The Royal Academy will host the first major UK exhibition by African American artist Simone Leigh in September 2027, featuring a series of new monumental works. Leigh, who in 2022 became the first African American woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale, said the show will explore themes including architecture, art produced under fascism, and her own connection to the UK through her Jamaican heritage.
Leigh told the Guardian that current political events in the US have influenced her thinking. “I’ve been thinking about American history a lot in the development of these works because we’re now living under full-on fascism here,” she said. She expressed concern about the complicity of some US institutions in the Trump administration’s ‘anti-woke’ attacks, comparing the situation to the McCarthy era.
The exhibition will be the largest of Leigh’s career. Curator Tarini Malik noted that few spaces can adequately represent the breadth of her work. Leigh, who began her career in ceramics—a medium often dismissed by critics—has experienced a meteoric rise over the past 15 years, with her work connecting Black Lives Matter to older movements and resonating with theories of public intellectuals like Christina Sharpe.
Leigh’s breakthrough came in 2012 with the exhibition You Don’t Know Where Her Mouth Has Been at The Kitchen in New York. Her sculpture Brick House (2019) was displayed on the High Line in New York, and her Venice Biennale show, The Milk of Dreams, won the Golden Lion. The third edition of her Loophole of Retreat event will take place in London during the exhibition.
Additionally, the Turner Contemporary in Margate will show two of Leigh’s sculptures—Bisi (2023) and Untitled (2023–24)—from 3 October 2025 until 15 March 2026.
