Curator and activist Linda Goode Bryant and Fruitmarket director Fiona Bradley discuss the art of Senga Nengudi.

This conversation was recorded in 2019, when Fruitmarket showed the first solo institutional exhibition of Nengudi’s work outside the United States.

Born in Chicago in 1943, Senga Nengudi has been a trailblazer in sculpture for fifty years. A vital figure in the avant-garde scenes of Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s and 1970s, her work is characterised by a persistently radical experimentation with material and form.

Linda Goode Bryant founded the New York artists’ space Just Above Midtown, which showed work by African-American artists, including Nengudi, in the 1970s and 80s.

Further details about the 2019 Senga Nengudi show, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive.

Originally organised by the Henry Moore Institute, the exhibition brought together pioneering sculpture, photography and documentation of performance from 1969 to the present, including recreations of work not seen since the 1970s and a major new installation.

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