With time, the visibility of black women artists gradually improved in England thanks to more inclusive exhibitions and the support of British art institutions. Today, these women artists are exploring multiple themes in various media with creativity. Some of them have conveyed political messages in their art while others have produced work completely separate from issues of race. We have selected five black British women artists whose unique work has been showcased around the world.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Art Style: Figurative art
Media: Painting, Writing
Awards: Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize, Carnegie Prize, Turner Prize shortlist

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in London, United Kingdom, in 1977. She is particularly interested in the portraiture of fictitious black figures created from found images and her own imagination. Often painted in spontaneous and instinctive bursts, her figures seem to exist outside of a specific time or place. Her paintings are coupled with poetic titles, such as Tie the Temptress to the Trojan (2016) and To Improvise a Mountain (2018). Writing is central to Yiadom-Boakye’s artistic practice, as she has explained: “I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about.”

Grace Ndiritu

Art Style: Conceptual art, Textile art
Media: Video, Performance, Photography, Painting, Writing
Awards: Landscape Video and Photography Prize, Jarman Award shortlist

Grace Ndiritu was born in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1982. Her art and activism is inspired by alternative communities, spirituality and lifestyles. In 2017, she initiated her live art project, The Ark, in the migrant suburbs of Paris, France. This ‘model for living off-grid in an urban setting’ brought together scientists, artists, gardeners, economists and spiritual practitioners. Other ongoing projects involving diverse groups of people in performance, meditation or protest include Healing the Museum (2016) and Birth of a New Museum (2021), which seeks to re-activate the ‘sacredness’ of art spaces.

Lina Iris Viktor

Art Style: Conceptual art
Media: Painting, Photography, Performance
Awards:

Born in 1986, Lina Iris Viktor was raised in London, United Kingdom. Her work of opulent gold, black, and blue draws on artistic traditions and visuals from African symbolism and cosmology. Her photography, painting, and installations are infused with cultural histories of the African diaspora and preoccupied with complex notions of blackness. Viktor often appears in her work, posing like some ahistorical queen or goddess as seen in the series Materia Prima (2015) and Dark Continent (2015). These portraits can be seen as a reminder of the absence of the black female body from the art-historical canon.

Jadé Fadojutimi

Art Style: Abstract art
Media: Painting, Writing
Awards: Chadwell Prize shortlist, Contemporary British Painting Prize shortlist

Jadé Fadojutimi was born in London, United Kingdom, in 1993. Her large-scale paintings combine color, space, line, and movement in the service of fluid emotion and the quest for self-knowledge. Her compositions can suggest plants, microbes, or marine landscapes, but edge consistently toward abstraction as seen in her recent exhibition Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy. Fadojutimi draws inspiration from specific locations, cultures, objects, and sounds, especially Japanese anime, clothing, and soundtracks. She also uses writing to help articulate the subtleties of her painting; at other times she positions it in parallel to the visual by adopting a more poetic approach.

Rosa-Johan Uddoh

Art Style: Conceptual art
Media: Performance, Writing, Installation
Awards: Artquest Peer Forum Award, Jarman Award shortlist

Rosa-Johan Uddoh was born in Croydon, United Kingdom, in 1993. Her interdisciplinary work is inspired by Black feminist practice and writing. She explores an infatuation with places, objects or celebrities in British popular culture, and their effects on self-formation. She is influenced by her architectural background, rooting stories in specific spaces and materials. Uddoh’s recent exhibition, Practice Makes Perfect, focused on the timely subject of childhood education in Britain. She looked at how schooling forms an early understanding of what it means to be British, but also at what within this is marginalised or left out.