“We started talking about identity and who's allowed in certain rooms”: Edward Enninful on curating The ‘90s for a new Tate retrospective

90s Tate — (Image credit: Gareth Cattermole / Tristan Fewings via Getty Images | Vinca Petersen)

Former British Vogue editor, longstanding fashion gamechanger and now major exhibition curator Edward Enninful’s version of The ‘90s is perhaps not what you might expect it to be.

Taking residence at the Tate Britain this October and running until February 2027, on one level ‘The 90s: Art and Fashion’ does what it says on the tin - cherrypicking a series of beautiful, arresting and sometimes (at the time at least) shocking things, from characterful photos of a young Kate Moss smoking on a grotty doorstep with Naomi Campbell, to a formaldehyde-preserved baby shark, courtesy of YBA provocateur Damien Hirst.

A more accurate - yet likely less content-friendly - title for the exhibition, however, would be ‘Art, Fashion and a hell of a lot of Politics’. Split over seven rooms, Enninful has curated a path through the decade that focuses acutely on the demographics to which it started giving more of a voice: young people, people of colour, queer people and women.

The last analogue decade

Enninful, speaking to Shortlist and a handful of journalists ahead of the exhibition’s public opening, says that he wanted to shine a different type of light on the creativity of the decade.

“I remember we had a conversation in the beginning and I said, ‘If this is a YBA [Young British Artists] exhibition, you don't need me for that’. For me it was about ideas of inclusivity, ideas of feminism, ideas of what it meant to be a young person - male or female - in that time,” he says.

“The ‘90s was when we started talking about identity and who's allowed in certain rooms. It's when we started talking about youth and what it means to be a young person in a world that was changing. Conversations about race and sexuality and who gets to be in the room - these are things that we’re [still] navigating right now.”

Yet while these overarching questions still resonate, the nostalgia of a room full of clubbing photos, depicting wildly varying music and social scenes all united in their sweaty lack of self-consciousness, feel like a lifetime ago. The analogue nature of the decade - “the last pure time where you could do whatever you want and not be captured” - feels pivotal. So too does the scrappy, DIY spirit that rings through many of the curator’s memories of growing up and making his way in the creative industries back then.

“I think the message of the exhibition for me was that this was a special time where we all took inspiration from each other, where we all worked together. There was so much cross-pollination and I think that was really, really important,” says Enninful.

“It was a time when young people really came together, and I think that's something that [people now] could pick up from then."

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“I feel like it's a tough time for young people now,” he continues.

“The government needs to pay attention to what young people need and the tools that they need to be given to do what they did [back then]. I think that’s more important than ever. Back then we were just scuffling. And your friend would give you a hand. But I feel like 30 years later, the government should have moved on a little to really help people who want to create. You could squat back then, you could get council flats back then. I wouldn't know how to navigate it if I was a young person today.”

Common people

Young people, and regular everyday people, are the real stars of ‘The 90s: Art and Fashion’. In the entrance hall outside the main exhibit, a selection of the decade’s most notorious cultural pioneers - from Moss and Campbell to Tracey Emin and The Spice Girls - lay a recognisable breadcrumb trail to the main event. But inside, it’s the street photos and snapshots of life that are often the exhibition’s most evocative.

A selection of Juergen Teller photos featuring models on their way to job interview ‘go-sees’ show the everyday style of a generation’s young and beautiful, while British photographer Vinca Petersen’s ‘constellation’ work arranges a patchwork of photos, flyers, diary entries and ephemera like an exploded version of every teenager’s bedroom wall.

However there is weight to the exhibition too. Nation’s Finest shifts the tone, with a titular video from Keith Piper that juxtaposes British flags with footage of Black athletes, while David Rodney’s moving In The House of My Father shows a photo of the artist holding a small house made from skin removed during operations to fight his sickle cell anaemia; an inherited disease that largely affects people of African and Asian descent. It was important, says Enninful, not to merely show the ‘90s through “rose-tinted glasses”.

“As a Black person, I was one of the few in my industry. We had to create spaces for ourselves and for others to follow: women, people of colour, people of different races. There were a lot of things that needed to be addressed,” he says.

For Enninful, ‘The 90s: Art and Fashion’ is a way to keep those conversations going whilst also showing a decade full of possibility and hope; the decade that gave him his career.

“I'm a person of colour, I'm a Black person, I'm an immigrant. My parents came here with nothing, I grew up in a council estate,” he says.

“If you told little Edward from Ghana that I would be having an exhibition in Great Britain at The Tate, that would have been a different story.”

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Lisa Wright is a freelance music, culture and food journalist writing for places including NME, The London Standard, Time Out, Wallpaper, The Observer and more. She likes big riffs, small plates and preferably a night that combines the two.