Tschabalala Self
b. 1990
Coco
2019
Offset lithograph exhibition poster
11 x 8 inches (image)

Produced on the occasion of Self’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States at the Frye Art Museum in 2019. The image is of Self's "Coco", an oil on paper painting from 2013.

Tschabalala Self’s work examines the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality, focusing particularly on the iconographic significance of the black female body in contemporary culture. The artist creates exuberant, multilayered characters—not depictions of herself or others, but “avatars”—that resist reductive representations of blackness, performing their individual identities despite the voyeuristic fantasies of the spectator.