Maud Sulter was an award-winning artist and writer, cultural historian, curator and gallerist of Ghanaian and Scottish heritage who lived and worked in Britain. Through the mediums of text, photography, performance and sound, her works interrogated the representation of black women in the histories of art, the media and photography.
Sulter was one of eleven women artists exhibited in The Thin Black Line at the ICA, London, curated by Lubaina Himid, in 1986. This show marked a significant breakthrough for contemporary Black and Asian art in a British public gallery. Sulter’s subsequent presentations gained her international recognition: she was awarded the British Telecom New Contemporaries Award and the Momart Fellowship at the Tate Gallery Liverpool in 1990. She was also nominated for the European Photography Award in 1991. Her series Syrcas (1993) was selected by the British Council to represent Britain at Africus, the first Johannesburg Biennale in 1995. She also curated Check It!, a two-week festival celebrating black women’s creativity, and with the artist and photographer Ingrid Pollard she started the Blackwomen’s Creativity Project.
She obtained an MA in Photographic Theory from Derby School of Art, now University of Derby in 1990. Maud Sulter’s art work can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Arts Council Collection, British Council Collection, the Scottish Parliament, National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, City Art Centre Edinburgh, the McManus, Dundee, New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge, and several private collections.
Her writings are available at the Glasgow Women’s Library, the Scottish Poetry Library, the Stuart Hall Library, London and many other libraries.