BLK ART MAP

May Highlight: Kith & Kin: the Quilts of Gee’s Bend 📍 @americanmuseumandgardens Bath Until 21 June 2026 £17 / Concs Kith & Kin: the Quilts of Gee’s Bend celebrates the extraordinary work of a group of African American women from a remote river island community in Alabama which embodies a 200-year tradition of making quilts that hold both profound artistic and political significance. With skills and traditions passed down primarily from mother to daughter, the women of Gee’s Bend have created quilts that are renowned for their improvisational style, bold colours, and abstract designs, often compared to modernist art movements like abstract expressionism. Politically and historically, the quilts reflect resilience and self-sufficiency, as they were born out of necessity in an economically deprived, racially segregated region. The civil rights movement brought attention to these women, who became symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. @geesbendquiltmakers Co-organised by the Irish Museum of Modern Art/IMMA, Dublin and Souls Grown Deep, USA (a non-profit organisation dedicated to the recognition and empowerment of Black artists from the American South) this is the only showing of the exhibition in the UK Image: Essie Bendolp Pettway, courtesy of American Museum And Gardens #blkartmap #blackart #geesbend

May Highlight: Ten.8 afterimage 📍 @thenewartgallerywalsall Walsall Until 13 September 2026 Free entry Ten.8 afterimage, curated by @pelumi.odubanjo , explores the legacy and enduring impact of Ten.8 (1979–1992), a photography journal that emerged from the Midlands’ radical cultural and political landscape. Ten.8 played a key role in shaping critical debates about representation and the politics of photography. The exhibition brings photographic works produced in the 1980s and 1990s into dialogue with more recent artworks, bringing into focus key considerations raised by Ten.8 across the subjects of visibility, power, and representation. It features a newly commissioned work by British Ghanaian visual artist Heather Agyepong, alongside works by Ajamu X, Dawoud Bey, Zarina Bhimji, Derek Bishton, Brian Homer & John Reardon, JEB (Joan E. Biren), Vanley Burke, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Gon Buurman, Renee Cox, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Joy Gregory, Sunil Gupta, George Hallett, Claudette Holmes, Roshini Kempadoo, Dave Lewis, Cynthia MaiWa Sitei, Masterji, Ming de Nasty, Ingrid Pollard, Franklyn Rodgers, Donald Rodney, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Jo Spence (in collaboration with Rosy Martin), James Van Der Zee, Maxine Walker, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis. Ten.8 afterimage was organised by @icf__ in collaboration with @thenewartgallerywalsall . Image: Franklyn Rodgers, Monolith 1, 1992. Courtesy the artist.  #blkartmap #blackart #photography #blackphotographers

May Highlight: LR Vandy: Rise 📍 @yspsculpture The Weston Gallery Wakefield Until 13 September 2026 Free entry (General entry to YSP from £12) Rise is an ambitious first solo museum exhibition by LR Vandy, created for The Weston Gallery with many works made on site at YSP. @lrvandy has transformed the gallery into an immersive environment dominated by a soaring rope maypole. The twisting structure draws on the idea of the maypole as a site of communal gathering, ritual, and collective movement. Using the form and texture of rope, Vandy’s work explores the textile industry’s role in Britain’s industrial history, and ongoing examination of labour, pattern, and material legacy. Image: LR Vandy, Dancing in Time-Harlem Shake, 2024. Courtesy the Artist and October Gallery, London, Photo: Copyright Jonathan Greet, courtesy YSP. #blkartmap #lrvandy #blackart #fineart #sculpture

NOW OPEN: PHOTO LONDON 2026 💫 📍 @olympialondon West London 14 - 17 May Weekend Pass £52 / Standard £32 Concs £24 / Off-peak £20 Now in its eleventh year, @photolondonfair is the UK’s leading international fair for photography and image-based art. Each year it brings together the world’s most acclaimed photographers, galleries and curators alongside a new generation of emerging talent. Here’s a rundown of our highlights from this year’s fair- swipe through to see what caught our eye! 📍 @thkgallery presents: @tshepisomoropaa : ‘Dinaane, Ditoro, and the Work of Imagining Otherwise’ 📍 @hope93gallery presents: @misanharriman : The Purpose of Light 📍 @autographabp : We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For An exhibition of works by women and non-binary artists from Autographs collection, featuring; Joy Gregory, Zanele Muholi, Carrie Mae Weems, Lina Iris Viktor, Sasha Huber, Eileen Gregory, Ingrid Pollard, Mónica de Miranda + more. 📍 @fisheye_gallery presents @delphinediallo 📍 @thephotographersgallery presents @saidou_dicko 📍 @davidhill_photo presents @sorysanlephoto Finally, check out @photolondonfair ’s special feature POSITIONS - a curated space platforming 10 outstanding artists working outside of the traditional gallery model. In addition, each edition sees a unique Public Programme including special exhibitions and installations. Check the @photolondonfair website for more information. #blkartmap #photolondon #photolondonfair #photography

