TSCHABALALA SELF

Constructed Identity

In her early works, Self began shaping a distinct visual language rooted in fragmentation, repetition, and improvisation. She created composite figures from layered materials—hand-painted textiles, stitched canvas, found fabric and bold strokes of acrylic paint—evoking both the vulnerability and resilience of Black identity. Artworks like Princess (2014) and Grown (2015) reveal Self’s use of sewn collage not only as a formal strategy, but as a metaphor for the piecing together of a personal and cultural narrative.

These works emerged during and shortly after her time at Yale School of Art, when she began investigating how cultural memory and visual language intersect with the Black body. Her figures—largely female-presenting—appear playful, confrontational, and emotionally charged. They are not naturalistic but intentionally stylised, born from imagination rather than observation. Self describes them as ‘avatars’ or archetypes drawn from collective experience, enabling a dialogue between personal storytelling and shared social context.

The ‘Bodega Run’ Series

Between 2017 and 2018, Self developed the series Bodega Run, presented in part at Pilar Corrias in London. Here, she took inspiration from the corner stores of Harlem—bodegas—as sites of mundane yet emotionally complex interactions. These everyday urban environments become stages for her protagonists, who engage in exchanges that explore gender dynamics, consumer behaviour and power.

In works such as Lite (2018), Panties (2018) and Tight (2017), Self uses packaging motifs, logos, and domestic fabrics to create a layered narrative about visibility, objectification and agency. Her figures are often shown in gestures of confrontation or seduction, turning the viewer into a participant in the social script unfolding. The physicality of her media—textured fabrics, expressive brushwork, and hand-stitched outlines—emphasises the bodily presence of the characters, while complicating the boundary between high art and craft traditions.

The Bodega Run series exemplifies Self’s ability to infuse the everyday with a mythic, symbolic charge, transforming banal commercial settings into charged portraits of community, conflict and desire.

Sculptural Expansion

From 2019 onwards, Self’s work increasingly expanded into three dimensions, building on the tactile qualities of her paintings to create sculptural objects and installations that immerse the viewer. In Sounding Board (2021), commissioned by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, she presented a monumental, double-sided figure seated on a bench, inviting passers-by to interact with the work. The piece exemplified Self’s interest in public engagement and the physical encounter between viewer and artwork. The same year, she created Seated (2022), a seven-foot-tall bronze sculpture installed permanently on New York‘s High Line. The sculpture features a poised Black woman cast in repose—self-possessed, serene and monumental. It reclaims the tradition of public statuary, positioning the Black female body not as object or muse, but as subject and sovereign presence.

In these sculptural works, Self’s longstanding themes—representation, embodiment, and Black femininity—take on spatial and civic dimensions. Her forms, whether soft or cast in bronze, maintain the energy of her collage-based painting practice while engaging with the politics of scale, material, and public space in contemporary art.

Public Commissions

• Seated, a bronze sculpture permanently installed on the High Line, New York (2022)

Exhibitions

Tschabalala Self has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Inside Out, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen St. Gallen (2023)
• Make Room, Le Consortium Dijon, France (2022)
• Tschabalala Self: By My Self, ICA Boston, Boston (2020). Travelled to Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021).
• Bodega Run, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018). Travelled to Hammer Museum Los Angeles (2019)

Group Exhibitions

• The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2023)
• What’s Going On, Rubell Museum. Washington, D.C. (2022)
• Radical Figure: Painting in the New Millennium, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020)
• The Big Sleep 4th Biennial of Artists, Haus de Kunst. Munich, Germany (2019)
• Show Me as I Want to be Seen, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2019)
• Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, The New Museum, New York (2017)

Website and Instagram

Tschabalala Self’s website can be found here, and Tschabalala Self’s Instagram can be found here.

Critical Reception

Self’s work has been reviewed by major art publications including Cultured, Ocula, and The New York Times. On Self’s practice, Ocula Magazine wrote: ‘Her portrayal of the Black female figure presents an untraditional view that unpacks the gaze and its attitudes towards the racialised and gendered body. By reimagining archetypal feminine features, Self introduces expressive characters that embody powerful identities and represent a shift in Black rhetoric.’

Tschabalala Self FAQs

Ocula | 2025