BLACK ART
‍NEAR + FAR

This sweeping retrospective across the Bermondsey galleries presents six decades of Howardena Pindell's extraordinary artistic evolution—a body of work born from trauma and transformed into triumph. From the 1960s to today, her paintings, sculptures, and works on paper reveal an artist who has turned the wounds of racial segregation into weapons of beauty and resistance.

At age eight, during a family road trip through northern Kentucky, Pindell discovered red circles marking the bottom of cups at a roadside stand—a cruel coding system that designated which utensils Black customers were permitted to use under Jim Crow laws. This searing childhood encounter with institutionalized racism would become the genesis of her most powerful artistic vocabulary. The circle, initially a symbol of exclusion and humiliation, became Pindell's chosen instrument of reclamation.

Through obsessive, meditative repetition, she has spent decades transforming this loaded motif into something transcendent. Her circles multiply across canvases as ellipses, perforations, spray-painted constellations, and methodical hole punches—each iteration a small act of defiance, a conscious rewriting of painful memory. What began as markers of segregation become portals of liberation, turning the grid of oppression into a boundless field of possibility.

"Unsettling the City: Julie Mehretu’s Epigraph, Damascus" centers on Julie Mehretu's monumental print Epigraph, Damascus, which reimagines urban landscapes through layered mark-making techniques. Employing photogravure, sugar lift aquatint, spit bite aquatint, and open bite, Mehretu reflects on the complexities of city life and the impact of conflict on urban environments. Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110. Runs from November 21, 2025, to April 12, 2026.

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The Game marks the 40th anniversary of the Cuenca Biennial. It features a dynamic curatorial model with 17 different curators, each selecting three artists (with at least one Ecuadorian per curator) to create a pluralistic exhibition across the city.

The Waiting Room presents new works by Inniss that test the boundaries of representational painting, using her involuntary memories to evoke sensations that feel familiar yet uncanny. It’s a show about what remains when memory is filtered through the senses, and how identity can be understood as fluid and multidimensional. 

Nationhood: Memory and Hope is a landmark touring photography project that brings together internationally renowned Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh and seven emerging UK photographers to examine identity, belonging, and cultural diversity across the UK’s four nations. The exhibition is structured as a dialogue between Muluneh’s colourful, staged photographs and a series of black-and-white portraits, both created in collaboration with communities in each host city. Each venue adds its own local voices through commissioned works by regional photographers, creating a layered portrait of modern Britain. This is the first UK City of Culture initiative to tour all four constituent nations, marking an unprecedented cultural exchange that connects audiences from Bradford, Belfast, Cardiff, and Glasgow.

"Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity" celebrates Hayward L. Oubre, Jr. (1916–2006), a pivotal figure in Black American art and modernism. Featuring 52 sculptures, paintings, and prints, it highlights Oubre's innovative use of materials, notably his transformation of wire coat hangers into modernist sculptures. Stanley Museum of Art, 160 W. Burlington St., Iowa City, IA 52242. Runs from August 26, 2025, to December 7, 2025.

Sonia Gomes’s Raio de Sol showcases vibrant assemblages and suspended textile sculptures that explore themes of identity, history, and transformation. The exhibition is on view at Fiesta Lille 3000, Lille, France, from September 6 through November 10, 2025.

Across the Universe highlights Jackson’s expansive body of work, centering on the intersections of systemic inequities, civic participation, and cultural memory. The exhibition contextualizes her practice within broader social and political histories, drawing on themes of voting rights, education, housing, and racial justice.

“Across the Universe” offers a comprehensive look at Tomashi Jackson’s artistic practice over roughly the past ten years, spotlighting how she uses visual art to unearth under-recognized histories and patterns of resistance, power, and marginalization. Her work intertwines vibrant color theory, abstraction, and layered materials with archival research and personal story. Central themes include racial injustice, community empowerment, grief and loss (including personal loss), migration, and spatial politics—how geography, law, and policy shape who gets seen and who remains silenced. The exhibition also has a strong emotional core, as Jackson returns to Houston—the city of her birth—for this major survey, bringing into view her roots and the resonances of place, memory, family. 

The exhibition offers a comprehensive survey of Ayón’s oeuvre, tracing her evolution from small-format, colorful lithographs to her iconic, large-scale black-and-white collographs. It highlights her technical mastery and her unique ability to use printmaking to construct immersive, narrative environments.

ICA San Francisco presents Spotlight: Tau Lewis, a solo exhibition featuring the acclaimed Toronto-born artist’s monumental textile sculptures. The exhibition showcases repurposed fabrics and found materials crafted into intricate, layered installations that honor African diasporic traditions of creativity and resilience. Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco (ICA), 345 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA. Runs from May 16 -December 7, 2025

Renowned contemporary artist Rashid Johnson presents a major solo exhibition featuring nearly 90 works, including paintings, sculptures, and installations. Johnson's art delves into themes of identity, race, and history, often incorporating materials like shea butter, black soap, and ceramic tiles to explore the complexities of the African American experience. 

“Safiotra” means “hybrid” in Malagasy. This major solo exhibition by Yinka Shonibare explores the idea of hybridity — the blending of cultural, historical, and material identities. It brings together over 15 years of Shonibare’s sculptures, installations, and textile works that examine the intersections of colonial legacies, globalization, and identity.

Alongside Shonibare’s works, the artist also curated a selection from the Fondation H collection, including African and Afro-descendant artists such as El Anatsui and Zanele Muholi, creating a dialogue across generations and geographies.

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"Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen" is a landmark exhibition showcasing new and recent paintings alongside a single-channel video work.  This marks Pendleton's first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C., emphasizing his unique contributions to contemporary American painting within the context of the museum's architecture and the National Mall's history. ​ Hirshhorn Museum, Independence Ave SW & 7th St SW, Washington, D.C.​   Runs through January 3, 2027. 

Manuel Mathieu: Pendulum features the eponymous Haitian-Canadian artist’s award-winning short film. The 11-minute film employs nonlinear storytelling and symbolic imagery to explore themes of freedom and the collective pursuit of liberation. It delves into the balance between historical legacy and an uncertain future, portraying a spiritual journey toward self-mastery and liberation. The exhibition will be at the Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110.  Runs through November 30, 2025.

Miami MoCAAD’s Mobile Interactive Mural Exhibition, "Telling Overtown Stories, Saying Their Names", is a community-centered public art project that celebrates the history, culture, and resilience of Overtown while honoring individuals whose legacies continue to shape Miami. Through art and technology, the exhibition invites audiences to engage with layered narratives that merge history, storytelling, and digital interactivity.

Lessons of the Hour is a five-screen immersive video installation by Isaac Julien, reflecting on the life and ideas of 19th-century abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass. It is the first joint acquisition by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, co-curated by Saisha Grayson and Charlotte Ickes. This work underscores Douglass’s enduring influence and relevance in ongoing conversations around race, democracy, and visual culture.