The All About Love exhibition at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which opened in late October, presents a dynamic array of artworks—paintings, collages, photography, video, and site-specific installations—that highlights Mickalene Thomas’s singular artistic vision from the late 2000s to today. Her work is renowned for its spectacularly staged, rhinestone-encrusted, large-scale painted scenes and bold, intimate compositions that center Black femininity in realms of visual pleasure, agency, and kinship. Engaging in imaginative dialogues with art history and popular culture alike, Thomas’s vibrant portraits provide a powerful reimagining of beauty and desire, articulated through a sensual, Black feminist perspective. Through mixed media, rhinestones, and rich textures, she constructs portraits that confront traditional narratives, honoring the depth and complexity of Black womanhood.
We spoke with Maori Karmael Holmes—filmmaker, writer, curator, and founder of BlackStar Film Festival—who curated a series of screenings for the show through January 2025. This Saturday, November 9th, at The Barnes Foundation, the first screening will feature short films by visionary directors Rebeca Huntt, Iyabo Boyd, Rikkí Wright, Numa Perrier, Felicia Pride, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Adepero Oduye. Each filmmaker, an accomplished visual artist in their own right, contributes to a powerful exploration of desire, woven together by Holmes’s thoughtful curatorial vision.
Mickalene Thomas. Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015. Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel. © 2024 Mickalene Thomas via The Barnes Foundation.
How did you get introduced to the work of Mickalene Thomas?
I first began hearing about Mickalene Thomas maybe ten years ago. I'm trying to remember the first time I saw her work. I feel like it was around 2014 or so, and it just kind of kept popping up. I remember Solange's album cover, and I remember dream hampton's music video for THEESatisfaction that was an homage to Mickalene’s paintings. And I saw a wonderful show at Spelman College in 2016 or 2017. That was the first time I'd seen [her work] in person.
And the setting of the installation was really, really beautiful. There's something so familiar about the way she's presenting Black female interiority. Even if it isn't exactly you, you know somebody that it represents. I know a lot of it is an homage to her mother, but it makes me think about my mother, my grandmothers, and my aunties. The wood paneling and the glitter… [laughs] it’s just amazing.
It’s so exciting to see your work overlap with and become an extension of Mickalene Thomas’s through this exhibition. Your work has such a throughline of cultural moments that both capture and transcend Black culture. Do you feel that this exhibition is a continuation of your work, or does it provide a new moment for you as a curator?
This is a continuation of my work. I programmed Mickalene’s film in the [BlackStar] festival. We screened Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman at the second or third festival. That was back when I used to program it myself. I've been programming work of artists like Mickalene’s, and I've been doing film programs for museums for quite a while as well. So, it's definitely a continuation, and I love it. I'm very happy.
Still from 1-800-Lovable (2020) | Directed by Rebeca Huntt
I’m such a huge fan of Numa Perrier and Rikkí Wright. The lineup for this Saturday looks incredible. Can you tell us about how you chose the specific films and filmmakers for this exhibition? Which films are you most excited to share?
I'm excited to share all of them, of course. When James Claiborne (Deputy Director for Community Engagement) invited me to do the program, I thought about the themes of the exhibition, which are desire, kinship, and femininity. And because I was invited to do three programs, I decided to take each of those themes as the inspiration for each program. I just started thinking about Black filmmakers and work that I thought reminded me of Mickalene’s. Work that kind of evoked the essence of her paintings. We're showing dream hampton's music video—I felt like I had to. And we're also showing Mickalene’s film. Those were obvious inclusions, but I also think about Rebecca Hunt's 1-800-Lovable. And we're showing Nefertite Nguvu’s feature film, In the Morning.
They are all included because they evoked the same kind of feeling as Mickalene’s work, and that was really how I came to think about it. I also wanted to make sure, particularly around kinship, that we were exploring queer kinship—not just blood kinship but also thinking about people’s chosen family and other ways that we become kin to people. There are some films about mothers and daughters because that's important to Mickalene, but I also wanted to make sure we were thinking about house mothers, godmothers, and those other ways of relating.
A still from A Song About Love (2019) | Directed by Rikkí Wright
What is your go-to feel-good film about love?
One of the films that comes up for me is Amélie, but that’s more about other people's love [laughs]. I also really like Love and Basketball. And Love Jones, too. I think about Love Jones a lot. Nothing But a Man is not a feel-good film, but I do love how strong their love is—how it's depicted. It makes me think about my grandparents and the kind of love that sustains us.
Anything else you’d like to share?
There are two screenings happening this weekend in Philadelphia that I'm organizing called Love+Time. One is at the Barnes Foundation in conjunction with the Mickalene show, but I'm also curating a film program on Sunday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s in tandem with a traveling exhibition like the Mickalene show, and this is the first U.S. stop. The show is called The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure. It's been interesting to be invited by both institutions to curate their film programs, and they just so happened to line up for the next three months. We have a screening this weekend, in December, and in January. They're all on the second Saturday and Sunday.
