Edel Assanti is delighted to present two solo presentations by renowned American artist Lonnie Holley across the Premiere and Unlimited sectors at Art Basel 2025.
PREMIERE
Edel Assanti's booth in the Premiere section comprises an interconnected group of sculptures, paintings and assemblages produced by Holley within the past five years, addressing themes of social justice and ancestral memory.
Active for more than four decades, Holley has cultivated a practice of improvisational creativity spanning painting, sculpture, filmmaking, and music. His expansive oeuvre addresses themes including social justice, technology, and ancestral memory, while engaging deeply with specifically American narratives. These include the enduring legacies of the Jim Crow era, the achievements of the Civil Rights movement, and the persistent myths surrounding race and class mobility.
Holley is recognised as a pivotal figure in the Black Art tradition of the American South, while also occupying a vital position within the wider trajectory of twentieth-century and contemporary art. His first major monograph (Rizzoli, 2025), including contributions by Harmony Holiday and John Beardsley, was published this year alongside the release of his acclaimed fifth studio album, Tonky.
In the past two years, Holley's work has been exhibited at institutions including Camden Art Centre (London, UK), Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art (both New York, US), alongside acquisitions of major works by Centre national des arts plastiques, Kadist (both Paris, France) and Norton Museum of Art (Florida, US) amongst others.
ABOUT LONNIE HOLLEY
Lonnie Holley (b. Birmingham, AL, 1950) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia and has been making art since 1979, devoted to a practice of improvisational creativity that spans painting, sculpture, filmmaking and music. Adapting found materials, Holley’s works relay histories that are both autobiographical and collective. His oeuvre tackles universal topics such as humanity’s precarious relationships to the natural world and technology, alongside specifically American and personal histories, encompassing the residual effects of the Jim Crow era, the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement, and the ongoing struggles with false narratives around class mobility and race.
In 2024, Holley’s work was the subject of a solo show at Camden Art Centre, London, UK. His work has recently been exhibited at the International African American Museum, Charleston, USA (2024); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA (2023); the Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2023); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA (2022); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, USA (2022); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA (2021); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2020); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2020); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2018); MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA (2017); de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (2017); among many others. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the International African American Museum, Charleston, SC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Holley’s first film, I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, (2019), premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2019. In 2023, he received lifetime achievement awards from the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, USA, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine, ME, USA. Holley is signed to Jagjaguwar, and lives and works in Atlanta, GA, USA.
Image: Lonnie Holley,Without Skin (The Whole Congregation), 2025. Courtesy the artist and Edel Assanti.
