Artist Phoebe Boswell has unveiled a major public art commission for Art on the Underground, installed across the escalators of Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate stations in London. The immersive photographic series features Black subjects moving underwater, captured in a stop-motion style that responds to the physical movement of commuters. The project was inspired by the statistic that 95 per cent of Black British adults do not swim, a reality Boswell links to generational trauma and structural inequality.
This commission is significant for its reclamation of water as a space for Black bodies, contrasting historical narratives of forced migration and trauma with themes of healing and liberation. By placing these large-scale images in the high-traffic, subterranean environment of the London Underground, Boswell challenges the art-historical canon and addresses contemporary political tensions regarding freedom of movement and citizenship in the UK.