This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London will present Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, a major group exhibition and event programme curated by Lubaina Himid, the Turner Prize-winning artist who will represent Great Britain at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Celebrating 40 years since The Thin Black Line, the groundbreaking group show of young Black and Asian women artists curated by Himid at the ICA in 1985, the exhibition will present work by the original artists Brenda Agard, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Singh Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter all together for the first time. Featuring new commissions as well as artworks made over the past four decades, the exhibition will extend beyond the gallery space with a rich programme of film screenings, talks, music and live performances – fulfilling Himid’s original ambition for a multi-disciplinary Black arts festival across the ICA’s exhibition, cinema and live spaces.
In the early 1980s, Himid curated three 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 landmark exhibitions platformed female artists, highlighting the intersections between race and gender.
Now, 40 years since the original presentation at the same venue, Connecting Thin Black Lines at the ICA seeks to expand contemporary interpretations and conversations around the practices of these eleven artists today. Rather than a restaging or retrospective, this exhibition looks forward as much as it does back, with works made in the past four decades including two new commissions by Burman and Smith. In her signature style, Burman will light up the ICA’s Concourse with new neon works and Smith’s sculpture, inspired by a photograph from her late parents’ family album, takes centre stage in the Lower Gallery. The earliest work in the exhibition, Sonia Boyce’s Rice n Peas (1982) acknowledges that The Thin Black Line was not the sudden genesis of these artists’ practices, but a coalescence formed from continuous work throughout the early 80s. Artworks created in the years following the exhibition include Jennifer Comrie’s Coming to Terms Through Conflict (1987) and Maud Sulter’s Polyhymnia (1989). More recent contributions include Threads (2024) a hanging crochet sculpture by Veronica Ryan, a glass-mounted digital print by Ingrid Pollard from her 2018 installation, Seventeen of Sixty-Eight, and Birdsong (2004) a moving image work by Sutapa Biswas.
The exhibition highlights the interconnected and wide-ranging roles that The Thin Black Line artists have been playing in art and exhibition making, and the meaningful paths crossed between these artists over the course of the last 40 years. This is reflected in key loans from both the Arts Council Collection – such as Johnson’s Trilogy series depicting Black female sitters including Agard and Pollard – and from Himid’s personal collection, which features works by Boyce, Pollard, Sulter, and Himid herself.
Connecting Thin Black Lines features an archival display of professional and personal documents from the original 1985 show, including photographs and never-before-seen correspondence revealing the quotidian work and care behind this historic exhibition.
Himid has conceived of Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025 as a multi-vocal, multi-disciplinary project bringing together artists across a range of practices beyond the exhibition. Film screenings by Amber Akaunu, Sutapa Biswas, Helen Cammock and Pratibha Parmar will be accompanied by contextual discussions in the Cinema. Music and live performances led by Trevor Mathison, Andra Simons, Rommi Smith and Magda Stawarska will take place in the Stage. Tao Lashley-Burnley will take over the ICA Instagram. A critical panel discussion bringing together artists and curators will reflect on the legacy of The Thin Black Line and what it means to sustain radical artistic networks today.
On the occasion of this exhibition, the ICA will republish the original 1985 exhibition guide accompanied by a companion publication featuring new contributions by the participating artists of Connecting Thin Black Lines. The original publication serves as an important resource for curators and art historians but has been long out of print with only 27 copies held in libraries globally. Widening access to an important primary source, the new publication will also provide space for reflection today.
‘The ICA serves to platform bold artists and thinkers who challenge our perceptions and interrogate our understanding of the world around us. 40 years ago, this group of daring, young Black and Asian women artists did exactly that, transforming the British art world through their sheer talent. The ICA is honoured that Lubaina Himid is bringing these leading artists, who include Turner Prize winners and nominees, together at the ICA again to create new conversations and connections between both iconic and newly commissioned works across multiple disciplines’
Bengi Ünsal, ICA Director,
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, 24th June – 7th September 2025, Institute Contemporary Arts
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025 is supported by The Christian Levett Collection and Musée FAMM Mougins, The Ampersand Foundation, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and Lubaina Himid.
Lubaina Himid’s limited-edition artist print, The Thin Black Line (2022) originally released for the ICA’s 75th anniversary, will be on display and available to purchase at the Bookshop and via shop.ica.art.
Priority booking for ICA Members will be on sale from 10am on Thursday 22 May. General booking will be available from 10am on Tuesday 27th May.
