Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time exhibition catalog

MADISON MUSEUM of
CONTEMPORARY ART

FAILURE
to LAUNCH
Temporal Suspense in
Kambui Olujimi’s Zulu Time
Sampada Aranke
There is a thin line between explosion and implosion in Kambui
Olujimi’s Zulu Time. Structures and materials are mobilized in ways
that confuse the boundary between these two forms of destruction.
Olujimi leaves us with more than destruction, however. He imparts a
renewed set of sensations that relish in the indeterminacy of construction
and deconstruction, a suspended examination of power’s temporal
dimension
Part of what is at play in Olujimi’s work is an understanding of
the contingency of power. This is best evidenced in T-Minus Ø (2017),
a set of 13 digitally printed cotton flags that feature images of failed
rocket launches. Since military research and the conquest of space are
usually presented as progressive if not utopic explorations undertaken
for scientific knowledge, the rocket becomes the perfect surrogate for
nationalist—and by extension masculinist—vitality. 1 The work of
nationalism is metaphorized through space exploration, and in this vision
of the future, the rhetorics of conquest and settlerism work against
those racialized and gendered bodies who will be left behind.
Olujimi takes the rocket’s promise and disturbs it, then; the
rocket’s phallus wryly signals the doubleness of failed explosion as
an ejaculation gone wrong for the nation and therefore for mankind.
Each flag features one historic failed launch, the images of which are
manipulated by the artist, layered upon themselves, and echoed in
their repetitive presentation. What we see is multiple and spectacular
attempted takeoffs: the pyrotechnics of failure right before the moment
of collapse. What we’re given is a commentary on our current political
moment not as exceptional nor isolated, but rather as part of a broader
system of power in which our political present is a manifestation of the
long durée of history itself.
T-Minus Ø comments on the deep resonances between science
and politics, space and nation, universality and patriotism. Olujimi
arranges these flags so as to proffer a salute, or at least a quiet repose,
in which the viewer is asked to consider how the ambitions of scientific
innovation might mark an affiliation with those nationalist and militaristic
impulses that set these rockets in air. Importantly, these iterative
objects stand in stillness indoors, taken out of their landscapes and
stuck endlessly in their failures to launch. Throughout Olujimi’s work,
time is trapped in the moment of explosion, at once spectacular and yet
eerily static, a moment stuck without resolution.
These are Olujimi’s time bends in Zulu Time. In his work,
time sticks, suspends, holds still. Moments are anticipated, but never
fully activated. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), referred to commonly
as Zulu Time, is a “universal” way of marking time, in which
zero is the point of departure for hours, minutes, and seconds. Standard
timekeepers have adopted UTC as the normative mode of time,
therein reinforcing the West as timekeeper of modernity. 2 Experts
insist that this use of “Zulu” has no direct relation to the Bantu people
of South Africa and that the word is merely adopted from NATO’s phonetic
alphabet in which the letter “Z” is signaled through “Zulu.” However,
the naming points us to colonial methods of timekeeping used
1. For more information on the intersections
between space exploration, popular culture,
and gendered representations, see: Constance
Penley, NASA/TREK: Popular Science and
Sex in America (London: Verso Books, 1997);
Daniel Sage, How Outer Space Made America:
Geography, Organization, and the Cosmic
Sublime (London: Routledge, 2016); Peter
Dickens and James S. Ormrod, eds., The Palgrave
Handbook of Society, Culture and Outer
Space (London: Palgrave, 2016).
2. Jean Baudrillard, “Modernity,” in Encyclopaedia
Universalis Vol. 12, trans. David James
Miller (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis
France, 1985), 424–426; Edward Said, Orientalism
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1997).
3. “Military & Civilian Time Designations,”
Time Zones | Greenwich Mean Time, accessed
February 27, 2017, https://greenwichmeantime.com/info/timezone/.
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y conquest cultures and reflects Western visions of the African continent.
Modernity’s aesthetic wing, shorthanded as modernism, relies upon traditions
and practices that have notoriously fixed the nonwhite body within
temporal stasis, if not regression, through representational traps that tarry
between hypervisible and invisible, undesirable and lasciviously sexual.
