Goodman Gallery presents Lifelines, a group exhibition featuring works by Ghada Amer, Jared Ginsburg, Kapwani Kiwanga and Unathi Mkonto, among others. Lifelines brings together artists from across generations and geographies who engage the aesthetics of minimalism through a tactile and embodied approach. The exhibition reflects on mark-making, not as a gesture for personal expression, but a reflection on memory, politics and meditative presence.
In the history of Minimalism, the mark was stripped of emotion and replaced by systems, units and industrial form, distilling art to its most “objective” means. In contrast, the artists in Lifelines reclaim the mark and saturate it with material complexity through process and experimentation. Through slow processes, scraping, stitching, rubbing, folding and assembling, these works explore time and labour, transforming the surface into a space of intimate dialogue.
Kapwani Kiwanga and Ghada Amer explore power and its historical effects on our contemporary culture, particularly in Amer’s work through a more feminist lens. Kiwanga’s Transfer II is a large sculpture of a ring made from bronze, with a transparent glass ball balanced on it. The work reflects on colonial extraction and the impact of commerce on society.
Amer’s stitched canvases operate in a similarly layered space. In ANOTHER BLACK PAINTING, the outlines of women’s bodies are stitched in black thread on black ground, visible only in shifting light, as an attempt to reframe female agency and desire.
Ginsburg leans into improvisation and experimentation within his process. In Hanging Drawing, an installation constructed from bamboo and string and described by the artist as a three-dimensional drawing, the line is extended into space. The artist reflects on the movement of the shape of the line and its shadow. Ginsburg’s paintings carry similar instincts such as scratched notes, abandoned gestures and fragments of text which emerge, vanish and reappear.
Mkonto, working in wood for this exhibition, builds restrained, upright forms from salvaged materials that are similar to pillars or towers. Describing his practice as “anti-architecture,” he creates structures that speak of emotional states and spatial memory. Across disciplines and geographies, artists in Lifelines reclaim the mark, not only to express the self, but to make space for process, memory and embodied knowledge.
Lifelines will run until the 23rd of August 2025 at Goodman Gallery, London.
