts in my practice is that one’s identity is a reflection of many aspects and formed through a host of varying experience. Some aspects are inherent, while other aspects are experience based. I try to articulate this idea by using various materials from various sources.
That is such a noticeably welcoming aspect of the work, which is that everyone can relate to it because every person is a collage. And your work is both fierce and joyful.
Switching gears, how are you feeling about the commercial side of things?
People do a lot of funny things with art, maybe they use it to speculate, they use it as an investment—that happens. People do all kinds of things, you know? I think people sensationalize the commercial aspect of the art world to some degree. I think it’s a way to disparage the industry which is coded with a lot of wealth and power disparities.
The materiality of art and the ideas of art, indeed a constant source of stimulation.
It is what it is, money is involved, unfortunately—and money muddies things. At the end of the day people are making objects, and objects are tangible things. And with tangible things, you have to produce them, you have to make them, you have to store them, so there is a financial aspect to that.
Your art is now included in the permanent collections of many outstanding institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum, and Hirshhorn Museum, among others. Please share with us which museum was the most meaningful for you with respect to your art being represented in that collection?
I would say that all of the museums that my work has been permanently acquired by have a special and meaningful importance to me. All of them are meaningful for different reasons, as these acquisitions took place over several years and all mark a different milestone in my practice. Not one collection is more valuable to me than the other. I am always thankful to be in public collections and private collections that are shared with the public. Institutional support is extremely valuable to an artist and the community that grows around their practice.
What is your current focus?
Currently I am focusing on developing a few new bodies of work. I have a show at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Helsinki, “Around the Way,” which will be open until May 2025. All in all, I am just working, producing, settling into Catskill and gaining new ideas for new projects.
This article appears in August 2024.
