Marcia Michael is a British artist who challenges the presence of the Black subject within the auspices of the family album by reconstructing her family archive through her works. The Object of My Gaze exhibited at Tate Britain, Life Between Islands (2022), saw Michael extend her previous series The Study of Kin (2009) using photography as a mode of documentation and conversation to renew and re-create a trans-disciplinary tradition of storytelling and historical recovery. Michael interjects into a discourse that reconciles Black feminism, intergenerational visuality, African diasporic traditions and the use of the Black mothering body. Michael’s practice reimagines and restructures history through the site of the empowered, political and self-loving Black body.
“Women who have stood the test of time, forging their own stories, display the marks of their lives and commitment to the life they lived as proof. Identifying and drawing attention to the power of the breath and the veins/roots which carry the essence of life itself, I wanted to acknowledge this through an embodiment.
The embroidery on the dresses shows me that these marks of life are not only visible but can be worn with a proudness that makes them part of a defining moment, a kind of language which transfers on to the wearer, enhanced through and with the movement of wearing the dress. In moving the expression that is formed on the bodice of the dress to the hair and the upper body of the sculpture, the structural renegotiation of this power is transferred to an adornment that transpires, for me, as armour. This also carries over the supportive structure from the hips on the dress to the shoulders on the figure.
The nature of this character being transferred from mother to daughter, sister to sister, friend to friend creates a kinship; a connecting force within my work.”
Earth Bound: jesmonite stone with a surface patina of waxes and shellac, embroidery created with the Alexander McQueen team in cotton, bullion, thread, beads, bugle beads and sequins, Marcia Michael, 2022.
To illustrate the fact that creativity emerges from countless perspectives, Alexander McQueen invites a group of twelve artists to express their individual working practices inspired by the Autumn/Winter 2022 women’s pre-collection.
Film by Masha Vasyukova
Music by John Gosling
#McQueenPROCESS #AlexanderMcQueen
“Women who have stood the test of time, forging their own stories, display the marks of their lives and commitment to the life they lived as proof. Identifying and drawing attention to the power of the breath and the veins/roots which carry the essence of life itself, I wanted to acknowledge this through an embodiment.
The embroidery on the dresses shows me that these marks of life are not only visible but can be worn with a proudness that makes them part of a defining moment, a kind of language which transfers on to the wearer, enhanced through and with the movement of wearing the dress. In moving the expression that is formed on the bodice of the dress to the hair and the upper body of the sculpture, the structural renegotiation of this power is transferred to an adornment that transpires, for me, as armour. This also carries over the supportive structure from the hips on the dress to the shoulders on the figure.
The nature of this character being transferred from mother to daughter, sister to sister, friend to friend creates a kinship; a connecting force within my work.”
Earth Bound: jesmonite stone with a surface patina of waxes and shellac, embroidery created with the Alexander McQueen team in cotton, bullion, thread, beads, bugle beads and sequins, Marcia Michael, 2022.
To illustrate the fact that creativity emerges from countless perspectives, Alexander McQueen invites a group of twelve artists to express their individual working practices inspired by the Autumn/Winter 2022 women’s pre-collection.
Film by Masha Vasyukova
Music by John Gosling
#McQueenPROCESS #AlexanderMcQueen
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