Groundbreaking artist Sonia Boyce was the first black woman to be added to the Tate collection in 1987, and the Royal Academy in 2016, she is now the first Black woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale.

Boyce’s exhibition is a multi-media installation comprising video, sound, wallpaper and sculptural objects, that explores her childhood yearning for a sense of belonging.

Na Chainkua Reindorf, Lara (2021). Courtesy of the artist.

The inaugural Ghana pavilion in 2019 received widespread critical acclaim, and this year’s follow up did not disappoint! Black Star: the Museum as Freedom was curated by Nana Oforiatta and features artists Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Araúja. Their works respond to the iconic black star of the Ghanian flag and continue the exploration of freedom established in the first pavilion. The star is a symbol for the connection between Africa and its diaspora, pan-Africanism and anti-colonialism. The bamboo structure which houses the exhibit in the Arsenale has been replicated across Venice and in Ghana.

Paula Rego, Agony in the Garden (2002) © Paula Rego, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro

Completed in 2002, Paula Rego’s works depict episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary – subjects familiar in Christian art radically retold by Rego. This is a theme I’ve been really interested in, and have created my own re-imaginings of the holy family that challenge the connection between whiteness and divinity.

Sculptor Simone Leigh explores the burden of colonial histories and the promise of Black feminism for the US pavilion. Leigh has transformed the neo-Palladian pavilion with a thatched roof and wooden supports as a critical reference to the presentation of Africa at colonial expositions and fairs.

References to the artistic traditions of Africa are seen throughout Leigh’s works, such as her life-sized sculptures are carved in ceramic and raffia and cast in bronze. My personal favourite was Jug (2022) a reimagining of a South Carolina face jug from 1882 in which the caricatural features have been replaced with large cowrie shells.

Kehinde Wiley, The Wounded Achilles (Fillippo Albacini), © Kehinde Wiley

In this new body of work, Wiley highlights the brutality of the colonial, American and global past, using the figurative language of the fallen hero. The exhibition will include a series of unpublished monumental paintings and sculptures, expanding his 2008 body of DOWN work. Initially inspired by Holbein's painting The Dead Christ in the Tomb, as well as historical paintings and sculptures of fallen warriors and figures in the resting state, Wiley created a haunting series of prone black bodies, reconceptualizing classical pictorial forms to create a contemporary take on portraiture. monumental, which resounds with violence, pain and death, as well as ecstasy. For this new body of work, Wiley has expanded on these core thematic elements to ponder the deaths of young blacks killed around the world.

The exhibition includes a pop-up shop of merchandise to support Black Rock, Wiley’s artist-in-residence program in Senegal. It’s packed full of beautifully ornate textiles!

Morel Doucet, After All That, We Still Stand (When Black Lives Look Blue) #4, (2022).

In “The AfroFuturist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined,” eight African-American artists construct a future forged in their African ancestry and Afrofuturism’s ideology to expand the notion of Blackness at the intersection of technology and liberation. The exhibition asserts Afrofuturism as the cross-cultural philosophy of artists, musicians, and writers who draw inspiration from techno-utopian thinking of the space age to reimagine Black life.

Anish Kapoor, The Dark, (2021). Photograph by Dave Morgan, © Anish Kapoor.

Anish Kapoor is the first British artist to be honoured with a big exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia. Although I was excited to see Kapoor’s highly anticipated and controversial Vantablack sculputres, using the world’s blackest black, I was really captivated by this erupting sculptural painting!