APOGEE ISSUE 05 PREVIEW: Mickalene Thomas

  Apogee Issue 05 launches in 3 days! Here is our 5th exclusive preview: ‘A Little Taste Outside of Love’ by the talented Mickalene Thomas.     A Little Taste Outside of Love, 2007 Rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel on wood panel 108 x 144 inches 274.3 x 365.8 cm   MICKALENE THOMAS is a distinguished, multidisciplinary visual artist who earned her BFA in painting at Pratt Institute, and MFA at Yale University School of Art. She has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally since 2003. Her fist solo museum exhibition was in 2012 at Brooklyn Museum and Santa Monica Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include George Eastman House, New York; L’Ecole des Beaux Art, Monaco; First International Contemporary Art Biennial, Columbia; as well as group exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass, Amherst; and La Conservera Contemporary Art Centre, Ceutí, Spain. Thomas’s work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Seattle Art Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., among...
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Coming of Age in the Time of the Hoodie

By Sarah Ladipo Manyika This excerpted essay was originally featured on AGNI Online. My son’s self-portrait, age fifteen. Work in progress. Earlier this year I decided to read Joe Brainard’s cult classic, I Remember. The book had long intrigued me for I had heard that it was widely taught in creative writing courses and was a favorite of many authors, including several well-known authors whose work I admire. I was immediately drawn to Brainard’s style, each line starting with the words “I remember.” As I read it, I found myself jotting down remembrances of my own, complementing Brainard’s memories of America with my memories of Nigeria. I was enjoying this little book, reading it slowly, taking my time to appreciate the beauty and originality of the writing while remembering and reminiscing. It was a soothing and creative project until I came to this: I remember feeling sorry for black people, not because I thought they were persecuted, but because I thought they were ugly. I remember gasping. I remember thinking, So this is what Zora Neale Hurston meant when she wrote, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” I remember ugly. I remember not wanting...
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