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Lubaina Himid, Venetian Maps: Shoemakers, 1997. Acrylic on canvas.
Courtesy of Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York © Lubaina Himid
Courtesy of Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York © Lubaina Himid
This major exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid celebrates 40 years since The Thin Black Line, the groundbreaking group show of young Black and Asian women artists at the ICA in 1985. Presenting work by the original artists Brenda Agard, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter, the exhibition features new commissions as well as artworks made over the past four decades.
In the early 1980s Himid curated three landmark exhibitions of young Black and Asian women artists, positioning their practices at the fore of debates in the British art world: Five Black Women, Africa Centre (1983), Black Woman Time Now, Battersea Arts Centre (1983 – 84), The Thin Black Line, ICA (1985 – 86). Developing within the wider discourse surrounding the British Black Arts Movement, these exhibitions platformed female artists, highlighting the intersections between race and gender. Forty years since the original presentation, Connecting Thin Black Lines seeks to expand contemporary interpretations and conversations around the practices of these eleven artists today.
Rather than a restaging or retrospective, this exhibition looks forward as much as it does back, with two new commissions by Burman and Smith. In her signature style, Burman will light up the ICA’s Concourse with new neon works. Building upon her ongoing exploration of the materiality of objects and embodied perception, Smith will produce a sculptural installation which takes centre stage in the Lower Gallery.
The exhibition highlights the interconnected and wide-ranging roles that The Thin Black Line artists have been playing in art and exhibition making, and the meaningful paths crossed between these artists over the course of the last 40 years. While works by Agard and Pollard are on display, the artists also feature as sitters for Johnson’s Trilogy series. Intimate traces of Himid as collector and curator are felt throughout the exhibition, highlighted by works by Boyce, Pollard and Sulter which come from Himid’s personal collection, which she has developed over the years.
Connecting Thin Black Lines features an archival display of professional and personal documents relating to the original exhibition including photographic documentation of the 1985 show. The quotidian work and care behind this historic exhibition are revealed in correspondence between the artists, exhibited here for the first time.
On the occasion of this exhibition, the ICA will republish the original 1985 exhibition guide accompanied by a companion pamphlet which provides space for reflection today.
Further information about the exhibition, event programme and publication will be announced in the coming weeks.
In the early 1980s Himid curated three landmark exhibitions of young Black and Asian women artists, positioning their practices at the fore of debates in the British art world: Five Black Women, Africa Centre (1983), Black Woman Time Now, Battersea Arts Centre (1983 – 84), The Thin Black Line, ICA (1985 – 86). Developing within the wider discourse surrounding the British Black Arts Movement, these exhibitions platformed female artists, highlighting the intersections between race and gender. Forty years since the original presentation, Connecting Thin Black Lines seeks to expand contemporary interpretations and conversations around the practices of these eleven artists today.
More info
Rather than a restaging or retrospective, this exhibition looks forward as much as it does back, with two new commissions by Burman and Smith. In her signature style, Burman will light up the ICA’s Concourse with new neon works. Building upon her ongoing exploration of the materiality of objects and embodied perception, Smith will produce a sculptural installation which takes centre stage in the Lower Gallery.
The exhibition highlights the interconnected and wide-ranging roles that The Thin Black Line artists have been playing in art and exhibition making, and the meaningful paths crossed between these artists over the course of the last 40 years. While works by Agard and Pollard are on display, the artists also feature as sitters for Johnson’s Trilogy series. Intimate traces of Himid as collector and curator are felt throughout the exhibition, highlighted by works by Boyce, Pollard and Sulter which come from Himid’s personal collection, which she has developed over the years.
Connecting Thin Black Lines features an archival display of professional and personal documents relating to the original exhibition including photographic documentation of the 1985 show. The quotidian work and care behind this historic exhibition are revealed in correspondence between the artists, exhibited here for the first time.
On the occasion of this exhibition, the ICA will republish the original 1985 exhibition guide accompanied by a companion pamphlet which provides space for reflection today.
Further information about the exhibition, event programme and publication will be announced in the coming weeks.
Artist Biographies
Brenda Agard (1961 – 2012) was a photographer and writer who described herpractice of photographing Black women as a strategy to document truthful images in opposition to stereotypical representations. She was an important figure in The Black Photographers Group, which sought to platform Black photography in mainstream art venues in Britain, and was also a founding member of ‘Polareyes’, a journal showcasing the work of Black women photographers.
