Formation …
Tschabalala Self sprung her zesty rethink of beautiful black female bodies on the world in 2015. Saartjie Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus who was paraded as a freak-show attraction with what was perceived as a supersized bottom in early 19th-century London and Paris, cast her shadow across Self’s early painted, stitched and collaged works. Yet her breakthrough figures were far from tragic victims. She conjured the cultural legacy of the body type from Matisse’s Blue Venus to Beyoncé, as well as its origins in ancient mother goddesses, but through characters with a sense of agency and vitality.
In one basket …
Since then she has shifted the focus from abstracted ideals to everyday black lives. Her series Bodega Run, from which this 2017 painting hails, affirms the ordinary women who frequent Harlem’s version of the cornershop: a mainstay for the original communities in the gentrifying neighbourhood where she was born and raised.
Shine on …
Selecting from a rainbow lineup of fizzy drinks in her red crop-top and hotpants, the figure in Pop is a vision of plenitude. The pose is suggestive, even vulnerable, and the woman’s flesh very much on display beneath the strip light blaring like the holy illumination in paintings of the coronation of Mary.
See me now …
What stands out are the butt, long nails and somewhat sexualised pose. Yet Self’s work goes beyond pointing to problematic tropes to explore how subjects take shape in the complex back and forth between personal desires and outside influences. This woman couldn’t care less who is looking. She gazes into the mid-distance, self-possessed and inhabiting an inscrutable inner world. Meanwhile, we are turned into voyeurs, forced to acknowledge the limits of our vision.
Included in 7 Up, Pilar Corrias Gallery online viewing room to 29 June, and the Vortic app
