The Royal Academy of Arts will present an exhibition focused on Black artists from the American South in March

Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South will bring together around 64 works by 34 artists from the mid-20th century to the present.

Image: Thornton Dial, Stars of Everything, 2004.Mixed media. 248.9 x 257.8 x 52.1 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation © 2022 Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.

Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South will showcase unique African American artistic traditions and methods of visual storytelling. The distinctive creativity of the artists in this exhibition has brought about artworks whose subjects and materials often reverberate with the South’s painful history - the inhuman practice of enslavement, the cruel segregationist policies of the Jim Crow era, institutionalised racism as well as the Civil Rights Movement.

The exhibition will bring together around 64 works by 34 artists from the mid-20th century to the present, in various media including assemblages, sculpture, paintings, reliefs, and drawings – mostly drawn from the collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia. Although these artists are now well known in the United States, most of the works in this exhibition will be shown for the first time in Europe. The exhibition will also feature quilts by the celebrated quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and the neighbouring communities of Rehoboth and Alberta. Artists in the exhibition will include Mary Lee Bendolph, Thornton Dial, Ralph Griffin, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Loretta Pettway and Purvis Young, amongst others.

The majority of these artists acquired their art-making skills by learning from family members, mentors and friends, as well as through experimentation. Their challenging economic situation and lack of resources - a result of systemic racism in the South - pushed their creativity into a specific direction. Artists would use local, recycled materials and found objects to realise their artworks.

Location: The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries
, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, W1J 0BD. Date:17 March – 18 June 2023, Price: from £15. Concessions available; under 16s go free.