Lava Thomas
Lava Thomas tackles issues of race, gender, representation and memorialization through a multidisciplinary practice that spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations. Drawing from her family’s Southern roots, current socio-political events, intersectional feminism and African American protest and devotional traditions, Thomas’s practice centers ideas that amplify visibility, healing, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma and oppression.
Watch
"Making a Monument: Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman" San Francisco Arts Commission, October 11, 2024
Selected Work
Artist News
Group Exhibition
“Reunited,” CCA Campus Gallery
On view April 2-May 17
Opening Reception
April 2, 5-7 pm
Public Monument
Lava Thomas’ monument honoring Dr. Maya Angelou is permanently installed at the SF Main Library
Group Exhibitions – Ongoing
“Dwelling: New Acquisitions,” Cantor Arts Center
“Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
Catalog
Exhibitions
Lava Thomas / Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
September 8 – October 27, 2018
Watch
"LAVA THOMAS: Homecoming," Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, April 9 - July 4, 2022
In Conversation: Lava Thomas + Hung Liu, October 9, 2020
Lava Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is grounded in an ethos of social justice. Her work has been exhibited nationally at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, among others.
In 2024, Thomas unveiled Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman: A Monument to Honor Dr. Angelou for the San Francisco Main Library, commissioned by the City of San Francisco as the first public monument dedicated to a Black woman in the city’s civic art collection.
Lava Thomas has received numerous awards, including a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award, and the 2019 KALA Art Institute’s Master Artist Award. In 2020 she was recognized as a YBCA100 Honoree and one of the “Women to Watch” by the San Francisco Advocacy for the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2015). Nominations include the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2023) and the United States Artists Fellowship (2019).
Thomas studied at UCLA’s School of Art Practice and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts, and currently serves on its Presidential Advisory Board. In 2025, Thomas joined the Board of Directors of Headlands Center for the Arts. She is a former trustee of the Alliance of Artists Communities and the Djerassi Resident Artists Residency Program.
She has participated artist residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Facebook Los Angeles, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, SF Chronicle, The Guardian, and more.
