Exhibition Visit - Edward George: Black Atlas

Black Atlas is a major new exhibition and film commission by multidisciplinary artist and founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, Edward George. Developed during a 12-month residency at the Institute, the project explores the Image of the Black archive – a collection of more than 30,000 images that document representations of people of African descent in Western art from antiquity to the civil rights era. This will be the first time that images from the archive have been exhibited in the UK. In Black Atlas, George has drawn on the archive to produce a new film: a poetic ‘image essay’ built from sequences of the collection’s images, utilising the archive as both a site of cultural history and a tool for speculative thinking. The images will be narrated by George, who will work through the archive – producing a meditation on time, place, and presence; and on art as a medium of transcendence, a technology of power, and an affirmation of a humanist, anti-racist project. Black Atlas draws inspiration from Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, a series of collaged image panels that trace recurring visual motifs from antiquity to modernity. Echoing Warburg’s associative method of exploring history and memory, George uses images from the Image of the Black archive to reflect on how certain figures and forms resurface across time. In his words, these are images that “have leapt out and staked a claim on the present,” sparking new pathways of thought and interpretation.

Content warning: please note that many of the images presented within the work are violent, and evidence the histories of racism that Edward George is negotiating with this project.

The visit will begin at 3:45pm with an introduction from curator Matt Harle. The film begins at 4pm and lasts approx.57 minutes, there will be time to view the rest of the exhibition and for discussion afterwards. 

This event is open to History of Art staff and postgraduate students (MA, PhD). If you would like to attend, please RSVP to zaena.sheehan.20@ucl.ac.uk. 

Image: Edward George, Black Atlas (Still), 2025, from Image of the Black archive, Warburg Institute. Courtesy of Warburg Institute, © the artist. Commission made possible with Art Fund support.