The Late June 2026 Cherry Basket is ripe and ready for picking! This series shares noteworthy art exhibitions with an emphasis on Black artists. I hope you find something sweet ❤️ 🍒
New York
Under a Plantain Tree: Notes on Liberation
- What: “Beneath the broad, sheltering leaves of the plantain tree—a diasporic archive rooted across the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Black Atlantic—liberation is neither singular nor complete. It is iterative, fugitive, and unfinished. Juneteenth marks not a moment of arrival, but a delayed recognition: freedom announced after its supposed decree, conditions that remain beyond emancipation.”
- Who: Ronald “EFE” Ramirez, Jeffrey Merris, Zion Estrada, Laurena Finéus, Luis Gutierrez, Yanira Collado, Naudline Pierre, Bony Ramirez, Raelis Vasquez
- Where: Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL) (161-4 Jamaica Avenue | Queens, NY)
- When: June 19
- What: “Working amid a turbulent era in US history shaped by widespread social and political change, the seventeen artists in Fade embrace spirituality, surrealism, and nonlinear conceptions of time to locate spaces of possibility.”
- “The word “fade” carries many meanings: a cinematic transition, a type of haircut, or a skillful basketball move. “Fade” is both a departure and an adaptation, or something receding or slipping in and out of view. Here, “fade” becomes a framework for understanding how artists complicate the idea of determinacy by revisiting histories through abstracted forms, reshaping materials into unique compositions, and making work rooted in reverence and feeling.”
- Who: Turiya Adkins, Harlan Bozeman, Kiah Celeste, Antonio Darden, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Y. Malik Jalal, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, Andina Marie Osorio, Utē Petit, Taj Poscé, Amina Ross, Coumba Samba, Shani Strand, Malaika Temba, Chiffon Thomas, London Pierre Williams
- Where: Studio Museum in Harlem (144 W 125th Street|New York, NY)
- When: May 7 – June 20
- What: “Holding it Together, a group exhibition bringing together 20 queer New York based artists organized in collaboration between Marco DaSilva, Isa López, and Beverly’s NYC. The exhibition is a fundraiser responding to the escalating defunding initiatives by the current administration, whose policies flirt with authoritarianism, formulating the precarious economic landscape we currently face. Rooted in principles of solidarity economies and mutual aid, the exhibition serves as an urgent call to collectively build systems of support to cope with the economic crisis through local, informal, and mutual networks. 100% of funds raised will directly support Queer|Art and participating artists.”
- Who: Jordany Genao, Armando Alleyne, Chris Cortez, Chris Gartrell, Dana Robinson, Devin N. Morris, Devin Osorio, Felipe Baeza, Heather Lynn Johnson, Jairo Serna, Miguel Martinez, Monte Marin, mujero, Pol Morton, RIDIKKULUZ, Rodrigo Moreira, Sean O’Connor, Terry Hempfling, Liz Collins, Maxx Wade
- Where: BEVERLY’S (297 Grand Street|New York, NY)
- When: June 18 – July 18
- What: “Planets in Transit, the newest project from Brooklyn-based photographer and DJ Guarionex Rodriguez Jr., celebrates the liberatory potential of this energy and the dancefloor as a transformative refuge. This body of work, on view in the Gallery at Ace Brooklyn, honors the spaces that align bodies in dance — celestial, planetary, spiritual, and human.”
- Who: Guarionex Rodriguez, Jr
- Where: Ace Hotel Brooklyn (252 Schermerhorn St|Brooklyn,NY)
- When: May 14 – July 21
- What: “Everything Must Be Returned, the first New York, institutional solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Shani Strand. Through her work, Strand weaves together culturally inscribed materials and practices to examine how the visible—objects, architectures, and social performances—operate as metonyms for the invisible: ghosts, infrastructure, and history.”
- “Guided by the question, “How might we imagine alternative moralities (or moral alienation) as methods for navigating social relations and accessing or evading violence?” Strand draws on trickster figures, including the duppy (a ghost or spirit in Jamaican Patois) and demonic angels, for a new series of sculptures. These figures, arranged across the entirety of the gallery, trace intersections of diasporic and historical narratives at the edges of violence and in spaces of resistance.”
- Who: Shani Strand
- Where: Artists Space (11 Cortlandt Alley|New York, NY)
- When: June 12 – August 15
Los Angeles
- What: “Au Fil du Lin, a series of staged photographs conceived as a unified body of work. Drawing from the different worlds that have shaped the artist, the series revives cultural traditions and reshapes them into contemporary, personal expressions.”
