ICA Patrons are pleased to invite Frieze Connect members to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London for a private viewing of Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025, a major group exhibition and event programme curated by Turner Prize winning artist Lubaina Himid, who will represent Great Britain at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Celebrating 40 years since The Thin Black Line, the groundbreaking group show of young Black and Asian women artists curated by Himid at the ICA in 1985, the exhibition will present work by the original artists Brenda Agard, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Singh Burman, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter all together for the first time. Featuring new commissions as well as artworks made over the past four decades, the exhibition will extend beyond the gallery space with a rich programme of film screenings, talks, music and live performances – fulfilling Himid’s original ambition for a multi-disciplinary Black arts festival across the ICA’s exhibition, cinema and live spaces.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is London’s leading space for contemporary culture that commissions, produces, and presents new work in film, music, performance, and the visual arts by today’s most progressive artists. At its landmark location on The Mall in central London, the ICA invites artists and audiences to interrogate what it means to live in the world today, with a genre-fluid programme that challenges the past, questions the present, and confronts the future.
The ICA platforms the daring and the curious, supporting artists and ideas that challenge perceptions, inspire social change, and connect with diverse audiences locally and globally.