Modernism tends to maintain the temporal logics of modernity, which lock
the Black body into a temporal logic of regression— the stereotype of the
savage left behind by the West, and therefore stuck in History and therefore
lagging behind in narrative progression. 4
In light of this, Olujimi flips the script. He uses Zulu Time as a
point of departure, considering the ways that Blackness itself might always
be imbedded in modernity’s logics of time and, by extension, structures
of power. In other words, Olujimi suggests that “Zulu” being the name
for a universal system of timekeeping is no coincidence. Because the word
connotes a people whose anticolonial history has been oft-cited in Black
freedom struggles across the world, “Zulu” connects Blackness to the field
of temporal play. Olujimi calls attention to these vestiges in the structuring
of everyday contemporary life, and, by extension, illuminates modernism’s
role in the consolidation of white supremacy today. His is an anachronistic
4. For more on the relationship between temporality,
colonialism, and empire as it unevenly
impacted African diasporic subjects, see: Anne
McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and
Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York:
Routledge, 1995); Keya Ganguly, “Temporality
and postcolonial critique,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, ed.
Neil Lazarus (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2004),162–182; Simon Gikandi, “Globalization
and the Claims of Postcoloniality,” South
Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 3 (2001): 627–658;
Barbara Fuchs and David J. Baker, “The Postcolonial
Past,” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly
65, no. 3 (2004): 329–340.
Black-aesthetic practice that takes time out of sync, and settles in the impasse
of irreconcilable liminality. In this visual formulation, time becomes
a mechanism through which we understand power through sight—what we
see is not only what we get, but also what was given to us.
To mobilize this kind of sight through Olujimi’s works is to suspend
oneself between explosion and implosion, and ultimately to practice
modes of relationality gripped by the gestures of disturbance. Take Killing
Time (2017), for instance: a series of wall hangings composed of single
and hinged handcuffs decorated with costume jewelry, gold-plated chains,
feathers, fake pearls, and shiny cubic zirconia. The cuffs and delicate expanses
of chain unravel across the wall, calling attention to the transitional
functions of the prison industrial complex as they unevenly impact Black
people. As handcuffs are used to temporarily limit movement of subjects
accused of transgressing the law, Olujimi’s instruments of restraint are
fashioned to form a precarious relationality pieced together through thinly
constituted chains. Their juxtapositions, excesses, and scale position us at
the crossroads of pain and pleasure particular to Black life.
In Killing Time, Olujimi cites and departs from Melvin Edwards’s
phenomenal Lynch Fragments (1963–ongoing). This series of relief sculptures,
composed of layered and entwined metal chains, fragments, and
industrial objects sometimes used in acts of anti-Black violence, calls
attention to the weight of such bodies of pain. Departing from Edwards,
Olujimi installs cuffs in plain view, making the conditions of such violence
unavoidable to his audience. In Olujimi’s work, as in Edwards’s, there’s a
call to think about the ways that power manifests relations between subjects
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Above:
Melvin Edwards
Some Bright Morning, 1963
Welded steel
14.5 x 9.3 x 5 inches
(36.83h x 23.62w x 12.7d cm)
Courtesy Alexander Gray
Associates, New York
© 2017 Melvin Edwards/
Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York
Facing:
Stowaway, from Killing Time
whose bodies are made temporally present by these cuffs, while nevertheless
absent from their presentation. Put another way, in order to meet their
function, the cuffs necessitate wrists which are themselves made present
here only by their absence.
Killing Time activates the suspension of time as mediated through
the prison industrial complex, best understood as the relationship between
prisons, courts, policing, criminalization, and surveillance that anticipates
and exceeds prison walls. The prison industrial complex relies upon
a durational understanding of time, where punishment is determined by
fantastical algebras of equivalence: prison sentences are calculated through
irrational ratios of time, as evidenced by sentences that amount to multiple
lifetimes inside prison walls. “Doing time” becomes shorthand for serving
out one’s sentence, a formula where time is a form of waiting with no
guaranteed endpoint. With Killing Time, Olujimi takes this logic of time in
a different direction, suggesting that to kill time is to do time, while waiting
to make use of time, while waiting for time to pass.
Further, Olujimi’s cuffs and accessories suggest that time is a
practice of relationality mobilized through the proximity to power structures
that make us subjects. However, relationality is by no means overdetermined
by those powers. The blinged-out, decadent objects networked by
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shiny chains blur the boundaries between pain and pleasure. They annotate
handcuffs and jewelry as two kinds of excess: on the one hand,
the forms of structural violence as made evident by the prison industrial
complex, and, on the other, the pleasurable decadence of embellished
jewelry. Both are worn, both require the cold touch of metal on flesh.
This relationality exists within temporal suspense: disturbing gestures
of time-keeping that are unquestionably Black.
Blackness means doing time in a particular way. For Olujimi,
this way is through anachronism, a method of historical collision in
which the past cannot escape its present. Olujimi materializes this
collision through overlay and juxtaposition such that time stands still,
freezes momentarily so as to enable a moment of reflection, thought,
gathering. Operating as a clock of his own making, Olujimi arrives at
the task of timekeeping and asks us to reconsider how radical Black
aesthetic interventions open up impossible possibilities which may,
if we’re lucky, rupture time itself, collapsing past, present, and future
altogether.
1, 2, 13, 14, front
and back covers:
Untitled (detail),
from T-Minus Ø
4–5, 8–9, 13, 14:
T-Minus Ø
(installation view)
12:
Fathom (detail)
14 15

POETICS
of (IN)VISIBILITY
Leah Kolb
In Zulu Time, Kambui Olujimi presents a body of work that
plays with notions of visibility, gesturing towards socio-economic
infrastructures and political systems whose authority relies on the very
absence of detectability. In a clever parallel, Olujimi similarly disguises
his artwork’s own power by eschewing the literal. In refusing to give
visual form to what he specifically references, the artist asks us to
look behind, around, under, and through his objects and images—to
consider what might be absent or obscured as much as what is present
and tangible. His artworks become simultaneous presentations of
visibility and invisibility, and demand a metaphorical slowing down of
time to allow for careful, contemplative observation.
Time itself manifests as the most invisible yet pervasive
force in this exhibition. Zulu Time—the phonetic pronunciation of
Z-Time—refers to Coordinated Universal Time (formerly Greenwich
Mean Time), the world’s standardized mode of tracking time. Specifically,
it references the time at the prime meridian (longitude 0 degrees),
the invisible and ultimately arbitrary line from which all global time
zones are calculated. Since Great Britain was the world’s foremost
maritime power when the concept of latitude and longitude originated,
the starting point for designating longitude is based on the location
of the British Naval Observatory. Thus, Zulu Time literally revolves
around Western norms for structuring a day. 1 This notion of universal
time as an intangible yet ever-present expression of dominance and
an imposition of control—a residue of Empire—serves as Olujimi’s
jumping off point for creating two- and three-dimensional works that
explore entrenched hierarchies and power disparities, while questioning
assumptions underlying our understanding of the world at large.
Consider InDecisive Moments, a series of four hourglassshaped
vessels with craggy protrusions, resembling icebergs, that
extend inward on either end. The bottom section of each hourglass
is partially filled with water, further reinforcing the visual allusion
1. Dava Sobel details the politics, history, and
science of global mapping and timekeeping
in Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius
Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of
His Time (New York: Penguin Books, 1995).
Regarding the arbitrary nature of the prime
meridian, she writes: “As the world turns, any
line drawn from pole to pole may serve as well
as any other starting line of reference. The
placement of the prime meridian is a purely
political decision.” (4).
