In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery, 29 June –⁠ 18 September 2022 and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands 19 November 2022 – 9 April 2023

Myth, science fiction, spiritual traditions, and the legacy of Afrofuturism are all sampled, reimagined, and recontextualized 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.

In the Black Fantastic is generously supported by the US Embassy London, Gagosian, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation, Victoria Miro, David Zwirner, Pilar Corrias, and Sprüth Magers.

For more info on the exhibition CLICK HERE!

To purchase a catalogue CLICK HERE!

★★★★★
‘unlikely to be a better show this year’

–Evening Standard

★★★★★
‘a magnificent experience, spectacular from first to last’

-The Observer

★★★★★

-The Guardian

★★★★
‘powerful, affecting and often very, very beautiful’

-Time Out

★★★★
‘rich and strange… visual fabulousness and flair’

-The Telegraph