Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Accra, Ghana, d. 2021, UK) composed works of vibrant geometric patterns that are inspired by a wide range of influences, from Ewe and Assante cloth to jazz, the tradition of mural painting and the design of street kiosks along the roads of West-African towns. Kwami is known for expanding the notions of painting, basing his practice both in the visual world of his native Ghana and in reflections on modernism.

In 2021, the year he died, he was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize, which recognised later career artists deserving wider career recognition, and, in 2022, The Serpentine unveiled the final public mural commission by Kwami, DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace), which remains on view until September 2024. This Spring, the Serpentine will publish a monograph edited by Melissa Blanchflower titled Atta Kwami, with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln supported by The Maria Lassnig Foundation and marking the first publication dedicated to Kwami’s practice. 

Laura Lima’s (b. 1971, Brazil) intentionally slow practice eschews manual techniques and re-engages with forms of production that suggest an earlier or alternative way of living.  Her hand woven tapestries bring together found materials and involve hand dyeing processes using organic materials.  In May 2023, her mid-career survey Balé Literal was presented at MACBA, Barcelona and presented a choreographed display of works to sound and music across the museum spaces.

Lima’s works are included in the collections of Instituto Inhotim, Modern Art Museum of São Paulo, Bonniers Konsthall, Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Zabludowicz Collection and the Bonnefantenmuseum.

Anhanguá is a spirit from Tupi mythology that protects animals, especially females and puppies. It usually appears as a white deer with red eyes, but can take any form. Raw cotton threads dyed by natural pigments (coffee, black tea, crajiru, turmeric, spinach, parsley, cashew leaves, porangaba, hibiscus, redwood, red beans, annatto) and steel wire

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Misheck Masamvu’s (b. 1980, Mutare, Zimbabwe) works allow him to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. As one of the most significant artists from Zimbabwe, Masamvu’s work offers a renewed understanding of visual culture in Africa and the decolonial project more broadly. Rhythmic lines and layered fields of colour have become a prominent language for Masamvu to explore structures of power and how history comes to bear on the contemporary moment, but also how one can adapt to a new way of interacting with the world.

Pour (2022) is part of Kentridge’s ongoing Lexicon series. Acting as a visual dictionary, the sculptures form a vocabulary of symbols, or ‘glyphs’, representing a collection of everyday objects, suggested words, or icons that are ubiquitous in the artist's broader practice. Pour is the newest addition to this collection of bronzes.

Exploring and championing a breadth of mediums, such as animation, sculpture, performance and drawing, William Kentridge’s complex creations are multifaceted in form, resonating with audiences through their unifying exploration of the very fabric of our existence. Revisiting and reacting to philosophical, historical or political tropes, he conjures myriad themes in his polymorphic works which are experimental and conceptually rich.

In 'IF YOU ARE NEUTRAL’ Amer worked for the first time with an Egyptian appliqué technique that is traditionally a craft only undertaken by men. A statement by the late Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Nobel Peace Laureate and anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu is transformed is transformed into a bold geometric composition that references ubiquitous QR codes, a contemporary visual language that has replaced printed text. 

Sue Williamson (b. 1941, Lichfield, UK) emigrated with her family to South Africa in 1948. In the 1970s, Williamson started to make work which addressed social change and by the late 1980s she was well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle, titled A Few South Africans (1980s). 

A major retrospective of her five-decades long career will be shown at Iziko South African National Gallery in 2025 following her UK and US institutional exhibitions in 2023 at The Box, Plymouth and The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.

Postcards from Africa is a series of ink drawings based on postcards from the early 1900s, produced for residents and travellers in Africa as well as for collectors who had never set foot on the continent. These postcards, which peaked in popularity at that time, now contribute to understanding political and cultural changes in Africa as the rise of the new medium coincided with the expansion and consolidation of colonial rule. In Williamson's re-drawn scenes from these postcards, all the figures have been left out: a reference to the scourge of slavery, which saw 12.5 million people shipped from the continent to the Americas.

Faith Ringgold (1930-2-24) was a pioneering painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, author, teacher and activist whose powerful works address issues of race, gender, and social justice. Ringgold’s innovative use of quilting and storytelling techniques revolutionized the art world by bridging the gap between fine art and craft traditions.

