Expressions of Freedom is a collective exhibition of 11 talented black female artists using different art mediums to express their understanding and view of what freedom means to them.

The exhibition is curated by Black Womxn Artist Network, a non-profit organisation aiming to promote, celebrate, connect and support Black Women / Womxn identifying Artists by creating opportunities for black female-identifying artists within the UK who often do not get to showcase their work and are often not celebrated and voices not heard.

Showcasing artists

• Lindsey Daniella

• Rachel Harvey

• Sharon Adebisi

• Sharon James

• Sabina Silver

• Birungi Kawooya

• Natasha Muluswela

• Leah Adamson

• Gayle Ebose

• Juma Dimmock

• Caroline Lacoma

The first major survey of British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, whose career as a studio portraitist, photojournalist and Black lifestyle photographer spans six decades and records major social and political changes in London and Accra. Born in 1929 in Ghana, James Barnor experienced first-hand his country’s independence as well as the formation of the diaspora to London in the 1960s. In the early 1950s, he opened his famous Ever Young studio in Accra, where he immortalised a nation craving modernity and independence in an ambiance that was animated by conversation and highlife music. 

Wording by Serpentine Gallery

The Yellow Wallpaper is an exhibition of new portraits by American artist Kehinde Wiley. This will be the first solo exhibition of new work shown by Wiley at a UK museum and also the first to feature exclusively female portraits. The works feature women that the artist met on the streets of Dalston and offer a visual response to American novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s acclaimed feminist text, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892).

‘The Yellow Wallpaper is a work of literary fiction that explores the contours of femininity and insanity. This exhibition seeks to use the language of the decorative to reconcile blackness, gender, and a beautiful and terrible past.’ — Kehinde Wiley

Gilman’s text is a semi-autobiographical tale which sees her narrator confined to her bedroom after being diagnosed with hysteria and explores the disastrous consequences of denying women independence. In Wiley’s new portraits, each woman is positioned as autonomous, as powerful, as open to individual interpretation and as an emblem of strength within a society of complicated social networks. They wholly embody myriad positions with regard to social class, status, religion, colonialism and the negotiation of gender.

For over fifteen years Wiley has sourced William Morris’s iconic floral designs for his paintings. Building on his interest in the relationship between the human body and the decorative, Wiley’s models are depicted in reimagined fields inspired by the William Morris oeuvre. Wiley’s portraits offer a rubric through which to engage with the beautiful yet fraught histories and traditions that black women — and all women — are heir to.

This exhibition is supported by Stephen Friedman Gallery.

Wording by William Morris

In an important moment in the art industry, diverse aesthetic and artistic manifestations seek to capture the Afro-Brazilian subjectivity, #BLVCKSBTFLL - Black is Beautiful is born in Bahia, which was the port of entry of the slave ships in Brazil.

These images propose a generous look on the black body as a form of historical repair of the image constructed of people of colour over the years, most often stigmatising and marginalising this body, silencing their spiritual and phenotypic powers that in turn have their self-esteem compromised, reflecting a structural racism that made blacks deny their own image by “whitening” their existence to feel they belonged  within a society ruled by white supremacy.

Without artifice, lack of cultural values, religious and sexual orientation, the composition of images seeks to reveal the black genesis, bringing together elements that point to a place of origin: nature, the cradle of the ancestry of the bodies photographed.

The title of the project is a reference to the Black-and-Beautiful African-American cultural movement that happened in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, deconstructing the notion instilled by racism that the natural black phenotype is ugly or less attractive than the Eurocentric beauty standard.

Writing by Pedro Henrique França. Pedro is a  journalist, author, screenwriter and an admirer of Thiago Borba’s work.

Fons Americanus is a 13-metre tall working fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London.

Rather than a celebration of the British Empire, Walker’s fountain explores the interconnected histories of Africa, America and Europe. She uses water as a key theme, referring to the transatlantic slave trade and the ambitions, fates and tragedies of people from these three continents. Fantasy, fact and fiction meet at an epic scale.

This commission has been made using an environmentally-conscious production process and has been built from recyclable or reusable cork, wood and metal. The surface covering is made from a non-toxic acrylic and cement composite that can be used for sculpting or casting. It avoids the use of large quantities of non-recyclable materials and harmful substances often found in the production of exhibitions and installations.

Based in New York, Kara Walker is acclaimed for her candid explorations of race, sexuality and violence. She is best known for her use of black cut-paper silhouetted figures, referencing the history of slavery and the antebellum South in the US through provocative and elaborate installations.

Written by TATE Modern