Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Passio (2026) © Michaela Yearwood-Dan Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Marianne Boesky Gallery Photographer: Deniz Guzel.
The Whitworth has announced The Practice of Liberation, a major new exhibition by acclaimed contemporary artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan, marking her first solo institutional museum presentation in the United Kingdom.
Formed entirely of newly commissioned works, the exhibition transforms the gallery space into a deeply layered, site-specific installation that harmonizes painting, ceramics, and sound.
This significant cultural project has been organized in close collaboration with Towner Eastbourne and Arnolfini in Bristol, both of which will host the exhibition following its initial premiere at the Whitworth.
The core of the presentation centers on a curated sequence of fourteen expansive abstract paintings and six detailed ceramic vessels, all set within a multidimensional spatial environment designed by the artist and activated by a bespoke musical score composed by Alex Gruz.
By drawing heavily on the rigorous aesthetics and dense symbolism of the Catholic Church, Yearwood-Dan constructs a powerfully resonant environment to critique the historical intersections of colonial legacies and institutional religion through the lens of her own memory, offering a profound reflection on the perpetual journey toward personal and collective independence.
Using a highly sophisticated vocabulary of abstraction, Yearwood-Dan’s vibrant canvases incorporate fragmented passages of her own diaristic writing alongside adapted texts, literary fragments, and borrowed song lyrics.
These text elements shift seamlessly between the intensely intimate and the overtly political, manifesting at varying scales across the painted surfaces.
Intellectual references to iconic civil rights figures such as James Baldwin sit directly alongside the artist’s raw, personal reflections, inviting the public to investigate how the private sphere and the political arena intersect in unexpected ways.
The title of the exhibition pays direct homage to the seminal writings of cultural theorist bell hooks, whose foundational work explored how education, visual culture, love, and fine art can be actively weaponized as tools for social and personal sovereignty.
Rather than presenting freedom as a static or finalized state, The Practice of Liberation frames it as a continuous, daily labor grounded in radical care, quiet introspection, and innovative strategies for community building.
The underlying structure of the fourteen paintings directly mirrors the traditional motif of the Stations of the Cross, a sequential devotional narrative central to Catholic liturgy.
Yearwood-Dan subverts this formal framework as a compositional reference point, introducing recurring visual motifs that echo ecclesiastical architecture, such as collapsed or fallen crosses, and complex diptych layouts reminiscent of historic stained-glass windows.
Concurrently, her six ceramic vessels reference both the biblical narrative of Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana and the malleable, organic contours of Ghanaian bolga baskets, beautifully evoking themes of domestic comfort, heritage, and sacred ritual.
Additional layers of historical meaning are communicated through her titles, such as the painting Passio, which takes its name from the Latin root for suffering and endurance—a spiritual concept historically embedded within Catholic models of devotion.
Her palette also shifts dramatically, moving away from her signature bold, saturated colors toward muted, subdued tones that simultaneously recall the faded pigments of Renaissance religious art and the sun-bleached, atmospheric hues of the Caribbean.
As the exhibition prepares to embark on its national tour, curators and museum directors have widely celebrated Yearwood-Dan’s ability to reimagine the institutional gallery space as a sanctuary for collective healing and open dialogue.
Olivia Heron, Curator at the Whitworth, emphasized the rich complexity of the commissions, noting that the multi-dimensional installation creates a vital space entirely dedicated to memory, growth, and restoration.
Sook-Kyung Lee, Director of the Whitworth, reiterated this sentiment, highlighting that the project perfectly aligns with the institution’s mission to foster open, inclusive, and safe spaces by offering an ambitious presentation deeply anchored in lived experience.
Curators from the touring partner venues, including Noelle Collins of Towner Eastbourne and Gemma Brace of Arnolfini, praised the immediate vitality, calligraphic gestures, and profound vulnerability running through the collection, noting that the exhibition serves as a powerful invitation for audiences to step away from modern systems of burden and collectively imagine a different world.
Yearwood-Dan herself views the exhibition as a culmination of years of creative exploration, describing it not as a finite reckoning, but as an ongoing, compassionate invitation for visitors to pause, be held, and actively engage in their own daily practices of self-liberation.
