Phoebe Collings-James
Artist Profile
Phoebe Collings-James is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, ceramics, drawing, video, performance and text. Her practice examines power, violence, language and Black subjectivity through materially and conceptually rigorous forms.
Phoebe Collings-James employs materials to destabilise Western philosophical hierarchies that privilege permanence and authority. Objects in her work resist fixity: they sag, pierce, bind or hover, existing in states of tension. Through layering, repetition and embodied performance, she interrogates the erotics and politics of fear — exposing how systems of control are internalised and enacted upon the body.
Phoebe Collings-James graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009 with a BA in Fine Art. Since then she has established a significant international exhibition profile. Her work has been presented at Tate Britain, London; MoMA PS1, New York; the Serpentine Galleries, London; and the New Museum, New York, among other major institutions. In 2019 she was awarded the Frieze Artist Award, a landmark commission recognising artists at a pivotal moment in their careers. Her installations have also featured in significant biennial contexts, contributing to global conversations around race, violence and representation.
Across her practice, Phoebe Collings-James constructs environments that confront viewers with both vulnerability and resistance — insisting on the body as a site of knowledge and disruption.
