In the Black Fantastic: Ekow Eshun’s curator tour

In the Black Fantastic featured works by contemporary artists from the African diaspora, who draw on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world.

In this video Eshun introduces us to the exhibition and some of its underlying themes, such as what he calls ‘the racialised everyday’. The curator explains how In the Black Fantastic’s 11 artists start from the awareness of race itself as a fiction, and a social construct, and through their work propose other ways of seeing that look beyond this constraint.

He goes on to give a more detailed introduction to four of the artists and their work in particular; Nick Cave, Ellen Gallagher, Chris Ofili and Wangetchi Mutu.

Main image credit: Installation view of Wangechi Mutu works, In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery, 2022. Copyright the artist. Photo: Zeinab Batchelor, Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery

‘As an exhibition In the Black Fantastic is a series of small worlds that each artist is conjuring, and offering, as a way to see through the eyes of Black lived experience’

Ekow Eshun, Curator, In the Black Fantastic