React, Respond, Repair

Honoring Black History Month with Guest Curator Barry Johnson

On the occasion of Black History Month, we invited longtime, bestselling Saatchi Art artist Barry Johnson to guest curate a collection of artworks in honor of the celebration. On the heels of a challenging year, we cannot overstate the importance of art as a vehicle for reflection and social change. This crucial function gave rise to the title of this online exhibition—React, Respond, Repair—three words that came to mind as our guest curator selected artworks for this show. In this show, we highlight Black artists whose works take on the active dimensions of those words, as many of these artists create art as a response to our social climate and to the limits of the art-historical canon, spurring us viewers to participate in these artworks’ calls for repair. More broadly, the works in this collection speak to a plurality of Black narratives and technical approaches to art today, including figurative paintings, experimental ceramics, and contemplative abstracts.