Untitled #3C, 2009, reveals the enduring importance of collage, which has played a key role in Pindell’s art since the 1970s. Initially, her engagement with the paper chads that result from the hole punch process emerged organically from the process of creating her spray paintings earlier in that decade. These small circles of paper or card were incorporated into her painting process as early as 1973. The circles and ovals she corrals into service in these works, some punched out of colourful drawings created by the artist over several years, abut and overlap, with many individual parts standing on their edges, bursting out of the notional picture frame. While the grid format remains present in a number of works, the forms of these layered, detailed works tend towards the amorphous, creating dynamic tension between aggregate and whole.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell has exhibited extensively throughout her career. The major touring survey exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen, opened at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2018, travelling to Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2018) and Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2019). Pindell’s work appeared in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern, London (2017), which toured to Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018-19), and The Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2019). In October 2020, the exhibition Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water opened at The Shed, New York, examining the violent, historical trauma of racism in America and the therapeutic power of artistic creation.