Solo exhibitions include: Faith Ringgold: American People, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, (2023-24); Faith Ringgold: Black is beautiful, Musée National Picasso-Paris (2023); Faith Ringgold: American People, New Museum, New York (2022); Faith Ringgold, Serpentine Gallery, London (2019); Faith Ringgold: A Twenty-Five Year Survey, touring exhibition (1990-93); Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Arizona State Art Museum; Figge Art Museum, Davenport; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Women’s Center Gallery, University of California; Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland; and Tacoma Museum, Washington; and Twenty-Year Retrospective: Sculpture and Performance (1963-1984), The Studio Museum, New York. Group exhibitions include: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, The Broad, Los Angeles (2019) and Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018).

Collections include: High Museum of Art, Atlanta; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Savannah College of Art, Georgia; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City; Schomberg Library; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia

Awards and honours include: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; two National Endowment for the Arts Awards; The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Medal of Honor for Fine Arts from the National Arts Club. Ringgold received an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London (2013). Ringgold was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, MA (2017).

Dor Guez (b. Jerusalem) is a Jaffa-based artist, educator, archivist, and curator. His 2022 overview, Catastrophe, at the Museum of Modern Art Bogota, spanned a wide range of works showcasing the artist's ongoing engagement with the ever-unfolding studies of his region. Catastrophe travelled to Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City in April 2023. His more recent solo presentation Amid Imperial Grids at the Felix Nussbaum Museum extended these reflections. 

Mapping connections between historical archives, photography, and performance, Guez’s photographic series mines the rich historical and mythological dimensions of Jerusalem as a site of religious and political projection. Guez’s ‘Lilies of the Field’ is composed of luminous prints of pressed floral and plant arrangements that the artist discovered in his research of the American Colony archive.

Guez’s work has been displayed in over 45 solo exhibitions worldwide including Princeton Art Museum, Princeton (2022); Kunst im Kreuzgang, Bielefeld (2021); American Colony Archive, Jerusalem (2019); MAN Museum, Nuoro (2018); DEPO, Istanbul (2017); the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015); the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2015); the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2013); Artpace, San Antonio (2013); the Mosaic Rooms, Centre for Contemporary Arab Culture & Art, London (2013); the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); and Petach Tikva Museum of Art, (2009). 

Guez’s work is held in public collections including Tate Modern, London; Center Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi; The Jewish Museum, New York; Rose Art Museum, Boston; FRAC collection, Marseille; and Museum of Modern Art, Bogota. 

Paul Maheke (b. 1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France), across various forms and artistic disciplines, has sustained a long-term exploration into the ways that marginalised bodies, narratives and histories are made visible and invisible. Resisting a probing of identity that sits solely within the framework of identity politics, Maheke’s trajectory has continuously been channelled through spectral sensations. The artist has called in ghosts, spirits and non-human beings into his works to invite a re-orientation to the way that we, the audience, are able to perceive; which is to say, to reframe the way that we are able to see, feel and listen.

In reconfiguring the sensible, Maheke seeks to shift the dominant systems of discourse production and understanding that heavily depend on representation, visibility and legibility as the ultimate forms of truth, value and/or power. Instead, the artist nurtures the formation of a self through a state of in-betweenness; one where esoteric, spiritual, queer and embodied knowledge(s) help Maheke garner the potential for prophecy.

His work has been shown in solo presentations at Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales (2024); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2023); High Line Art, New York (2022), The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois (2021); Collection Pinault, Paris, France (2021); Chisenhale Gallery, London, England (2019); Vleeshal Centre for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, Netherlands (2018); and South London Art Gallery, London, England (2016). He has participated in group exhibitions and festivals at institutions including Tate Modern, England (2024); Rudolfinum, Prague (2023); ICA Miami, Florida (2019); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2018); and Serpentine Galleries, London, England (2016). He has been featured in major international exhibitions including Biennale du Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (2022); Glasgow International, Scotland (2021); 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Performa, New York (2019); Baltic Triennial 13, Estonia (2018); and Manifesta 12, Palermo, Italy (2018).

Maheke lives and works in Montpellier.