June 2024 exhibitions: Art shows to leave the house for this month

Bronx-born Lyle Ashton Harris gets a well overdue first major solo exhibition in New York and the Queens Museum. Our first and last love will feature over 40 works, including photos, collages, assemblages, and video installations from his four-decade career in which he has explored race, gender, and desire. These include Harris’ early works such as the black-and-white photographs Americas (Triptych), made amidst the Aids crisis in 1987-88, whereby he dons whiteface, and his seminal 1989 nude self-portrait series Constructs, donning a tulle skirt, tank top, wig, and beauty spot, it was an example of queer visibility at a time of crisis.

Interspersed throughout are 35mm Ektachrome snapshots and journal entries he created of life in the 1990s. This personal archive revisited in 2013, became the foundation for his book Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, featuring photographs of notable figures such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Nan Goldin, with essays by friends and colleagues like Mickalene Thomas and Rashid Johnson. More recent series will also be exhibited, including Shadow Works and performative self-portraits transformed into assemblages exploring identity, memory, and cultural heritage.

From 19 May – 22 September 2024 at Queens Museum, New York City

Monuments of Solidarity is a survey of artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s 20-year career, from photography to text, moving images, and performance. Frazier’s work builds on the legacy of social documentary, photo-conceptualism, and socially conscious writing. It is a poignant exploration of forgotten narratives surrounding labour, gender, and race in the post-industrial era. Her crucial work sheds light on pressing social and political issues, such as environmental injustice and workers’ rights, demanding recognition for marginalised voices that take up space amongst her frames but also that exist outside of them.

From 12 May – 7 September 2024 at MoMA, New York City

South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi returns to Tate Modern to build on their 2020-21 exhibition. Since the early 2000s, Muholi has documented and celebrated South Africa’s Black LGBTQ+ communities, confronting issues of violence and prejudice. Series like Only Half the Picture capture love and trauma, while Faces and Phases challenges viewers with the direct gazes and testimonies of the people pictured. Other works include Brave Beauties, honouring non-binary and trans individuals, and Being, defying stereotypes. Muholi’s ongoing series, Somnyama Ngonyama, delves into themes of labour, racism, and sexual politics.

From 6 June 2024 – 26 January 2025 at Tate Modern, London

Tunisian-born, Paris-based artist and filmmaker Younès Ben Slimane originally trained as an architect but now uses the camera to delve into the essence of different places. His debut UK solo exhibition, Images de Tunisie, at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, offers an intimate glimpse into Tunisia’s architectural scenery, capturing its atmospheres, memories, and traditions. Ben Slimane blends ethnographic documentaries from France’s national audiovisual archive with contemporary footage from sites like Matmata, Douiret, and Tameghza. Also on display are “Parallel” (2018), revealing the play of steam and natural light within a Hammamet hammam, and “All Come From Dust” (2019), an exploration of bricklaying craftsmanship in Tozeur, Ben Slimane’s ancestral home.

From 11 April – 29 June 2024 at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, London

Berlin-based visual artist Rheim Alkadhi’s Templates for Liberation, confronts the enduring impacts of war and colonialism in contemporary Iraq and beyond. Sculptures, archival records, and counter-histories converge in the ICA’s main gallery, featuring sculptures crafted from heavy-duty transport tarpaulins, bearing traces of their cross-border journeys amidst regional turmoil. The adjacent reading room, “The Land and the People,” immerses visitors in a colonial context, exploring the establishment of Iraq’s modern borders and reclaiming narratives of rebellion against categorisation. Alkadhi’s work, rooted in intimate encounters and feminist practice, profoundly reflects agency amid geopolitical upheaval.

From 11 June – 8 September 2024 at the ICA, London

Andy Warhol’s social life is well documented. From the Factory to downtown NYC, Warhol was surrounded by an omnipresent cloud of artists, actors, and more. But a new exhibition asks: “Who are you when the party is over?” After The Party shows the flip side to the image of the artist, “an individual longing to belong, captured through the camera lens”. Described as a search for connection, we catch Warhol in rarely-seen intimate moments that reveal “his desire to engage with fellow revellers, lovers, and confidants” all through the lens of his camera.

