In the Black Fantastic review: ‘a magnificent experience’
Reality is reshaped into ‘something rich and strange’ at this ‘intoxicating’ Hayward Gallery show

This exhibition showcases 11 artists from the African diaspora “who use fantasy, myth and fiction to address racism and injustice”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Each artist is granted the amount of space equivalent to that normally taken up by an entire solo presentation, so that they have “space to breathe, and to sing”; while a “judicious selection also allows for echoes and connections throughout”.
The show incorporates video, painting, sculpture, collage, and even costume design, and the effect is little short of mesmerising. All of the art here is “wildly imaginative”, from a series of “lifesize” papier-mâché sculptures by the Kenyan-American Wangechi Mutu to the “sumptuous” selfportraits of Liberian-British artist Lina Iris Viktor, in which she depicts herself as the prophetess Sibyl foretelling “the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade”. It is “a magnificent experience, spectacular from first to last”.
In this show, decorative flourish comes at the expense of nuance and clarity, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. The American artist Nick Cave, for instance, makes “sound suits” – “human-sized wearable sculptures covered in sequins, buttons and flowers”. These “look like carnival costumes” but apparently commemorate the deaths of black Americans at the hands of the police: one, dedicated to George Floyd, is adorned in an “ornate and busy manner”, leaving “no detail left undecorated”. “How the sculpture refers to the death remains unclear.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Far worse, though, is the British Turner Prize-winning artist Chris Ofili’s life-sized sculpture Annunciation, depicting “a black Angel Gabriel raping a golden Virgin Mary”. “You don’t need to be a fierce Catholic to find it graceless and sick.” It is the nadir of a confused and “neurotic” exhibition.
This show is a response to the long history of black suffering in the West, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. So it’s hardly surprising that some works on display are upsetting. Kara Walker’s “retro, animated cut-paper silhouettes” depict “atrocities by white supremacists” to a ragtime soundtrack, while the Confederate battle flag “looms” large in a picture by the Philadelphia-born artist Sedrick Chisom.
Yet generally the exhibition is “anything but sombre”. Instead, it is defined by its emphasis on “visual fabulousness”, privileging jubilant colour and “party spirit” over historical recrimination. The upbeat atmosphere is evident everywhere from Cave’s colourful suits to Hew Locke’s Ambassadors, four sculptures of “exuberantly attired horsemen” he has “festooned with glittering objects”. The artists here are intent on “reshaping reality into something rich and strange”, and the result is an “intoxicating” show.
Hayward Gallery, London SE1 (southbankcentre.co.uk). Until 18 September
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
GPS jamming: a new danger to civil aircraft
The Explainer Use of the 'invisible threat' is on the rise
-
'Axis of upheaval': will China summit cement new world order?
Today's Big Question Xi calls on anti-US alliance to cooperate in new China-led global system – but fault lines remain
-
Educating Yorkshire: a 'quietly groundbreaking' documentary
The Week Recommends The 'uplifting' return to Thornhill Community Academy is a 'tonic' for tough times
-
Woof! Britain's love affair with dogs
The Explainer The UK's canine population is booming. What does that mean for man's best friend?
-
Millet: Life on the Land – an 'absorbing' exhibition
The Week Recommends Free exhibition at the National Gallery showcases the French artist's moving paintings of rural life
-
Thomasina Miers picks her favourite books
The Week Recommends The food writer shares works by Arundhati Roy, Claire Keegan and Charles Dickens
-
6 laid-back homes for surfers
Feature Featuring a home near a world-renowned surf spot in Hawaii and a house built to withstand the elements in South Carolina
-
Twelfth Night or What You Will: a 'riotous' late-summer jamboree
The Week Recommends Robin Belfield's 'carnivalesque' new staging at Shakespeare's Globe is 'joyfully tongue-in-cheek'
-
Hostage: Netflix's 'fun, fast and brash potboiler'
The Week Recommends Suranne Jones is 'relentlessly defiant' as prime minister Abigail Dalton
-
Music reviews: Chance the Rapper, Cass McCombs, and Molly Tuttle
Feature "Star Line," "Interior Live Oak," and "So Long Little Miss Sunshine"
-
Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!
Feature Seekers of a new utopia spiral into savagery and a queer private eye prowls a high-desert town