ARTISTS
To Protect These Fragile Things
Goodman Gallery presents a group exhibition To Protect These Fragile Things. This show brings together a powerful selection of works by influential 20th-century and early 21st-century African artists, alongside a new generation making their mark on the global stage. Through this intergenerational dialogue, the exhibition explores how art acts as a protective force in a fragmented world.
The show is inspired by writer Zadie Smith’s assertion in Feel Free that “The writer’s job is to protect these fragile things,” underscoring the importance of preserving the complexity of human experience. This aligns with writer and scholar Sara Ahmed’s notion of care as a radical act of repair and resistance, where creative acts offer protection, resist dehumanising forces, and create connections in a world that seeks to simplify complex human experiences. This exhibition extends Smith and Ahmed’s ideas of protection to image-making, where art becomes a force that resists emotional fragmentation and oversimplification.