An exhibition of 11 contemporary artists from the African diaspora, who draw on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world.

Myth, science fiction, spiritual traditions and the legacy of Afrofuturism are all sampled, reimagined and recontextualised in In the Black Fantastic.

Encompassing painting, photography, video, sculpture and mixed-media installations, the exhibition creates immersive aesthetic experiences that bring the viewer into a new environment somewhere between the real world and a multiplicity of imagined ones.

While some artists disrupt our understanding of the past, others invite us to imagine fantastical futures. In this exhibition, fantasy becomes a zone of creative and cultural liberation and a means of addressing racism and social injustice by conjuring new ways of being in the world.

In the Black Fantastic is curated by Ekow Eshun and features the artists Nick Cave, Sedrick Chisom, Ellen Gallagher, Hew Locke, Wangechi Mutu, Rashaad Newsome, Chris Ofili, Tabita Rezaire, Cauleen Smith, Lina Iris Viktor and Kara Walker.

Rashaad Newsome, Ansista, 2019. African mahogany wood, silicone, leather, metal, textile, hair, resin, paint, Swarovski crystal, 5 feet 10 inches x 5 feet 10 inches. Photo by Charlie Villyard.

The exhibition is open from Wednesday 29th June –⁠  Sunday 18th September 2022.

For more information and to book your tickets visit here 

Image Credit: Wangechi Mutu, ‘Family Tree’ 2012.

Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu is a Brooklyn-based artist whose sculptures, works on paper, installations, and videos explore gender, race, and sexual identity using collage and assemblage strategies that create provocative juxtapositions of the female body. Her collages are constructed using fragments from fashion and travel magazines, pornography, African art books, automotive schematics, and images drawn from science fiction as well as hand-drawn or painted elements which create a variety of new formations of the body. Photo-based collage elements are often intermixed with decorative or abstract patterns which create a simultaneous feeling of familiarity and other-worldliness to the works.