Steve McQueen: Sunshine State

A career-spanning introduction to the award-winning director of Small Axe, with contributions from Paul Gilroy, Hamza Walker and more

Declared by Time "one of the most influential people in the world" in 2014, British filmmaker Steve McQueen (born 1969) first presented his work in galleries and museums in the early 1990s, with installations and films influenced by Warhol and French New Wave. (An early friendship with Okwui Enwezor was also formative.) His first major work was Bear (1993), in which two naked men (one of them McQueen) exchange glances that can be interpreted as either flirtatious or threatening. Today McQueen is best known for award-winning films such as Widows (2018), Twelve Years a Slave (2013), Shame (2011) and Hunger (2008). More recently, he directed the five-part film series Small Axe (2020), about London-s Black community and the British Caribbean experience. In 2021, a three-part do