The Bluecoat is presenting Sumuyya Khader’s solo exhibition, Always Black Never Blue. Her work reflects on contemporary life in Liverpool, exploring people and place through illustration, drawing, print and painting.
The exhibition is free and opens to the public from 15 October 2021 – 23 January 2022, 11am-5pm.
The exhibition marks Khader’s first UK solo show in a public gallery and brings together work produced across her career to date. This includes a recent return to painting, the medium that first drew her to art, an artistic development that has been supported by a residency at the Bluecoat in the months leading up to Khader’s exhibition.
Khader’s paintings and illustrations capture fleeting moments and snapshots of daily life, originally captured by the artist photographing the world around her. Khader transforms these snapshots into her compositions, often by flattening images and mixing in abstract shapes, colours and rhythms.
Her work often features restorative green spaces, relaxed interiors and still life, including details such as house plants layered with patterns and markings. The spaces she depicts celebrate the life-giving properties of plants and greenery, and through their precisely detailed compositions, also advocate for a great sense of care for our surroundings and our neighbours.
Khader’s portraits focus on Black subjects and talk to Black lived experience and identity. Her celebration of people and places is often combined with powerful text, such as ‘STAND UP, SPEAK OUT THIS IS A FIGHT FOR US ALL’, ‘WE FIGHT’, and ‘SAY IT LOUD, I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD’ reflecting the urgency of the fight against racism and the erasure of Black voices, particularly in Liverpool.