Mickalene Thomas
Guernica (Resist #3)

• What do you think the artist is trying to communicate with this artwork? What details or symbols support this message?
  
• What does this artwork teach us about the past? How does it teach us about the future?

Mickalene Thomas’s work layers imagery from the civil rights and Black Lives Matter movements alongside motifs like an impaled horse, an anguish woman, and the watchful eye of God from Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937). In this way, Thomas creates a parallel between histories of violence and injustice across time and place, providing equal weight to the ongoing violence against Black peoples worldwide and the Spanish Civil War.

• How does Black American history differ from the "traditional" story of American history? Why is it important to learn about Black history?
• Do you think the limitations of people’s civil rights continue in today’s America? How so?
• How is racial justice related to human rights? What does it mean for Mickalene Thomas to compare the oppression and discrimination of Black Americans with the Spanish Civil War?