The unapologetic Portrait of Maya #10 (2024), originally conceived as a monumental 8-foot-tall artwork as part of the Broad Collection 2017, is a bold celebration of love and sexuality - conveying strength, beauty, power, and vulnerability all at once. Modes of intimate relations inform Portrait of Maya #10, drawing from a series of photographs (Remember Me, 2006) taken with a 35mm disposable camera by Thomas. The images capture Maya, her muse and lover from years gone by, in their home and basement studio on Lexington Avenue, Brooklyn.
The sensual Maya stands empowered, sparkled, and poised. With her arms raised behind her head like wings spread, she commands her outward gaze and her surroundings, exuding a powerful sense of self-possession through which she emboldens her viewers, forcing them to engage with her.
Her work also celebrates the textures of materials just as she honours the textures and contours of Black womanhood. Drawn to the unconventional, she embraced rhinestones - first out of necessity and later in reference to French Impressionism, in particular Pointillism and the works of Georges Seurat. The rhinestones came to symbolise the complexity of femininity in her work, becoming a defining element of her artistic language. The acrylic and rhinestone composition in the original portrait, transformed into silkscreen overprints and hand-applied glitter in this edition, also embodies Thomas’s signature ability to apply several layers of material and symbolic meaning, unmasking our world of appearances into a single surface while challenging conventional boundaries of technique and medium.
Collage is a foundational element in her practice, revealing the conception and intimate evolution of her artistic vision - visible also in the double exposure on Maya's chest. As Thomas described it, the projected image is almost like an X-ray, peering into Maya’s soul. By layering multiple photographs and juxtaposing painted with photographic elements, Thomas creates a striking depth of field, generating rhythm and movement.
Unifying all these elements in this larger-than-life work, Thomas invites viewers into the bold and dynamic universe she has created in Portrait of Maya #10, from which any viewer would be unable to divert their gaze.
“ So, yeah, it's Maya. She's incredible, incredibly beautiful. But also has a very strong sense of awareness of who she is in the world. I really wanted to convey the vulnerability but the strength in her and how she's standing. I wanted to create her as this monumental sort of essence of being. „