The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure

Author: Ekow Eshun (Editor)
Publisher: National Portrait Gallery
Year: 2024
Pages: 192
ISBN: 978-1855145580

The Time is Always Now: Artistis Reframe the Black Figure presents 22 contemporary African diasporic artists working primarily in the UK and US whose practice foregrounds the Black figure. Published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, this book explores the accomplished works of individual artists and celebrates a collective assertion of Black presence. 

Through their work in figuration, the artists are inviting a shift in the dominant art history perspective, form “looking at” the Black figure-- via an external, objectifying gaze-- to ‘seeing through’ the eyes of Black artists and the figure they depict.