Sutapa Biswas’s (b. 1962) works are shaped by her observations about the relationships between people and the places they live in. Born in India but having lived in the UK since the age of four, Biswas is especially interested in how larger historical narratives collide with the personal. Underpinned by an engagement with colonial histories and how this relates to gender, race and class, her art is nuanced by the ways in which oral narratives reveal the human condition and their relationship to our collective histories and to questions of time.
Sonia Boyce (b. 1962) is an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound, and installation. Boyce came to prominence in the early 1980s as a key figure in the burgeoning British Black Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photo collages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people. Working across a range of media, Boyce’s practice today is focused on questions of artistic authorship and cultural difference.
Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s (b. 1957) work has a unique visual identity spanning diverse media such as neon sculpture, printmaking, collage, painting and video. Her work is shaped by her working-class childhood in a Liverpudlian, Punjabi Hindu household, often drawing imagery from popular culture. Her practice is devoted to challenging stereotypes and placing alternative perspectives of Britishness at the forefront of art history.
Jennifer Comrie (b. 1960s) is an artist best-known for her pastel drawings which lie between figuration and abstraction, with text being an additional important part of her practice. She describes her work as emerging from the cry within her and the Black community. Her Blackness and spiritual awareness are important elements in her work, and her personal experiences directly inform her artmaking.
Lubaina Himid (b. 1954) is an artist and curator who has dedicated her career to uncovering marginalised and silenced histories, figures, and cultural moments. Himid employs her distinctive vibrant visual language across painting, drawing, printmaking, installation and assemblage, often also producing work imbued with performative potential. Himid’s curatorial practice has championed the work of underrepresented contemporaries, particularly Black and Asian women artists.
Claudette Johnson (b. 1959) is celebrated for her figurative portraits of Black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour. Countering the marginalisation of Black people in Western art history, Johnson shifts perspectives and invests her portraits of family and friends with a palpable sense of presence. Johnson’s empathy and intimacy with her subjects is felt through her sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale.
Ingrid Pollard (b. 1953) is a British artist and photographer working across photography, installation, video and printmaking. Her work uses portraiture photography and traditional landscape imagery to explore social constructs such as Britishness or racial difference. Pollard nuancedly deconstructs and uncovers the complexity of assumed notions of identity, ownership, borders and subjecthood. Pollard is associated with Autograph ABP, the first Black British photographic association.
Veronica Ryan (b. 1956) is a visual artist working primarily in sculpture and assemblage. Often working from a diverse range of materials, including organic forms, Ryan’s work elicits a wealth of histories, meanings and multiplicities which she describes as bearing powerful ‘residues, traces, memory and deposits.’ Her works’ deep psychological subtext resists narrow categorisation, as she tussles with oppositional principles such as interior and exterior, absence and presence, container and contained.
Marlene Smith (b. 1964) is an artist and curator, and one of the founding members of the BLK Art Group. Smith’s practice is concerned with the materiality of objects, both inherited and created, and their embodied perception. Through experimentation with their properties, biography becomes not a means of classification and stratification, but instead a similarly malleable object that becomes engaged, activated, and transformed through artistic practice.
Maud Sulter (b. 1960 – 2008) began her career as a writer and acclaimed poet, expanding her practice to include photography and performance. Sulter’s multi-faceted practice sought to claim space for Black artists and address the erasure and representation of Black Women in the histories of art, the media, and photography. Sulter critically investigated the complex experiences of the African diaspora in European history and culture, producing substantial bodies of work built upon this research.
Supporters
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025 is supported by The Ampersand Foundation and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
04:00 pm
Tue, 24 Jun 2025
Lower Gallery
Access information
Lower Gallery
- There is a wheelchair-accessible ramp into the Lower Gallery
- We provide Sensory Maps and Large Print Guides, these can be found at the information & sales desk
- Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email access@ica.art
- If you have other access requirements, need more info, or want to contact us, go to the Access Page
24 June – 7 September 2025
Events Programme
Alongside the exhibition, a rich event programme showcases film screenings, sound installations, spoken word and live performances by artists Amber Akaunu, Sutapa Biswas, Helen Cammock, Trevor Mathison, Pratibha Parmar, Andra Simons, Rommi Smith and Magda Stawarska as well as a social media takeover by Tao Lashley-Burnley. In addition, a critical panel discussion examining the significance of The Thin Black Line will bring a range of perspectives from artists and curators of different generations into dialogue. Taking the 1985 exhibition as its starting point, the curated event programme highlights how Himid has continued to foster supportive networks, connections and communities in artmaking for over 40 years.
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