Tschabalala Self

Tschabalala Self (born 1990 in Harlem, New York) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, printmaking, textile collage, sewing, sculpture, installation, performance, and public art. Best known for her vibrant figurative compositions, Self combines painted, printed, found, recycled, and hand-sewn materials to construct Black figures who possess authority over their bodies, environments, and self-presentation.  Self’s work is deeply invested in Black life, embodiment, selfhood, and human flourishing. Her figures are not intended as portraits of specific individuals but as invented characters or avatars through which she considers desire, intimacy, gender, sexuality, domesticity, community, and the psychological effects of fantasy and projection. Exaggerated proportions, assertive poses, layered surfaces, and vivid patterns allow her subjects to resist restrictive representations of Black bodies and claim space on their own terms.  Sewing is central to Self’s visual language. She uses thread and the sewing machine much as a painter might use line and brushwork, assembling fragments of fabric, discarded paintings, printed matter, and hand-colored canvas into highly tactile compositions. Her work traverses distinctions between fine art and craft while drawing from collage, quilting, printmaking, fashion, popular culture, storefronts, domestic interiors, and the social environments of Harlem. Projects such as Bodega Run examine the neighborhood bodega as a site of commerce, encounter, cultural exchange, and Black urban experience. Self earned a BA in Studio Arts from Bard College in 2012 and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2015. Her work has been presented at the New Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Baltimore Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Frye Art Museum, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Le Consortium, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and numerous international institutions. She received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and was selected to create Lady in Blue for London’s Fourth Plinth. Self lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley.