The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 19, 2024
Italo
2021
(American, b. 1976)
Unframed: 182.9 x 223.5 cm (72 x 88 in.); Framed: 204.5 x 242.6 cm (80 1/2 x 95 1/2 in.)
© Kambui Olujimi
Location: not on view
Did You Know?
To simulate floating bodies, the artist used video and photographs of people jumping on trampolines as models for this series.Description
Kambui Olujimi’s North Star series features paintings, drawings, and video of weightless, floating Black bodies “freed from the gravity of oppression,” as the artist puts it. Olujimi pictures a future in which a politics of resistance can result in true bodily freedom. The artist is interested in representing Black joy or Black rhapsody as a counternarrative to the constant circulation of imagery of Black suffering and death. All of the figures in his paintings have variegated skin tones and ambiguous genders, highlighting their occupation of a transitional space and our perception of them as futuristic, otherworldly beings.- Contemporary Art Rotation - Spring 2022. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 1-September 25, 2022).New Histories, New Futures. Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH (June 26-September 12, 2021).
- {{cite web|title=Italo|url=false|author=Kambui Olujimi|year=2021|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2021.147