Autumn means the art world is officially back! Few times in the year do I have so many shows worthy of inclusion that this list could have been three times its length. Anyway: from Marina Abramović breaking herself into 1,200 stills at Saatchi Yates to Kerry James Marshall’s canon-rewriting epic at the Royal Academy, the month ahead is about artists redrawing what history, memory, and images can hold.
In London alone, Naeem Mohaiemen revisits the fractured protests of 1970s America, Adham Faramawy conjures queer ecologies, and Onyeka Igwe rewires colonial scripts into radical new narratives. Further afield, Hoda Afshar flips the archive in Paris, Lebohang Kganye haunts Berlin with folklore and family, and Gem Fletcher brings her much-loved, much-needed The Messy Truth to New York City to have some serious conversations about the state of photography. Until next month!
Adham Faramawy: The earth laughs in flowers, London, UK
Adham Faramawy conjures a lush, queer ecology of resistance and belonging. Across two films, a sculpture, and new paintings, the artist’s world unfurls: birds become metaphors for exile, mothers turn into rosebushes, and riverbanks swell with grief and ritual. Birds of Sorrow and Daughters of the River ripple with dance, spoken word, and ancestral echo, tracing how bodies – human and otherwise – carry history. Set across sites from Barking & Dagenham to the Nile, it’s a deeply personal, poetically charged show where nothing stays still.
Adham Faramawy: The earth laughs in flowers runs from 12 September – 25 October 2025, Niru Ratnam Gallery in London, UK
