MARGATE.- Shown in the Sunley Gallery, Bisi (2023) and Untitled (2023–4) echo across seas and histories, connecting the female body to the movements of people, objects, and ideas.

Leigh's practice across sculpture, video and installation, explores Black feminist thought, vernacular architecture, and the histories and lived experiences of the African diaspora—centring women's unacknowledged acts of labour, community and care.

Bisi (2023) honours the late Nigerian curator Bisi Silva (1962–2019), whose vision and influence shaped contemporary art on the African continent and beyond. The sculpture is an anonymous, armless female bust with closely cropped hair and stands at 2.7 metres tall. Its hollow skirt, scaled directly to fit the artist’s body, reflects Leigh’s interest in the skirt as a vessel.

In Untitled (2023–24) a ceramic torso, again armless, with a perfectly round afro, sits atop a skirt composed of 313 ceramic cowrie shells. Long associated with women’s bodies, fertility and prosperity, cowries were also used as currency across Africa and beyond. They remain enduring symbols within the African diaspora, alluding to Atlantic histories and shifting forms of value. Shown here on Margate’s shoreline, the work evokes the tides and currents that carried these shells, binding local place to global histories.

Simone Leigh: Recent Sculptures has been guest curated by Daniella Rose King, a curator and writer based in London. She is currently Lead Curator, Collections Galleries at Wellcome Collection. Her curatorial practice focuses on artists from the Caribbean and Black diasporas, exploring questions of place, memory and relation through feminist and ecological perspectives. She was previously Adjunct Curator, Caribbean Diasporic Art: Hyundai Tate Research Centre at Tate and guest curator of Dominique White and Alberta Whittle: Sargasso Sea (ICA Philadelphia, 2024).

Following on from the display, the Royal Academy of Art has recently announced Leigh will be staging her largest exhibition to date with them in 2027.