David A. Bailey MBE is a photographer, writer, curator, lecturer and cultural facilitator. He is the founding Director of ICF (International Curators Forum) and a Trustee of the Stuart Hall Foundation.
Bailey’s practice is focused on the issues relating to black representations in the area of photography and artists’ film. These interests informed his appointment as an advisor on the founding bodies that established Autograph (ABP) and the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in 1994.
One of his main concerns are the notions of diaspora and black representation in art. He co-curated the seminal exhibitions ‘Back to Black – Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary’ with Petrine Archer-Straw and Richard J. Powell at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (1995) and ‘Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance’ with Richard J. Powell at The Hayward Gallery in London (1997) and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Bailey co-curated the groundbreaking ‘Diaspora Pavilion’ at the 2017 Venice Biennale together with Jessica Taylor. The ‘Diaspora Pavilion’ grew out of a desire to provide a space for artists to pose counter-narratives that interrogate the notion of diaspora and a topical interest in the impact of increased global mobility, displacement and migration on culture.
Bailey has extensively written about photography and film. From 1996 to 2002, he was Co-Director of the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive (AAVAA) at the University of East London. Until the end of 2009, he was Senior Curator of Autograph ABP, and Curator of the organisation PLATFORM’s Remember Saro-Wiwa Living Memorial. He worked as an associate curator at inIVA from 2003-2005.
David A Bailey’s personal archive is held in Iniva’s Stuart Hall Library.