A Bold Celebration of Black Figuration and History Featuring 26 Visionary Artists
Installation view of ‘The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure’. Godfried Donkor, St Bill Richmond, the black terror, 2019, Oil, acrylic and gold leaf on linen, 185 x 185 cm. Courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photography by Sarah Croop
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) presents ‘The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure’, a major exhibition expanded for its premiere in the U.S. Curated by British writer and curator Ekow Eshun, ‘The Time is Always Now’ takes its title from an essay on desegregation by American writer and social rights activist James Baldwin. It highlights a sense of urgency around contemporary artistic expression, while acting as a reminder that Black artists exist within an always-evolving artistic lineage.
Traveling to the PMA from the National Portrait Gallery in London, the artists in this exhibition work in the U.S. and the U.K., including Godfried Donkor, Kerry James Marshall, and Amy Sherald, among others. For the show’s Philadelphia presentation, six artists working in the U.S. and U.K have been added including Arthur Timothy and Deborah Roberts, among others.
Past and Presence explores the absence of Black figures in many mainstream narratives and shows how artists have responded. Barbara Walker, for example, recreates historical portraits with graphite and embossing, reconfiguring Western art history to give primary focus to the Black subject. This section continues with works by Kimathi Donkor, Godfried Donkor and Lubaina Himid, who use the tradition of history painting to restage overlooked narratives and elevate Black protagonists.
Both paintings by Arthur Timothy presented in ‘The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure’, invoke the Black history of Florence and poignantly depict themes of imminent change that are necessitated by radical imagination. The paintings are part of a series by Timothy that reflect upon the underrepresented fragments of Black history in the Italian context.
“The Time is Always Now celebrates a period of extraordinary flourishing in the work of artists from the African diaspora,” said the show’s curator, Ekow Eshun. “My hope is that the exhibition encourages audiences to look more closely at the imaginative reach of the exhibiting artists, the ways they are illuminating the richness and complexity of Black life through figuration, and simultaneously asking searching questions about race, identity and history, all while creating artworks that are never less than dazzling.”
‘The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure’ featuring Godfried Donkor and Arthur Timothy alongside 26 visionary Black and African diasporic contemporary artists, is on view at The Philadelphia Museum of Art until 9 February 2025. For more information, please visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
