Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025

About

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.