Kambui Olujimi: North Star / Patty Chang and David Kelley: Beta Space

Two new shows open November 1: Kambui Oljumi: North Star and Beta Space: Patty Chang and David Kelley.

What does the Black body look like when it is freed from the gravity of white supremacy? Kambui Olujimi: North Star is an immersive exhibition featuring Kambui Olujimi’s inquiry into the liberatory possibilities of weightlessness as an alternative to the structuring forces of anti-Black racism, a concept he has explored since 2019.

North Star brings together a selection of work that includes large-scale watercolor and ink paintings, a site-specific mural, a film, and a new sculpture and video installation. Together these works invite us to imagine the new relationships we might chart between our bodies, the self, the planet, and the universe once deeply entrenched forces are destabilized and replaced by boundless possibility. 

“Olujimi’s work is deeply joyful,” said SJMA’s Chief Curator, Lauren Schell Dickens. “With his North Star installation, he’s offering us a way to navigate away from the entrenched politics of representation, to imagine possibilities of boundlessness, within bodies, between bodies, and with the universe.”

Beta Space: Patty Chang and David Kelley premieres a multimedia exploration of the dynamic entanglements among humans, animals, minerals, and machines. Using deep-sea mining as a point of departure, Patty Chang and David Kelley’s project encourages us to think expansively and critically about the loops—of scientific discovery, resource extraction, and technological development—that connect us with places uninhabited by humans. 

Chang and Kelley’s project holds together these loops to facilitate a broad conversation about how we relate to such sites as we navigate multiple climate crises. Drawing on the forms of shipwrecks and whale falls, the artists’ multimedia installation weaves together footage and objects related to the International Seabed Authority’s recent and ongoing convenings in Kingston, Jamaica; the HMS Challenger collections at natural history museums in London and Oxford; and scientific specimens from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. 

“Taking a poetic approach to the loops that bind our lives with the deep sea, Chang and Kelley invite us to think critically about our responsibilities to other forms of life as we navigate multiple climate crises,” said Juan Omar Rodriguez, SJMA’s assistant curator.

This exhibition is the eighth iteration of the Museum’s “Beta Space” series, an ongoing commissioning program that encourages artists to prototype, test, and iterate new ways of thinking and making. Inspired by the legendary Silicon Valley garage, “Beta Space” supports artistic experimentation and invites visitors into the artistic process. Recent “Beta Space” artists include Trevor Paglen (2021), Pae White (2020), and Victor Cartagena (2017).