Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes

For Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self's first solo exhibition in Finland – on show at the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA) until May 2025 – she pays homage to her birthplace, assembling and staging a convocation of its inhabitants at ease with their surroundings. The title of the exhibition, ‘Around the Way’, is a Black-American colloquialism that signifies the distinctive characteristics or charms of one’s neighbourhood, evoking a sense of familiarity and belonging. It is from here that Self departs, abstracting the essence of her community in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes.
‘Around the Way’ by Tschabalala Self
Tschabalala Self's Negligee 1 (2023) at Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA)
The exhibition features nearly 20 works, including recent paintings, life-size sculptures, and three newly commissioned pieces that naturally evolve from the expressive, pluralistic practice that Self is recognised for.
Initially a painting student with an interest in printmaking, she uses fabric in a similar way to collagraph plates to build pictorial space through layers of materiality on the canvas. Her vibrant patchwork tableaux honour a lineage of Black American women such as the Gee’s Bend quilt collective, Faith Ringgold and Dindga McCannon, who similarly worked with textiles in this painterly manner. (Self has previously translated motifs from her painting into footwear and clothing with Ugg.)
Tschabalala Self's Dreamers (2021) at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
The shared experiences and encounters of Self’s Harlem take place across three sites within the exhibition. The first, the public sphere, exists as the street view. Here we encounter the large-scale triptych 12pm on 145th Street (2022), which takes its name from an intersection in Harlem and features a shadow-like figure striding across the canvas.
Mounted against a brick-patterned wall, the paintings in this space truly embody the sensation of being enveloped in the bustling cityscape and for Self, recall memories of walking through the neighbourhood with her older sister, stopping to speak to loved ones, friends, neighbours, and strangers.
Tschabalala Self's 12pm on 145th Street (2022) at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
Entering the second gallery, the zone of interaction shifts to domestic scenes; lovers dance across chequerboard tiles, while an elderly man sits, watchful, with his hands folded in his lap. In Harlem Sphinx (2024), Self depicts a woman reclining in her pattern-clad boudoir, the view through the ornamentally welded bars stunted by brick.
'Harlem Sphinx is an imagining of a woman in a typical Harlem brownstone,' says Self. 'The room is meant to look somewhat bourgeois, which is often the aspirational aesthetic of a brownstone, but directly outside her window is another building, so you know she’s in a densely populated metropolitan space like Harlem.'
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Tschabalala Self's Harlem Sphinx (2024) at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
The final setting of the exhibition isn’t necessarily a location but rather a state of mind. 'It’s dealing with interiorities; a reflection of the feelings and interpersonal relationships occurring between characters that we’ve previously encountered in the street and the home,' says Self. 'I imagine the show as someone travelling deeper into knowing the community of characters depicted in my works.'
Tschabalala Self at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
Speaking particularly to those scenes depicted beyond the public eye, such as Dreamers (2021) or Anthurium (2023), Self’s figures seem to possess a desire and authority to claim their space and determine how they are seen and understood.
Two figurative sculptures, titled Negligee 1 and Negligee 2 (2023), have been pulled directly from the artist's 2019 painting Damsel. Their very presence in the three-dimensional space embodies the illusion of having entered a private sphere. 'The sculptures serve to name the gallery space as that of the characters in the artworks,' says Self. 'Often it is felt that the subjects in an artwork are there for the edification of the viewer, but here that power and spatial dynamic has shifted, and the viewer is made to understand that they have the privilege of entering into the space of the subject.'
Tschabalala Self's Anthurium (2023) at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
In ‘Around the Way’, the conflation of interior and exterior gestures towards the polysemy of home as both a physical and psychological locale. Self uses portraiture as a way in which to emphasise the body as a home for one’s consciousness, ambitions and fears.
'I have always thought of home as the origin,' she says. 'A lot of these works are somewhat nostalgic, envisioned as memories of my neighbourhood [while I was] growing up that are perhaps not realistic depictions but more an attempt to capture the feeling of my birthplace.'
Tschabalala Self: Around the Way is presented in collaboration with the Saastamoinen Foundation at EMMA–Espoo Museum of Modern Art until 5 May 2025 as part of the In Collection exhibition series
emmamuseum.fi
Installation view of Tschabalala Self's 'Around the Way' at Espoo Museum of Modern Art
Millen Brown-Ewens is a book publicist and art and music writer based in London. She has written for Artsy, AnOther, Dazed, Elephant, Huck, i-D and Plinth amongst others.
-
Norman Foster and Porsche reimagine movement at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale
Norman Foster Foundation and Porsche collaborate on 'Gateway to Venice's Waterway', a flagship installation at the 19th global architecture biennale
-
What not to miss at NYCxDesign 2025, according to our editors
From mega furniture fairs to can't-miss parties, here's what to catch at North America's biggest celebration of design
-
These Loro Piana sunglasses are inspired by the house’s superlative garments
Continuing the house’s continent-crossing journey to find the very best materials – from Mongolia to New Zealand – Loro Piana’s new sunglasses collection takes it to Japan, where the first titanium frames were made in the 1980s
-
Technology, art and sculptures of fog: LUMA Arles kicks off the 2025/26 season
Three different exhibitions at LUMA Arles, in France, delve into history in a celebration of all mediums; Amy Serafin went to explore
-
Artist Zumba Luzamba on the vibrant aesthetic of Congolese fashion rebels, the sapeurs
The Congolese artist takes a deep dive into a fashion subculture in his show at London's Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery. ‘I draw people in with style so that they can sit with deeper themes,’ he says
-
‘The work is an extension of myself’: Michaela Yearwood-Dan on her debut show at Hauser & Wirth
London-based artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan continues her rapid rise, unveiling monumental new paintings in ‘No Time for Despair’
-
The largest posthumous survey of Helen Frankenthaler puts her in the frame with Pollock and Rothko
Guggenheim Bilbao hosts 'Painting Without Rules', a major exhibition of soak-stain innovator Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings that also includes Pollock and Rothko
-
Inside Yinka Shonibare's first major show in Africa
British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare is showing 15 years of work, from quilts to sculptures, at Fondation H in Madagascar
-
‘Humour is foundational’: artist Ella Kruglyanskaya on painting as a ‘highly questionable’ pursuit
Ella Kruglyanskaya’s exhibition, ‘Shadows’ at Thomas Dane Gallery, is the first in a series of three this year, with openings in Basel and New York to follow
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits London
Artist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
-
Alice Neel’s portraits celebrating the queer world are exhibited in London
‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World’, curated by Hilton Als, opens at Victoria Miro, London