To look at the art of Tschabala Self is to feel fabric think. Stitched velvet, printed cotton, painted skin: bodies collaged from memory and from life, all the way from Harlem to the Hudson.

The characters that Tschabalala Self paints aren't just portraits, they fold together myth and the everyday They ask how we see and how we're seen. 

In Melbourne for her solo exhibition, Skin Tight at ACCA, Self talks art and politics, fabric and representation and takes us into her experience of New York.