Shade Art Review

Shade Art Review

Home
Notes
Chat
The Message (Weekly)
Archive
About

July 2025

A Summer Pause (Kind Of)
For reading about: Black Britain beyond London, Paul Gilroy's photographic histories, Victorian portraits, artist mothers and the Saar family legacy
 • 
Lou Mensah
4
Message #3 Adrian Piper 'The Mythic Being' (1973)
It's philosophical investigation not identity art.
 • 
Lou Mensah
Five days with a First Nations Superhero in Arles
A festival diary exploring how one photograph of an Indigenous boy in a Captain America costume became the face of Europe's premier photography event
 • 
Lou Mensah
 and 
Greta Morton Elangué
4
Dennis Morris at the Photographers' Gallery, London.
From front page news at 11 to Island Records art director at 19, 'Music + Life' shows that the photographer is more than Marley and punk shots.
 • 
Lou Mensah

June 2025

May 2025

Message #1 Jean-Michel Basquiat 'Irony of Negro Policeman' (1981)
When 'Raw Talent' Means Institutional Blindness
 • 
Lou Mensah
Black fatigue? The pivot to identity-free Black art
When Black portraiture becomes too politically charged, the art world shifts to abstraction—but the power dynamics remain unchanged
 • 
Lou Mensah
7
Takenya Holness: 'The image is beautiful because the people are beautiful. Them just existing is beautiful.'
The London-based British Jamaican photographer documents life on her homeland island with grace and attentiveness
 • 
Dale Berning Sawa
 and 
Lou Mensah
The Architect Was Always There
On the Spatial Poetics of Noah Davis’ Life’s Work
 • 
Lou Mensah
© 2025 Lou Mensah
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture