From the rebellious women making art within the hostile a long time of the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties to the impact of hip hop, Keith Haring’s life-affirming message of affection, and Marina Abramović’s long-awaited retrospective, listed below are a choice of a number of the big exhibitions to look out for within the 12 months ahead…

ZANELE MUHOLI, THE MEP, PARIS

Describing themselves as a “visual activist”, Zanele Muholi’s fascinating portraits amplify the visibility of Black LGBTQIA+ community. Using their camera as a method of redressing the dearth of representation of queer and racialized people, confronting prevailing narratives and stereotypes, and difficult discrimination, Muholi’s extraordinary portraits are powerful, dignified, and abundantly beautiful. 

“In my world, every human is gorgeous… Talking about photography specifically and the necessity to capture images of ourselves, of our lives, is just not necessarily about beauty per se, it’s concerning the need of documenting realities of people that should be heard, who should be seen and whose lives are sometimes excluded as a part of the Canon,” the South African artist and activist told Dazed back in 2020. “I need people to know our existence and presence, to say, ‘we exist’. In order that existence comes with a visibility that’s positive.”

This major retrospective surveys the renowned artist and activist’s entire profession to this point, bringing together over 200 works and extensive archival material.  

Zanele Muholi at The MEP, Paris, runs from February 1 to May 21 2023

ACTION, GESTURE, PAINT: WOMEN ARTISTS AND GLOBAL ABSTRACTION 1940 – 1970, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, LONDON

This major exhibition surveys the artwork of a disenfranchised generation of international women artists working within the predominantly white, machismo realm of abstract expressionism within the aftermath of WW2. Motion, Gesture, Paint, because the title suggests, highlights the dynamic and vital potential of this static medium. Featuring Lee Krasner, Marta Minujín, Helen Frankenthaler, Behjat Sadr, and Janet Sobel, this expansive exhibition brings together over 150 works made by women from all around the world, all working to expand and advance the visual language of the painting.

Motion, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940 -1970 is showing at Whitechapel Gallery from  February 9 until May 7 2023

SONIA BOYCE, FEELING HER WAY, TURNER CONTEMPORARY, MARGATE

Initially exhibited on the British Pavillion as a part of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022, Sonia Boyce’s Feeling Her Way is the immersive and fascinating exhibition during which visitors move through a sonic landscape shaped by the audio of 5 pioneering Black female singers all singing acapella. The artwork, which was distinguished by winning the Biennale’s Golden Lion prize, presents the wordless, emotive performances on a series of high-definition television screens alongside geometric structures and wallpaper emblazoned with images a a whole bunch of Black British female vocalists. Clarrie Wallis, Director of Turner Contemporary, has commented: “This joyful, ambitious installation celebrates female creativity and collaboration – of finding a voice.”

Sonia Boyce’s Feeling Her Way can be showing on the Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent, from February 4 until May 8 2023 

ALICE NEEL: HOT OFF THE GRIDDLE, BARBICAN, LONDON

Few painters can animate a canvas with such tender humanity and psychological realism as Alice Neel. “For me, people come first,” the American painter once explained. “I even have tried to say the dignity and everlasting importance of the human being.” This resolution permeates her prolific portraits, during which she selected to depict individuals who may not ordinarily be chosen as subjects by other painters. Spending a few years living in Spanish Harlem, Recent York, Neel’s portraits immortalise pregnant women, labour leaders, Black and Puerto Rican children, civil rights activists, and queer performers from amongst her neighbourhood. Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle at London’s Barbican can be the most important exhibition of her work within the UK to this point, bringing together 70 of the artist’s most evocative paintings.

Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle will run on the Barbican, London, from February 16 until May 21 2023

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS: FROM THE 1980S IN THE MODERNA MUSEET COLLECTION, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM

Including work by internationally renowned art world stars resembling Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and Robert Mapplethorpe alongside a broad range of established and obscure Swedish artists, Sleepless Nights brings together artwork being made against the fraught backdrop of the late twentieth century. Characterised by financial crisis, the Cold War, and the Aids epidemic, the concerns of artists making work during these fraught a long time should not too dissimilar from a number of the dominant concerns shaping the current moment. 

Sleepless Nights is running at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet from February 28 2023 until January 14 2024

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: TO SEE TAKES TIME, MOMA, NEW YORK

“…in a way – no one sees a flower – really it’s so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time prefer to have a friend takes time,” Georgia O’Keeffe once remarked. As the primary major exhibition to deal with O’Keeffe’s work on paper, To See Takes Time highlights the preparatory, exploratory works that make clear this seminal American artist’s practice, and the method, over time, by which she developed and refined her ideas. 

Displaying over 120 artworks revamped a period of 4 a long time using charcoal, watercolour, pastel and graphite, the exhibition allows precious insight into the method by which O’Keeffe created her most celebrated works and, while a number of the pieces on display could also be embryonic, giving rise to more famous paintings, they’re in their very own right extraordinary artworks.

Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time is running at MoMA in Recent York from April until August 12 2023

THE CULTURE: HIP HOP AND CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE 21ST CENTURY, BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART

The undoubted influence of hip hop across swathes of up to date culture is profound. The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art within the twenty first Century traces the impact of this phenomenon on music, visual and performing arts, fashion, and technology because the Seventies. Through artworks and artefacts, the expansive show not only demonstrates how the influence of hip hop has manifested itself within the worlds of art and music, streetwear, the runway, and design, the exhibition also underscores the rebellious and revolutionary spirit that characterises this non-conformist movement. 

The Culture: Hip Hop and the Contemporary Art within the twenty first Century is running on the Baltimore Museum of Art from April 2023 until July 2023

KEITH HARING: ART IS FOR EVERYBODY, THE BROAD, LOS ANGELES

Featuring over 120 artworks and archival materials, The Broad’s Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody can be the primary ever museum exhibition in Los Angeles to present Haring’s vast body of labor. Including video, sculpture, drawing, painting, and graphic works alongside representations from the artist’s enormous output of public projects – including subway drawings and public murals – Art is for Everybody embodies the potent message of affection and inclusion at the center of Haring’s life-affirming artworks. 

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody at The Broad in Los Angeles is running from May 27 to October 8 2023

CARRIE MAE WEEMS, BARBICAN, LONDON

Since she emerged within the early Nineteen Eighties, multidisciplinary artist Carrie Mae Weems has, amongst many other things, sought to interrogate gender politics, systemic violence and discrimination, and the present dominant representations of Black subjects. 

Kitchen Table Series (1990) – which dramatises imagined, intimate domestic scenes from the lifetime of a fictive protagonist – is undoubtedly one in every of her most seminal works and sets the tone for a number of the vital themes that recur throughout this diverse and radical artist’s vast oeuvre. 

This upcoming exhibition on the Barbican is the primary major British survey of Weem’s work, encompassing photography, film, objects and installations created over three a long time, most of which have never been seen before within the UK. 

In an announcement concerning the exhibition, Weems explains: “My responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and divulges; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.”

Carrie Mae Weems is running on the Barbican from June 21 until September 3 2023

A WORLD IN COMMON: CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY, TATE MODERN, LONDON

This expansive exhibition will try and trace the ways during which generations of artists have worked across different mediums to explicate and articulate Africa’s vast cultures and historical narratives.

From dream-like utopias to frenetic cityscapes, the exhibition will guide visitors through a wealthy and complicated constellation of visions and interpretations of Africa, past, present, and future. 

A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography can be showing at Tate Modern from Jul 6 2023 until Jan 14 2024

SARAH LUCAS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

Sarah Lucas is renowned for her provocative, irreverent artworks interrogating assumptions about gender, sex, power, and sophistication. Incessantly transforming strange objects in extraordinary ways, Lucas is probably probably the most consistently inventive and groundbreaking of the Young British Art world from which she emerged within the Nineties. 

This exhibition, which is narrated in her voice, highlights the sheer diversity of her practice, bringing together her unique work across sculpture, installation and photography. 

Sarah Lucas’s exhibition can be running at Tate Britain, London, from September 28 2023 until January 14 2024

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON

Deferred because of the pandemic, the Royal Academy’s long-awaited major Marina Abramović show is finally almost upon us. Known for creating work which pushes the artist and her collaborators to the outer limits of their physical and psychological endurance, this exhibition spans five years of Abramović’s provocative artworks and guarantees to supply visitors “the form of intense, physical encounter for which she has develop into known”.

Marina Abramović on the Royal Academy of Arts, London, will run from September 23 until December 10 2023

WOMEN IN REVOLT! TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

Specializing in the febrile years of 1970 to 1990, Women in Revolt! can be a serious survey of labor by women making art amid the tough political and economic climate that defined the latter a long time of the twentieth century.

Spanning the punk scene, Greenham Common and the peace movement, Section 28, the AIDs pandemic, the British Women’s Liberation movement, and the visibility of Black and South Asian Women artists, this landmark exhibition will display the seminal artworks which crucially contributed to the feminist movement. From now-revered art world names to more and obscure artists, this show traces the lineage of art by women in revolt, celebrating “the work and lived experiences of ladies who, ceaselessly working outside mainstream art institutions, were largely disregarded of the artistic narratives of the time.”

Women in Revolt! can be running at Tate Britain from Nov 8 2023 until April 7 2024

Join Dazed Club and be a part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, in addition to a free subscription to Dazed for a 12 months. Join for £5/month today.