Barbican’s landmark exhibition traces a century of Pan-African imagination, resistance and cultural solidarity across continents and generations.
23 June 2026
This summer, London’s Barbican unveils ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’, an ambitious international exhibition that charts the enduring influence of Pan-Africanism on artistic and cultural production from the early twentieth century to the present. Bringing together more than 300 works by artists from Africa and its global diasporas, the exhibition offers a sweeping exploration of how visions of Black liberation, self-determination and collective futures have been imagined through art.
Rather than presenting Panafrica as a fixed geography, the exhibition positions it as a living constellation of ideas shaped by resistance, migration, political struggle and creative exchange. Paintings, sculpture, photography, film, archival material, and ephemera reveal how artists have responded to histories of colonialism and displacement while articulating new forms of belonging and solidarity.
Featuring works by figures including Ibrahim El-Salahi, David Hammons, Simone Leigh, Chris Ofili, William Kentridge, Magdalene Odundo, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, ‘Project a Black Planet’ foregrounds the critical role of artists in shaping Pan-African thought and imagining emancipatory futures. More than an exhibition, it is an invitation to reconsider the cultural and political possibilities of a world connected through Black consciousness, creativity and shared struggle.
This exhibition is on view at The Barbican, London, until 6 September 2026.
