The Artists’ Artists
To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select the single exhibition or event that most memorably caught their attention in 2025.
Sana Musasama (Eric Firestone Gallery, New York)
Musasama has been exhibiting for decades, initially at institutions committed to creating spaces for artists of color where none had previously existed, including New York’s Studio Museum in Harlem and Cinque Gallery, which ran between 1969 and 2004. But she has also shown widely throughout the rest of the United States and abroad. Recently, however, as with a number of older Black artists, more attention is being paid to her work.
I’ve followed Musasama and her art for a long time, but her exhibition at New York’s Eric Firestone Gallery struck me as an unbridled tour de force. This compellingly installed show featured a range of ceramics—from intimately scaled wall-based objects to larger slab-formed sculptures—created over the past forty-two years. Her singular approaches to glazing, color, mark-making, and embellishment imbued these works with vivid life. Several pieces called to mind dancing West African Egungun figures in their formal complexity, while others from her “House Series,” 1979–85 and 2020–, suggested that home can be as much a place for unseen spirits as for humans. Displayed on round and oval platforms of varying heights, Musasama’s elevated sculptures had a commanding and elegant presence that demanded and rewarded close attention.
–Dawoud Bey