From 17 May – 15 September 2024 at Fotografiska, Berlin

Avant-Garde and Liberation is a group show exploring global modernism’s impact on contemporary art. It highlights political contexts that led artists to turn towards non-European avant-garde art movements that challenged the dominance of Western modernism between the 1920s and 1970s. Featuring works by over 25 artists – including Mohamed Bourouissa, Diedrick Brackens, Cauleen Smith, Maud Sulter, and more – from South Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, the exhibition reflects on the relevance of historical liberation movements in contemporary times.

From 7 June – 22 September 2024 at mumok, Vienna

“Sisters, Saints, Sibyls” (2004–22) is a three-channel projection that pays homage to the triptych format of classical religious art. It delves into the myth of Saint Barbara, Nan Goldin’s sister Barbara’s psychiatric detention at age 12, and Goldin’s struggles with addiction and self-harm. Set in a deconsecrated church, “Sisters, Saints, Sibyls”, like much of Goldin’s work, confronts societal stigmas around stigma, trauma, and resilience.

From 30 May – 23 June 2024 at the Former Welsh Chapel, London

Artist Simone Leigh examines Black femme subjectivity and knowledge production by referencing African diasporic traditions, handmade processes, and forms most often associated with African art and architecture. In the first in-depth survey of her two-decade career, the self-titled travelling exhibition Simone Leigh has been organised by the ICA Boston and is being co-presented by LACMA and CAAM. The recipient of the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, where she represented America, visitors can expect to see Leigh’s ceramics, bronzes, videos, and installations, including several pieces from the US Pavilion.

From 26 May 2024 – 20 January 2025 at LACMA and CAAM, Los Angeles

Twenty Four Twenty Four is an exhibition featuring work by filmmaker Douglas Gordon and artist Miles Greenberg. Greenberg’s 24-hour performance “Oysterknife” (2020) will screen alongside Gordon’s 1993 film “24 Hour Psycho” in an examination of the human body’s relationship to time and space through the contrasting approaches of both artists. Gordon’s film, a 24-hour version of Hitchcock’s Psycho, strips the original of its narrative, focusing on each frame’s sculptural quality. Greenberg’s performance, documenting his 24-hour walk on a conveyor belt, explores endurance and bodily limits. Visitors can view these works during gallery hours or through the glass façade when closed, experiencing the interplay of time and duration, control and chaos.

From 18 June – 28 July 2024 at Albion Jeune, London

don’t worry i won’t forget you is a collaboration between FormaHQ and the West Asian and North African Women’s Library (WANAWAL) of which the centrepiece is an interactive library and exhibition curated by Êvar Hussayni and Sarah Hamed. The show features works by seven contemporary artists – Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Xece “Khadija Baker”, Meriem Bennani, Shamiran Istifan, Olivia Melkonian, and Sara Rahman – and reimagines archives from WANAWAL’s collection. The project challenges colonial archiving methods, offering a welcoming space for visitors to engage with the material. don’t worry i won’t forget you will also be accompanied by a public program.

From 14 June – 10 August 2024 at FormaHQ, London. The launch event will take place on the 13 June 2024, 19:00. RSVP essential, rsvp@forma.org.uk

The Future of Loneliness is a group exhibition curated by Maria Dolfini and inspired by Olivia Laing’s book The Lonely City. Examining loneliness and intimacy in today’s world, the exhibition reflects on technology and social structures’ impact on human connection through the works of 11 artists portraying solitude as a fluid, multifaceted experience. It explores technological progress, environmental anxiety, and societal fragmentation while delving into memory and nostalgia and highlighting the importance of intimacy and connection.

