TSCHABALALA SELF

Coinciding with this presentation, Petzel is pleased to announce representation of the artist, in joint collaboration with Pilar Corrias, London and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich. In fall 2026, Self will mount her first solo exhibition with Petzel.

On view from May 14 through May 23, 2025, Self’s presentation will speak to the artist’s recent investigations into repetition, pattern, and abstraction as they relate to both the individual and the collective subconscious. Self is an artist who builds a singular style from the syncretic use of painting, printmaking, and sculpture to explore ideas surrounding figuration. She constructs depictions of predominantly women using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self’s work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing.

Across this new suite of works, the fashioning of each figure reflects their imagined emotional, physical, and psychological states. In each painting, there exists a tension between foreground and background. Silhouettes emerge and disintegrate into the pictorial plane. Narratives arise and assumptions shift. Shown in unison, the characters, articulated through stitch and textile assemblage, engage varied iterations of a shared experience.

Heroine No. 2 depicts a female figure in a powerful pose, borrowed from the Virabhadrasana II yoga posture. This stance is named after Virabhadra, a mythological warrior avatar of the Hindu god Shiva, who is said to have a thousand arms and a body as dark as storm clouds. This protagonist exists in a liminal space of cascading flowers, speaking to her blossoming growth. She is depicted as transcendent, elevating forward into a new state of being, unmoved by the viewer.

In her practice, Self both accepts and rejects the fantasies and attitudes surrounding the Black body, and through this disorientation, new possibilities arise. Self imagines a cultural vacuum in which these bodies can exist for their own pleasure and self-realization, free from the othering gaze. Self’s figures do not aspire to show, explain, or perform, but rather to be.

Coinciding with this presentation, Self will be joined in conversation with interdisciplinary artist Shanekia McIntosh, on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at 4pm. RSVP is required as space is limited; please write to [email protected] to reserve your seat.

The Viewing Room series will spotlight specially curated works across media and genre by gallery artists, open to the public for a limited time. The series will continue this fall, with presentations coinciding with programming such as book signings, artist talks, and screenings, featuring artists Stefanie Heinze, James Little, Seth Price, among others, to be announced.