25 September 2025
Gazelle MBA, FRIEZE EXHIBITION REVIEWS: 'Connecting Thin Black Lines' Revisits British Art History
Frieze reviews 'Connecting Thin Black Lines', 1985–2025 at the ICA — Lubaina Himid's major retrospective group show featuring works by the original artists group of artists from her landmark 1985-1985 ICA, London exhibition including artists Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Brenda Agard, Jennifer Comrie, Himid, Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter.
"[...] One of the most distinctive works in the show is Sutapa Biswas’s 'Birdsong' (2004), a video work staged in an adjoining room. It features a young Indian boy in a tastefully decorated domestic space, interspersed with dreamlike imagery. In one scene, a child’s paper mobile instils a nostalgic mood, while the sudden appearance of a fully grown horse in a bourgeois living room disturbs the tranquil atmosphere. The piece initiates a finely poised call-and-response between the two screens on which it is displayed, circling through images of slow-burning power and intensity. The result is an enchanting combination of the familiar and strange."
