Petzel is pleased to present the seventh installment of The Viewing Room, a series that spotlights specially curated works across media and genre by gallery artists, open to the public for a limited time. This iteration will feature new paintings by Hudson Valley-based artist Tschabalala Self. In conjunction with The Viewing Room, Self currently has a work on the façade of the New Museum in New York. In the fall, she will unveil a sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

On view from May 12 through May 16, 2026, Self's presentation continues the artist's ongoing investigation into the emotional, physical, and psychological states that animate the human figure. Her work is dedicated to figuration. She constructs depictions of predominantly Black figures using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self's work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and the human experience.

Across this new suite of works, each figure inhabits a distinct interior condition — states of grace, vulnerability, and spiritual protection rendered through Self's characteristic fusion of stitch, textile assemblage, and paint. The works draw on vernacular language, scripture, and embodied experience to locate the universal within the deeply particular. Shown in unison, the paintings engage varied iterations of a shared reckoning with what it means to exist fully within one's own body and one's own life.

About Tschabalala Self

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990 Harlem, New York) lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland (2024); Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); Performa 2021 Biennial, New York City (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021); ICA, Boston (2020); among others.

Self’s work is included in collections such as Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, USA; Consortium Museum, Dijon, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; ICA Boston, Boston, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA; New Museum, New York, USA; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Stedelijk Museum Collection, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Studio Museum Harlem, New York, USA; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; among others.