A victory of the imaginatively crafted over the conceptual: In the Black Fantastic reviewed

‘These artists are offering other ways of seeing,’ says Ekow Eshun, curator of In the Black Fantastic, and from the moment you push open the Hayward’s heavy swing doors you see what he means. Outside, a world of grey utilitarian concrete; inside, a vibrant crew of invaders from planet Zog glittering like Technicolor Pearly Kings in bright carapaces of beads, sequins and buttons.

The kind of thing a nimble-fingered alien might come up with if his spaceship crash-landed in a haberdashery department, Nick Cave’s ‘Soundsuits’ make Ziggy Stardust look Earthbound (see below). Brought up with seven brothers by a single mother in Missouri, Cave learned early how to pimp hand-me-downs and his suits are exquisitely tailored. Slightly larger than life to accommodate performers – he’s a former member of Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater – when standing vacant they have the benign presence of tutelary spirits. Cave made his first after seeing footage of the LAPD’s beating of Rodney King that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Feeling vulnerable as a black American male, instead of rioting he constructed a protective shell. The handful of examples gathered here is a tiny sample of the more than 500 he has made since. They’re called ‘Soundsuits’ because of the noises they make when worn; when silent, they make a visual splash.

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Cave is one of 11 artists from the African diaspora who have each been given a room to themselves in which to reimagine our imperfect world in pictures. There are mercifully few words. Tabita Rezaire’s film installation ‘Ultra Wet – Recapitulation’ (2017) suggesting that ‘sexuality is a construct’ is as preachy as this exhibition gets, and Sedrick Chisom’s titles – ‘The Wholly Avoidable Death of Mighty Whitey, The Last Drunk Dionysian Hero, AKA The Wholly Tragic Birth of Fragile Narcissus’ (2020) being one example – as prolix.