Mickalene Thomas begins with constructing installations, that are very much like full stage sets, in her studio where her models are styled and pose. Then Thomas photographs them, creates a collage, and reworks the collage into acrylic on panel compositions to which she adds rhinestones.

This collage, made a year prior to the painting of the same name, includes images of paintings by Monet and helps explain the title of the final painting. Mickalene Thomas recognizes the history of modernism as an influence on her even as she abstracts the Monet references into blocks of color in the painting.

The pose of Mickalene Thomas’s figure in Tamika sur une chaise longue avec Monet references the common image of the odalisque throughout art history. Odalisque translates to female slave or a woman slave in a harem. Male artists have depicted women as passive, sexualized objects for centuries. Thomas turns that history on its head by depicting women as empowered and in control.