- “By combining photography with fabric, Sy recalls the collages and layered magazine imagery she was drawn to as a child. The resulting works feel expansive and tactile, transforming photographs into dimensional objects intended to be experienced within an exhibition space rather than as flat images alone.”
- Who: Selly Sy
- Where: HVW8 (661 N. Spaulding Ave|Los Angeles, CA)
- When: May 22 – June 21
- What: “Curated by Marantz Moon, Is It True? examines the distance between liberation promised and liberation lived. More than 160 years after Juneteenth, Black Americans continue to navigate systemic inequities, wealth disparities, redlining, voter suppression, over-policing, and the ongoing struggle for self-determination. In this context, the exhibition poses a simple but urgent question: Is It True that we are free?”
- “Through painting, sculpture, mixed media, and conceptual practices, the artists explore both personal and collective understandings of freedoms inherited, denied, fought for, and still being envisioned.”
- Who: Adrian Culverson, Christina Joseph, Marantz Moon, Jakia March, Monique Mitchell
- Where: DMST Atelier (4614 W Washington Blvd|Los Angeles, CA)
- When: June 13 – July 20
- What: “Into the Pluriverse is an interdisciplinary, group exhibition that incites the co-conspiracy of many ways of being human. The term pluriverse is a Zapatistan term that illustrates a commitment to and the concept of a world in which many worlds fit (Malandonado-Villalpando, 2022). Through the particularity of Afro-Caribbean diasporic worldmaking practices, the exhibition seeks to trouble ways of being that think of nature as necessarily perfect and untouchable, to highlight queer/multispecies kinship, Black arboricultural practices, and ancestor veneration as vital to temporal (re)negotiation.”
- Who: Jessica Taylor Bellamy, April Bey, and Nia Lee
- Where: Sovern LA (5757 West Adams Boulevard|Los Angeles, CA)
- When: June 25 – October 8
London
- What: “Dreams Lost Upon Waking, the first solo exhibition of Jemila Isa at the gallery and held at our Studio M space. Working across painting and sculpture, she engages with themes of spirituality, faith, womanhood and the complexity of locating the self-amidst inherited narratives.”
- Who: Jemila Isa
- Where: Maureen Paley (60 Three Colts Lane|London, EN)
- When: June 4 – June 25
- What: “Niru Ratnam will present a major exhibition titled ‘Red Flags’ by the leading British artist Keith Piper. A founding member of the BLK Art Group along with Eddie Chambers, Donald Rodney and Marlene Smith amongst others, Piper emerged in the early 1980s as part of generation of radical young Black British artists who confronted racism, social inequalities, colonial legacies. With an emphasis on self-organisation this informal group also tackled mainstream art world exclusion by writing texts putting together exhibitions and staging conferences…”
- “The exhibition at Niru Ratnam will include works made by Piper in the 1980s, including two works that were displayed in his first solo exhibition at the Black Art Gallery and two works from the early BLK Art Group shows.”
- Who: Keith Piper
- Where: Niru Ratnam (71-73 Great Portland Street|London, EN)
- When: June 5 – July 25
PARIS
- What: “Pays rêvé, pays réel takes its title from a 1985 poetry collection by Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) and draws inspiration from the Martinican writer, poet, and philosopher’s long-lasting influence on contemporary artistic practices across the African diaspora. The exhibition features artists whose work engages with histories of migration, memory, language and belonging, contemplating the diasporic experience as lived reality and as imagined space.”
- “Through painting, sculpture, sound, and video, Pays rêvé, pays réel considers how contemporary artists inherit and expand Glissant’s legacy, creating new visual and conceptual languages for understanding the complexities of the African diaspora today.”
- Who: Merikokeb Berhanu, Sanford Biggers, Julien Creuzet, Leslie Hewitt, Leslie Hewitt in collaboration with Jamal Cyrus, Jason Moran, Alex Gardner, Simone Leigh, Arjan Martins, Roberto Matta, Moké, and Thomias Radin.
- Where: Esther Schipper Paris (16 Place Vendôme – Staircase B across the courtyard, 2nd floor to the left|Paris, France) & Galerie Natalie Seroussi (34 rue de seine|Paris, France)
- When: June 4 – August 1