Maud Sulter

Maud Sulter (1960–2008) was a Scottish artist and feminist activist of Ghanaian heritage. She left Glasgow at the age of seventeen to study in London, then at Derby. She started her career as a poet and published her first volume As a Blackwoman in 1985. That same year, she took part as a visual artist in The Thin Black Line, curated by Lubaina Himid, the first major exhibition to feature contemporary women artists from ethnic minorities in a British public institution, at the ICA in London. Another significant step came in 1990 with the publication of Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity by Urban Fox Press, the publishing house which she ran with Himid. This groundbreaking publication was the result of the Blackwomen’s Creativity Project, which she started with photographer Ingrid Pollard in the 1980s. She was active in the Black feminist and lesbian movements, often inspired by African-American activists, artists and writers. She curated nearly twenty exhibitions and set up a gallery, Rich Women of Zurich in London’s Clerkenwell, with a view to exhibiting her own works and those of other artists from her community.