Exhibitions to leave the house for in February 2025

Through Motion is a solo exhibition by British-Ghanaian, London-based visual artist, performer/actor, and maker, Heather Agyepong, whose practice explores mental health and wellbeing, invisibility, the diaspora, and the archive through the technique of re-imagination. Through Motion pairs her Ego Death series with the debut screening of the performance piece The Body Remembers. Agyepong describes it as a vital opportunity to revisit and reimagine, fostering growth by looking both back and within.

Through Motion runs from 5 February 2025 at Doyle Wham, London, UK.

The late Los Angeles visionary painter and community leader Noah Davis created figurative works blending realism and dreamlike elements to explore Black life – joyful, melancholic, and deeply human. Drawing from archives, art history, and imagination, his enigmatic paintings reflect the “emotional textures of the everyday.” Cofounding The Underground Museum in  2012 with his wife, fellow artist Karon Davis, Davis championed free access to art. This long-awaited debut retrospective at London’s Barbican features over 50 works from 2007 until his untimely death in 2015, and examines his legacy in painting, sculpture, and community-building.

Noah Davis runs from 6 February – 11 May 2025 at Barbican, London, UK.

SCREEN MEMORIES is a group exhibition exploring the psychological impact of mass media in the Arab world on a generation who came of age at the end of network television’s reign in the early 00s. Referencing news, sitcoms, children’s shows, and music videos, the artists, Yara Asmar, Mona Benyamin and Huda Takriti, curated by May Makki, examine historic and everyday moments through screens. The exhibition takes place across two venues: Abrons Arts Center and Cuchifritos Gallery in partnership with Artists Alliance Inc.

SCREEN MEMORIES runs from 14 February – 14 April 2025 at Abrons Art Center, New York City, USA.

Shadi Al-Atallah’s solo exhibition Hole explores the concept of a hole as a transformative, productive space rather than an absence – a “portal, a conduit” representing potential, intimacy, and subjectivity. For this series, Al-Atallah takes a new approach to figuration, painting the background first and allowing the figure to take shape within the space created, as if the figure appears out of nothingness, filling the ‘hole’ left by the painted surroundings. The figures feel connected to their environment, much like a hole exists because of the matter around it. Inspired by the late artist Pope. L’s Hole Theory and late academic Leo Bersani’s Is the Rectum a Grave?, the works delve into the poetics of liberatory negation, challenging societal norms, and envisioning holes as sites of creation, intimacy and subversion of traditional gender and sexuality constructs.

Hole runs from 17 January – 22 February 2025 at Niru Ratnam in London, UK.

Captive Heart is a new site-specific installation by London-based artist duo Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban, exploring diasporic identity, cultural heritage, and pop culture. Inspired by Selena, the “Queen of Tejano Music,” it reflects the Latinx community along the city’s famous Old Kent Road, with the work examining notions of love, loss, and cultural transformation amid urban change. Developed at FormaHQ studios throughout January 2025, the installation is the first in a series of public interventions at Forma’s new public art space in Bermondsey Square, and invites reflection on personal and collective narratives shaped by gentrification.

Captive Heart runs from 8 February – 27 April 2025 at FormaHQ, London, UK.

Yawm al-Firak, the first solo exhibition by Palestinian-Dutch photographer and Magnum Photos member Sakir Khader, explores the fragile boundary between life and death. Through portraits of seven young Palestinian men and their mothers, Khader reflects “on farewells in times of conflict, occupation, and displacement.” Khader’s work embodies grief, love, and resilience, with the show’s title, inspired by an ancient Arabic poem, connects personal stories to the broader displacement of Palestinians since 1948, confronting the human cost of the Israeli occupation with powerful images that transcend political rhetoric. 

Yawm al-Firak runs from 7 February – 17 May 2025 at Foam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

A central figure in 1970s New York, Peter Hujar’s work gained recognition posthumously for its stark emotional charge. Eyes Open in the Dark – curated by Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar and close friend Gary Schneider – presents the full scope of his later photography in the 1980s, the decade he died of AIDS-related pneumonia, and captures the great depth of his portraits, street scenes, and his beloved animal subjects.

