Face of Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the various restrictions brought about by the Covid pandemic, Southampton City Art Gallery staged a year-long exhibition, ‘Face of Britain’ (September 2020–September 2021), curated by the artist Nahem Shoa. The exhibition brought together a number of outstanding portraits held by (or on loan to) the Gallery, of artists who painted British individuals from the seventeenth century to the present day. Importantly, however, these ‘canonical’ works from established collections were shown in confluence with a selection of Shoa’s own striking oil paintings of black sitters. In asking ‘head-to-head’ how diverse we are, it was a timely show, not least given the context of heightened debates of decolonisation, a growing acknowledgement of social inequities (further exposed by the Covid pandemic) and the newly emerging reality of a post-Brexit Britain. In this essay, Shoa offers a contextual account of the exhibition. It draws back to his development as an artist of mixed race in the early 1990s, and offers commentary on his major undertaking ‘Giant Heads’, as a means to establish just what it has meant to end up being the curator of a show entitled ‘Face of Britain’. Nahem Shoa, Daniel Sulleiman (2008) oil on canvas, 60.8 × 50.7 cm.