IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

303pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, London, 2022

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London, 2022.

Includes art, design, fashion, architecture, film, literature and popular culture.

Features work by Wangechi Mutu, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Michael MacGarry, Kristin-Lee Moolman, Mohau Modisakeng, Puleng Mongale, Athi-Patra Ruga, Yinka Shonibare and Mary Sibande, among many others.

Contributions include:

"Black Feminist: Voodoo aesthetics, conjure feminism, and the arts" by Kameelah L. Martin

"In Populated Air: Flying Africans, technology and the future" by Michelle D. Commander.

"In the Black Fantastic is a magnificent experience, spectacular from first to last ... The premise is succinct: to unite artists from the African diaspora who use fantasy, myth and fiction to address racism and injustice. Apposite literary quotations appear on the walls, from Frantz Fanon and others. But there is nothing theoretical or doctrinaire about the work ... The whole show twinkles and glitters ... The ultimate connection between all the artists in this show is their overwhelming passion: a force of feeling that translates into vision, music, poetry, ethos and form, and in the most original ways. The context, explicit or otherwise, is the narrative of black history. " Laura Cumming, Guardian

Writer, curator and journalist Ekow Eshun is former director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. His previous books include Black Gold of the Sun and Africa State of Mind.

Michelle Commander is Associate Director of New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is the author of Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic.

Kameelah Martin is Director of the African American Studies Program and Professor of African American Studies and English at the College of Charleston, North Carolina.