Filmmaker Ava DuVernay organises two art exhibitions honouring important figures in black history

Working with a gallery in London, the US director will bring together 13 African artists to create new works

US filmmaker Ava DuVernay has turned her sights to art exhibitions. AFP

American filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who directed acclaimed films such as Selma, 13th and the Netflix series When They See Us, is organising two art exhibitions in the UK and US to honour important figures in black history.

The shows, entitled Say My Name, are a collaboration between the director and Signature African Art gallery in London. The first exhibition will open in London on Tuesday, October 27, while the second will take place in Los Angeles during Black History Month in February next year.

DuVernay has worked with gallery director Khalil Akar to bring together 13 African artists to present commissioned works in homage to activists and victims of police brutality.

For the London outing, Nigerian artist Oluwole Omofemi has made a series of nine paintings as a tribute to George Floyd. The figure refers to the length of time – nearly nine minutes – a US police officer knelt on Floyd's neck and caused his death in May.

Moufouli Bello, an artist from Benin, will present a portrait of Breonna Taylor, 26, who was shot by plain-clothed officers who raided her Kentucky home.

There are also works that celebrate activists such as academic and author Angela Davis, whose portrait has been created by Dennis Osakue from Nigeria, and Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize, painted by Lagos-born artist Taiye Erewele.

Other works in the show will explore significant moments in black history in both the UK and US, from the transatlantic slave trade, the Black Lives Matter movement and the arrival of the Windrush generation in the 1940s, wherein the British government encouraged the immigration of Afro-Caribbean people to fill shortages in a post-war labour market.

Self-taught artist Adjaratou Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso will look at the Windrush scandal of 2018, which uncovered details on the wrongful detainment and deportation of the generation and their descendants.

Forty per cent of the sales proceeds will go to DuVernay’s Law Enforcement Accountability Project, which commissions black artists to create various art forms around the issue of police brutality and violence.