💫🔊 🔊 3000 FOLLOWERS 🔊🔊💫 A massive thank you to all of our new and longstanding followers! We appreciate your support, engagement and company while we grow organically and intentionally. Black art all day every day 💚💫 #blkartmap #blackart #greatbritain #london

Alexis Ralaivao: Flirter avec l’abstrait 📍 @pilarcorriasgallery Conduit Street Central London Until 23 May 2026 Pilar Corrias presents the first UK solo exhibition by Alexis Ralaivao (@oavialar ). Titled Flirter avec l’abstrait, the exhibition brings together a new suite of paintings that push figuration to its limits, flirting with but never fully embracing abstraction. @oavialar ’s paintings depict tightly cropped images, sections of midriff or draperies that, through their isolation from the wider image, approach geometric abstraction. In these works, composition, texture and colour take precedence over narrative. The result is a series of bright, sensual studies that resist spectacle and instead invite sustained looking and a sense of emotional proximity. On the reverse of each canvas, Ralaivao has handwritten diaristic texts, recording fragments of thought and feeling from the moment of each work’s completion. While the paintings themselves appear timeless, these annotations are firmly rooted in the present, creating a tension between the immediacy of spontaneous writing and the deliberation of the carefully composed paintings. Together, image and text form a single contemporary artefact. #blkartmap #alexisralaivao #fineart #blackart

Tizta Berhana: Love is a Practice 📍 @tiwanicontemporary Cork Street, Central London Until 16 May 2026 Love is a Practice is a tender meditation on the many forms love takes in our daily lives. For @tiztaberhanu , love is not just a fleeting emotion but an active, ongoing gesture, something we choose, nurture, and embody through presence, empathy, and quiet devotion. At the heart of the exhibition is the human need for support. Working with transparent layers, Berhanu creates dream-like spaces where unseen emotional currents surface. Hands and faces speak the language of empathy; gestures carry meaning beyond words. In these luminous compositions, the intangible bonds between people take form, revealing connection as something both delicate and resilient. Through repeated gestures: bowed heads, leaning bodies, intertwined hands for example, Berhanu reflects on the quiet heaviness we bear individually and together. Speaking to the fragile intimacy of shared pain, Berhanu renders moments of tenderness in which love manifests as empathy, a presence that does not fix suffering but stays with it. Through her compassionate lens, Tizta Berhanu reminds us that love lives not only in grand declarations, but in the quiet, steadfast practice of being there for one another. The exhibition is presented by @tiwanicontemporary in collaboration with @addisfineart . @corkstreetgalleries #blkartmap #tiztaberhanu #tiwanicontemporary #fineart #love

CARRIE MAE WEEMS: A Solo Presentation 📍 @goodman_gallery Cork Street, Central London Until 23 May 2026 For more than four decades, Carrie Mae Weems has positioned herself at the threshold between image and history – reshaping the possibilities of photography, installation, video and performance. @carriemaeweems makes her debut with Goodman Gallery London, premieres recent and iconic bodies of work reflecting on migration, belonging and the enduring afterlives of the Atlantic passage. A defining voice in contemporary art, Weems has illuminated histories, communities and narratives too often overlooked. Her practice moves fluidly between aesthetic innovation and political inquiry, positioning the artist as both a witness and a participant in the unfolding of history. @corkstreetgalleries #blkartmap #carriemaeweems #blackart #london

Carrie Mae Weems in conversation 💚 This weekend, @carriemaeweems led a special conversation with Dr Madeleine Haddon (Senior Curator, V&A East) and independent writer and curator Renée Mussai, in celebration of her debut solo presentation with Goodman Gallery London. The exhibition brings together recent and significant bodies of work reflecting on migration, belonging and the enduring afterlives of the Atlantic passage. Concurrently, Weems presents a newly commissioned film for the launch of V&A East, entitled The Long Goodbye. @goodman_gallery @vam_east @madhaddon @mussairenee #blkartmap #carriemaeweems

