Artists have a variety of methods to make their mark. Every Friday we will share a photograph of an #ArtistInAction. . Tschabalala Self (b. 1990) is an American portraitist whose multimedia works explore the cultural significance surrounding the black female body. “The fantasies and attitudes surrounding the Black female body are both accepted and rejected within my practice, and through this disorientation, new possibilities arise,” Self explains. “I am attempting to provide alternative, and perhaps fictional, explanations for the voyeuristic tendencies towards the gendered and racialized body; a body which is both exalted and abject.” Self’s abstract collage-like canvases include painted, drawn, and sewn elements to construct multidimensional renditions of her subjects. “The images all start from a drawing. And from that drawing I try to build a body or build the features of the subject I’m creating...I think that they are really sincerely built bit by bit.” The accumulation of diffe...