Emerging as an artist in the avant-garde scenes of Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s and 1970s, Senga Nengudi has been a trailblazing and influential force for over 50 years. Nengudi’s pioneering practice is currently the focus at the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, which represents the artist’s first solo institutional exhibition outside of the United States.

Characterized by a persistently radical experimentation with material and form, Nengudi’s work spans sculpture, performance, and photography. Building upon the legacy of abstraction, Nengudi imbues her work with human, philosophical and spirituals concerns. In her famous R.S.V.P. series, for example, she stretched, filled and knotted nylon tights with sand and mounted them on walls to create “abstracted reflections of used bodies”. Initiated in 1975 following her pregnancy, the series represent humble, yet powerful, icons of the triumphs and traumas of the human body.