Eyes Open in the Dark runs from 30 January to 6 April 2025 at Raven Row, London, UK.

After Leonora: Echoes of Surrealism explores the lasting impact of the late artist Leonora Carrington’s visionary sculptures, alongside contemporary women artists who reimagine surrealism and its themes today. Featuring late bronzes and lithographs by Carrington, the show includes works from emerging artists like Jade Ching-Yuk Ng, Daisy Collingridge, Emily Pope, and Sophie Dherbecourt, reflecting the movement’s ongoing relevance with artists of a new generation.

After Leonora: Echoes of Surrealism runs from 16 January – 26 February 2025 at Gillian Jason, London, UK

For two decades, Mickalene Thomas has been exploring Black womanhood, inviting audiences into her vivid world of rest, luxury, and radical repose. Known for her bold, large-scale portraits adorned with patterns and rhinestones, Thomas reclaims space and representation in art history, challenging the erasure of Black and LGBTQ+ identities. Drawing on European painting traditions, Thomas’ work exudes love, celebration, and empowerment. All About Love transforms the Hayward Gallery with immersive installations, celebrating the artist’s feminist roots and paying tribute to author bell hooks with its title.

Mickalene Thomas: All About Loveruns from 11 February – 5 May 2025 at South Bank Centre, London, UK

As one show closes, another show opens. As Alvaro Barrington’s commission at Tate Britain’s Duveen Hall enters its final month, the London-based artist opens the aptly titled My Mama Told Me You Was A Problem, Bitch in Milan. Focusing on the layers of Black identity, Barrington blends unconventional materials like concrete, jute rope, and denim to reimagine American narratives. Drawing inspiration from 90s rap, particularly the artistry of Biggie, Jay-Z and Tupac, his works explore hypervisibility, invisibility, and resilience. Through personal motifs, including references to Kobe Bryant and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Barrington’s work melds cultural history, art history, and a visual language of rebellion and celebration.

My Mama Told Me You Was A Problem, Bitch runs from 15 January – 15 February 2025 at MASSIMODECARLO, Milan, Italy

Manifestation #54: Shifting / Spirit / Time is a multi-screen film installation by artist Julianknxx. Building on his 2024 performance Chorus in Flight, the installation explores memory, language, and culture through repetition and sound. Featuring a choral refrain, “Wai Wai Wai”, it transforms poetry into visual art, weaving a narrative of connection, loss, and belonging. Drawing from Fred Moten’s work, the piece challenges national borders and invites reflection on how sound and collective memory transcends history. It will culminate with And If a Tree Sees It All, a new video work mixing poetry and cinematic meditation – “centred on ‘De boom die alles zag’ (‘The Tree Which Saw Everything’), a poignant symbol of resilience and sorrow in Amsterdam Southeast, tied to the Bijlmermeer disaster”.

Manifestation #54: Shifting / Spirit / Time runs from 27 February – 24 April 2025 at Buro Stedelijk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Mexico City is set alight in February with its annual art week. ZⓈONAMACO returns in 2025, showcasing 200 galleries from 29 countries, reaffirming its place as a global leading art fair. Expect exhibitions spanning contemporary art, design, photography, and antiques, with curated highlights including sections on the Global South, avant-garde movements, emerging design, and documentary photography. 

Feria Material will also return, for its 11th edition, showcasing 72 exhibitors from 20 countries, with a focus on Latin American galleries and emerging artists. Expect two floors of exhibitions, special events like Material Monday (on 3 February) and the IMMATERIAL Performance Program featuring Angela Goh, plus a forum with curators at Museo Tamayo. See you in Mexico City.

ZⓈONAMACO runs 3 – 9 February 2025 at Centro Citibanamex. Feria Material runs 6 – 9 February 2025 at Expo Reforma. Both take place in Mexico City, Mexico