This summer season, the Institute of Modern Arts (ICA) in London will current “Connecting Skinny Black Traces 1985 – 2025”, a serious group exhibition and occasion programme curated by Lubaina Himid, the Turner Prize successful artist who will symbolize Nice Britain on the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Celebrating 40 years since “The Skinny Black Line”, the groundbreaking group present of younger Black and Asian ladies artists curated by Himid on the ICA in 1985, the exhibition will current work by the unique artists Brenda Agard, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter altogether for the primary time.
That includes new commissions in addition to artworks remodeled the previous 4 a long time, the exhibition will lengthen past the gallery area with a wealthy programme of movie screenings, talks, music and reside performances—fulfilling Himid’s unique ambition for a multi- disciplinary Black arts competition throughout the ICA’s exhibition, cinema and reside areas.
Within the early Eighties Himid curated three exhibitions of younger Black and Asian ladies artists, positioning their practices on the fore of debates within the British artwork world: “5 Black Ladies”, Africa Centre (1983), “Black Lady Time Now”, Battersea Arts Centre (1983 – 84), “The Skinny Black Line”, ICA (1985 – 86). Creating throughout the wider discourse surrounding the British Black Arts Motion, these landmark exhibitions platformed feminine artists, highlighting the intersections between race and gender.
Now, 40 years because the unique presentation on the similar venue, “Connecting Skinny Black Traces” on the ICA seeks to broaden modern interpretations and conversations across the practices of those eleven artists as we speak. Quite than a restaging or retrospective, this exhibition appears ahead as a lot because it does again, with works made up to now 4 a long time together with two new commissions by Burman and Smith. In her signature fashion, Burman will mild up the ICA’s Concourse with new neon works and Smith’s sculpture, impressed by {a photograph} from her late mother and father’ household album, takes centre stage within the Decrease Gallery. The earliest work within the exhibition, Sonia Boyce’s Rice n Peas (1982) acknowledges that “The Skinny Black Line” was not the sudden genesis of those artists’ practices, however a coalescence shaped from steady work all through the early 80s. Artworks created within the years following the exhibition embrace Jennifer Comrie’s Coming to Phrases By means of Battle (1987) and Maud Sulter’s Polyhymnia (1989). Newer contributions embrace Threads (2024) a dangling crochet sculpture by Veronica Ryan, a glass-mounted digital print by Ingrid Pollard from her 2018 set up, Seventeen of Sixty- Eight, and Birdsong (2004) a shifting picture work by Sutapa Biswas.
The exhibition highlights the interconnected and wide-ranging roles that “The Skinny Black Line” artists have been enjoying in artwork and exhibition making, and the significant paths crossed between these artists over the course of the final 40 years. That is mirrored in key loans from each the Arts Council Assortment—comparable to Johnson’s Trilogy sequence depicting Black feminine sitters together with Agard and Pollard—and from Himid’s private assortment, which options works by Boyce, Pollard, Sulter, and Himid herself.
“Connecting Skinny Black Traces” options an archival show {of professional} and private paperwork from the unique 1985 present, together with pictures and never-before-seen correspondence revealing the quotidian work and care behind this historic exhibition.
Himid has conceived of “Connecting Skinny Black Traces 1985 – 2025” as a multi-vocal, multi- disciplinary venture bringing collectively artists throughout a spread of practices past the exhibition. Movie screenings by Amber Akaunu, Sutapa Biswas, Helen Cammock and Pratibha Parmar shall be accompanied by contextual discussions within the Cinema. Music and reside performances led by Trevor Mathison, Andra Simons, Rommi Smith and Magda Stawarska will happen within the Stage. Tao Lashley-Burnley will take over the ICA Instagram. A essential panel dialogue bringing collectively artists and curators will mirror on the legacy of The Skinny Black Line and what it means to maintain radical creative networks as we speak.
On the event of this exhibition, the ICA will republish the unique 1985 exhibition information accompanied by a companion publication that includes new contributions by the taking part artists of Connecting Skinny Black Traces. The unique publication serves as an necessary useful resource for curators and artwork historians however has been lengthy out of print with solely 27 copies held in libraries globally. Widening entry to an necessary major supply, the brand new publication may also present area for reflection as we speak.
at ICA, London
till September 7, 2025
