Pindell is known for employing unconventional materials such as glitter, talcum powder, even perfume, in her work and for rendering visible traces of labour, such as obsessively affixed dots of pigment and paper circles made with a hole punch, or canvases cut into strips and sewn back together, which signify wider, metaphorical processes of deconstruction and reconstruction.

Trailblazing early works include Video Drawings, shown in the inaugural exhibition at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, which led to a long series of works that feature her drawings superimposed over sporting events, news broadcasts and televised elections; and Free, White and 21, 1980, a video in which the artist plays herself and, wearing a mask, a white woman, whose conversation relays Pindell’s own experiences of racism. Her ravishing, pointillist paintings of the 1970s, created by spraying paint through a template, prefigure what is now regarded as her signature aesthetic, in which colourful paper circles are meticulously affixed to unstretched canvases.  

Pindell’s achievements as an artist are equalled by her role as a curator, educator and activist. She was the first black female curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and a co-founder of the pioneering feminist A.I.R. Gallery. In 1979, she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she remains a professor.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell has exhibited extensively throughout her career. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water at The Shed, New York (2020-2021) and the major survey exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen, which toured from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018) to Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2018) and Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2019). 

Notable solo exhibitions also include Spelman College (1971, Atlanta), A.I.R. Gallery (1973, 1983, New York), Just Above Midtown (1977, New York), Lerner-Heller Gallery (1980, 1981, New York), The Studio Museum in Harlem (1986, New York), the Wadsworth Atheneum (1989, Hartford), Cyrus Gallery (1989, New York), G.R. N’Namdi Gallery (1992, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2006, Chicago, Detroit, and New York), Garth Greenan Gallery, New York (2014, 2017), and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta (2015).  

Pindell’s work has been featured in many landmark museum exhibitions, such as: Contemporary Black Artists in America (1971, Whitney Museum of American Art), Rooms (1976, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center), Another Generation (1979, The Studio Museum in Harlem), Afro-American Abstraction (1980, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center), The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990, New Museum of Contemporary Art), and Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African-American Women Artists (1996, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta).

Her works have also been exhibited in important groups shows, such as: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern, London (2017), which toured to Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018-19), and The Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2019); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985 (2017, the Brooklyn Museum, New York), Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–1980 (2006, The Studio Museum in Harlem), High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967–1975 (2006, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro), WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949–1978 (2009, Seattle Art Museum), Black in the Abstract: Part I, Epistrophy (2013, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston), and Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age (2015–2016, Museum Brandhorst; 2016, Museum Moderner Kunst).

Pindell’s work is in the permanent collections of major museums internationally, including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Brooklyn Museum; Corcoran Gallery of Art; Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

Howardena Pindell: A New Language, the artist's first solo exhibition in a public organisation in the UK, was on view at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh (13 November 2021–2 May 2022), travelling to Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (2 July–30 October 2022), and Spike Island, Bristol (18 February–21 May 2023).