All About Love by Mickalene Thomas at the Grand Palais
The Grand Palais presents a major retrospective dedicated to American artist Mickalene Thomas with All About Love. This landmark exhibition explores questions of representation, identity and power in contemporary art. Spanning more than two decades of work, the exhibition reveals a bold and richly layered visual world, where the intimate engages in dialogue with art history.
A Multidisciplinary and Committed Artistic Practice
Born in New York in 1971, Mickalene Thomas is now a leading figure on the international contemporary art scene. Her practice brings together painting, photography, collage, video and installation, and is rooted in a sustained reflection on the place of Black women within artistic and cultural narratives.
By appropriating the language of classical portraiture, Thomas offers a contemporary re-reading through a Black queer feminist perspective, producing images that are powerful, self-assured and unmistakably of their time.
Love as an Artistic Concept
Inspired by All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), the exhibition approaches love as a philosophical and political concept. Far removed from any sentimental interpretation, love emerges here as a tool for self-affirmation, resistance and personal construction.
The figures depicted, friends, partners, loved ones and cultural icons, inhabit the space with confidence and elegance. Characterised by intense colour, rich textures and the use of rhinestones, the works create scenes in which representation becomes a deliberate and assertive act.
A Contemporary Dialogue with Art History
All About Love engages in a direct dialogue with the great masters of European art history. Mickalene Thomas revisits iconic works such as Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque, repositioning Black women at the centre of historically codified compositions.
These reinterpretations invite viewers to reconsider the artistic canon and to question the mechanisms of exclusion that have shaped our visual heritage.
A Landmark Retrospective in Paris
Following acclaimed presentations at The Broad (Los Angeles), the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), the Hayward Gallery (London) and Les Abattoirs (Toulouse), the Grand Palais exhibition stands as the most ambitious retrospective of Mickalene Thomas ever presented in Paris. An essential exhibition for understanding contemporary debates around representation in art.
Staying at Hôtel Moderniste, in the Heart of Paris
After visiting the Grand Palais, return to the elegant and contemporary atmosphere of Hôtel Moderniste, designed as a natural extension of the Parisian cultural experience.
Until 5 April 2026. Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 am - 7:30 pm. Late opening on Fridays until 10:00 pm
Photo ©Jean François Raffin - Unsplash