Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman:

A Portrait of My Mother

A FILM BY MICKALENE THOMAS

Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman: A Portrait of My Mother (2012, 23 min.) celebrates Sandra Bush, mother and long-time muse of artist Mickalene Thomas. In this short documentary film, Thomas presents an emotional portrait of her mother, who is also portrayed in Sandra: She’s a Beauty, one of the paintings in Thomas’s exhibition at the ICA. The film presents Bush’s personal and physical struggles, including kidney disease, revealing a different side of this beautiful woman. As Thomas explains, “One of the reasons I used my mother is because of her charisma, her beauty...and I thought about how I wasn’t [using her] because she was sick, and how a different type of beauty, a different type of aging, a different type of portraiture could come across on film.”

GALLERY TALK
MICKALENE THOMAS
with Anna Stothart, ICA Curatorial Associate
Saturday, March 2
1:30 PM
Following the screening on March 2, ICA exhibiting artist Mickalene Thomas joins Anna Stothart, ICA Curatorial Associate, for a conversation about the artist's work on view.