Art on the Underground presents: Phoebe Boswell - we move through scales of blue 📍 Bethnal Green + Notting Hill Gate Underground Stations London Until Spring 2028 As part of @transportforlondon ‘s @artontheunderground programme, London-based artist @phoebe.boswell will present new site-specific artworks for escalator sites at Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate Underground stations. ‘we move through scales of blue’ invites audiences to consider how we relate to the natural world, even in an urban setting like London. Boswell has gathered reflections from participants about their relationship with water, creating space for their stories and inviting audiences to consider the histories and futures held within our bodies. Following a public call out to swimming communities around Bethnal Green and Notting Hill, the work features multi-layered photographic assemblages of Black swimmers who have made London their home, or whose families have historically migrated here across generations. Boswell’s commission traces the notion of the waterway, evoking aquatic journeys and migratory routes to, from, and within London. Guided by the hydro-feminist view that all bodies of water are connected, this new work is conceived as ‘a call to the surface’ – an invitation to a shared understanding about the world we inhabit, and the stories held within our bodies. This builds on her ongoing practice of reclaiming water for Black diasporic communities, following her encounter of the statistic from the Black Swimming Association that 95 per cent of Black British adults don’t swim. Through these new large-scale artworks for Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate Underground stations, Boswell expands her exploration of water as a site of endurance, migratory trauma, healing and collective power. #blkartmap #phoebeboswell #artontheunderground #photography #fineart

April Highlight: Whitechapel Gallery presents Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972-1982, + Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations 📍 @whitechapelgallery East London 1 April - 14 June 2026 Free entry 📌 Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972-1982 The gallery presents a rare archival exhibition of the work of pioneering artist and educator @senganengudi (b.1943, Chicago, USA). Featuring photographic works, archival materials and films of key performance pieces, the exhibition offers audiences unique insights into Nengudi’s work and practice. Nengudi’s influential and groundbreaking works sit at the intersection of sculpture, choreography and performance and draw on a range of African, Asian and Native American art forms. The presentation focuses on a selection of Nengudi’s most iconic works made between 1972 and 1982 – a pivotal moment in her artistic development. During this period, Nengudi refined both her approach and creative forms, building on a background in dance and art. 📌 Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations Encompassing more than 100 works, and spanning four decades, the exhibition reflects the full spectrum of Ryan’s practice, showcasing her multifaceted work across sculpture, textiles and works on paper and illuminating a distinctive, highly evocative, visual language. Significantly, the exhibition features recently rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings – which reveal an enduring deep interest in psychology, memory and personal stories, while also connecting to wider themes around the environment, history, trauma and recovery. Images: Senga Nengudi, Performance Piece, 1977, (detail). Courtesy Sprüth Magers and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Photo Harmon Outlaw. Veronica Ryan, Along a Spectrum, 2021. Installation view, Spike Island, Bristol. Courtesy of Spike Island, Bristol and Alison Jacques. Photo Max MacClure #blkartmap #senganengudi #veronicaryan #blackart #fineart

April Highlight: Shaqúelle Whyte: Shattered Dreams 📍 @wolvesartandculture Wolverhampton 18 April - 31 August 2026 Free entry Wolverhampton Art Gallery presents Shattered Dreams, @shaq.whyte ’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK. Shattered Dreams brings together six paintings created by Whyte between 2023 and 2026, presented for the first time in his hometown of Wolverhampton. Whyte’s connection to Wolverhampton Art Gallery is deeply personal. Visits to the museum during his youth played a formative role in nurturing his artistic ambitions. Of his upcoming exhibition, he says, “I’m Blakenhall born and bred, and it’s an honour and a privilege to bring my work back to the city. I hope that in a small way I am able to fly the flag for what the Black Country represents wherever my journey may take me”. Image: Shaqúelle Whyte, Blackbirds singing in the dead of night, 2025. Collection Wolverhampton Art Gallery, purchased with support from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Contemporary Art Society, City of Wolverhampton Council and Kemal and Tala Cingillioglu, 2025/26. © the artist. #blkartmap #shaquellewhyte #fineart #wolverhampton #blackart