From 30 May – 25 June 2024 at Guts Gallery, London

In what promises to be the largest show of its kind, The Vinyl Factory presents Reverb, a collison of art and sound featuring over 100 artists and musicians from across visual arts, music, film, and live performance. Visitors to the exhibition can expect a selection of The Vinyl Factory’s 20-year history of collaborations with artists as well as new works, such as Virgil Abloh, Theaster Gates, Julianknxx, Kahlil Joseph, Jenn Nkiru, and more. Reverb will be accompanied by a programme of live performances and talks.

From 23 May — 10 November 2024 at 180 Studios, London

Ben Goulder (New Dimension) and Lillian Wilkie (Aperture, Printed Matter) are launching a “very curated” art book fair at Cromwell Place called Inventory. With the intention to “more than just fill a room full of tables”, explains Goulder, it will also have a reading room and a programme of events, emphasising interdisciplinary, collaborative, and non-profit publishing. It aims to explore the influence of artists’ publications and the potential of artist-led presses. Reflecting on print’s past, present, and future as part of an ongoing dialogue in artist and activist practices, this inaugural weekend programme invites established presses, occasional publishers, zinesters, and newcomers experimenting with print. The launch and closing nights will have performances, music, and drinks. 

From 7 – 9 June 2024 at Cromwell Place, London

Co-organised with London’s Hayward Gallery, London, and  Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, All About Love – a title borrowed from bell hooks – is the first major international tour of Mickalene Thomas’s decades-long career. Featuring over 80 pieces from the past 20 years, the exhibition showcases her innovations in mixed-media painting, collage, installation, and photography. Highlighting Black female representation, Thomas challenges conventional boundaries and historical exclusion in art. The exhibition will be accompanied by related programming focusing on women and Black and queer communities.

From 25 May – 29 September 2024 at The Broad, Los Angeles

Jazz Grant’s debut solo exhibition explores her Anglo-Jamaican heritage through collaged archival stills and video. The show blends Jamaica’s verdant beauty with industrial British landscapes as Grant examines the unreliable British imperial memory in the Caribbean, evoking nostalgic yet propagandistic colonial archives. Her eerie animations, featuring decommissioned Yorkshire power stations, signal the delusion and cost of taming nature.

From 15 – 23 June 2024 at VC Projects, London

𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘕𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘢 / 24 is the debut solo exhibition by Royal College of Art graduate and recipient of the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship and Chadwell Award, BLCKGEEZER. The exhibition explores “black” as a material, state, colour, mood, and “state of abstractions. Black Nausea / 24 draws on themes of maternal instincts, fertility, and existential persistence and is influenced by the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Fanon, and Lola Olufemi.

From 31 May – 22 June 2024 at Alma Pearl, London

Anne Imhof’s Wish You Were Gay spans the four floors of the Kunsthaus Bregenz. A personal survey and new body of work, the show reflects on and continues the themes and ideas that have made Imhof an art world star. Featuring bas-reliefs, large oil paintings, sculptures, stage elements, stadium lighting, and new videos from archival footage created in her early days and the underground subcultures she inhabited. Imhof explores themes of finitude, reality, chance, fate, absence, and presence. Without a performance piece, the exhibition becomes a stage, embedding movement and imagined narratives into the work.

From 8 June – 22 September 2024 at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz

Artist Onyeka Igwe – whose work asks “how do we live together?” – will receive her first UK solo exhibition with The Miracle on George Green. The exhibition borrows its name from her 2022, which blended text, images, and archival materials to explore the UK’s tradition of communal spaces, using text, images, and archival materials to map intertwined histories. The exhibition celebrates community resilience and resistance, highlighting shared spaces through letters and memories. Then, journey to the gallery’s newly opened first floor to see Recital, a group exhibition featuring Alex Margo Arden, Edgar Calel, Helen Chadwick, Hamishi Farah, Deborah-Joyce Holman, Sang Woo Kim, which explores the “notion of performativity, from the perspective of the artwork and the act that it fulfils.”

From 6 June – 31 July 2024 at Arcadia Miisa, London