During Summer 2024, LUMA Arles will be hosting this year’s Black Artists Retreat (BAR), an almost annual convening run by Theaster Gates. Conceived in Chicago over a decade ago at a time when Black artists were rarely invited to self-convene outside of white institutions, BAR radically underscored the weight of creating, protecting, and nurturing Black space through care, critical inquiry, and conviviality. Since 2013, Gates has invited artists from all over the world to reflect together on their making practices, explore challenges in the industry, and advance mentorship and knowledge sharing.

Year after year, BAR has demonstrated the generative possibilities in carving out space and time for Black artists to rest, embrace joy, build community, and share openly in the frame of an artist-led retreat. As part of Gates’s and LUMA’s long-term project that was launched with the artist’s solo exhibition in Arles, Min | Mon, in 2023, Black Artists Retreat will be held this year for the first time in France from July 15th to July 17th 2024. Such a special moment of exchanges will be a unique opportunity to forty artists based in and from Europe to meet within a space and time dedicated to them. LUMA will serve as a meeting ground to dialogue and to strengthen the collective creativity. For three-days, B.A.R. will be fostering private and public engagement featuring workshops and talks between the exhibition space and the wider site of LUMA Arles.