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to those floating mountains of ice whose exposed peaks belie their
massive underwater heft. Contrasting medium and message, Olujimi
uses glass, an inherently transparent material, to create sculptures that
remind us of a natural phenomenon whose real danger lies hidden beneath
the surface. This visual pun serves as a metaphor for the opaque
policies that privilege some while destroying others. In other words,
the injustices we can see are only the “tip of the iceberg,” while the true
source of America’s systemic and racially determined discrimination
is the country’s structural foundation. 2 Indeed, centuries after the
country’s founding, inequitable core principles continue to influence
through unfair policies and political violence. 3
The sculptures comprising InDecisive Moments recall both
geological formations (icebergs) and methods for time keeping
(hourglasses). Olujimi ascribes this visual convergence to his interest
in the scientific notion of “deep time,” from which springs our modern
conception of geological time—that “immense arc of non-human
history” that accounts for the formation of the earth itself. Impossible
to comprehend within the scale of human time, deep time reveals the
imperceptible forces that shaped the world as we currently perceive it:
the record of continents moving and reshaping, of mountain ranges
rising and falling, and of glaciers—the source of icebergs—transforming
topographies. 4
In the work titled The Black That Birthed Us Olujimi again
brings us out of human time to consider the elemental systems
underlying all life. Twenty-five large sheets of printed paper have been
attached to the gallery wall to reveal a composite image of star clusters
and intergalactic dust. The work can be read as an homage to the big
2. Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a succinct and
numerical summary of America’s racially directed
policies towards its Black population:
“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety
years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate
but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing
policy.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for
Reparations,” The Atlantic, May 24, 2014.
3. Structural racism refers to the normalization
and legitimization of historical, cultural,
institutional, and interpersonal policies,
practices, and attitudes that perpetuate and
produce cumulative, chronic adverse outcomes
for people of color. Keith Lawrence and
Terry Keleher, “Chronic Disparity: Strong
and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities:
Poverty Outcomes: Structural Racism”
(paper presented at the National Conference
on Race and Public Policy, Berkeley, CA,
November 2004).
4. David Farrier, “How the Concept of Deep
Time is Changing,” The Atlantic, October 31,
2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/
archive/2016/10/aeon-deep-time/505922/.
bang theory, which explains how the universe developed from a tiny,
dense state into what it is today, including the most basic forces in
nature, from electromagnetism to gravity. The science of the big bang
and of deep time have enabled us to construct an encompassing view
that places human history in the context of scientific historiography—
a way to perceive what could not otherwise be seen.
On the wall facing The Black That Birthed Us is a second
composite image made from another set of 25 sheets of paper. Rather
than conjuring associations to those forces outside of time that have
impacted how we see the earth, Ville Radieuse, habite-à-machine (The
Radiant City, the living machine) presents a view of the very human
forces—situated within the perceivable chronology of historic time—
that covertly direct the course of our lives.
This installation pictures the implosion of St. Louis’s Pruitt-
Igoe housing projects, the now-infamous public housing structures
that stood as towering symbols of inner-city poverty before being
demolished in the 1970s. But Olujimi does not simply replicate the
archival image in large scale. Instead, he digitally alters it with visual
echoes and stutters—blurring, multiplying, shrinking, cropping, and
overlapping the image onto itself so that it bounces back and forth
between clarity and obfuscation. He uses an image within an image
within an image to represent the notion of a system within a system
within a system. Thus, the formal attributes of this piece complement
the artist’s conceptual point that inequalities, including housing
inequalities, exist not on a single plane with one-point perspective,
but within multiple contexts and facets that interact and interconnect,
positioned on top of and within each other; some visible, some
distorted, and some beyond sight.
Familiar narratives constructed around the failures of
Pruitt-Igoe blame modernist architecture, public assistance programs,
or the predominantly Black residents themselves. 5 With Ville
Radieuse, habite-à-machine, however, Olujimi offers a more complex
reading. He suggests that focusing on the visible elements at the surface
of the narrative—the architectural design of the project, public welfare
programs, the inhabitants of the building—conveniently blinds us to
the larger contextual forces at play: the economic decline of post-World
War II urban St. Louis, and the city’s public policies and insidious
18 19

private strategies that effectively sorted and zoned the population by
race. 6 We also ignore the fact that this “urban renewal” plan did not
set forth an adequate strategy for funding and maintaining its massive
public housing project, nor did it stimulate the economic development
necessary for Pruitt-Igoe’s residents to financially succeed. Instead, by
tying the structural upkeep of the building to the tax base of its residents,
city leaders all but guaranteed a continuing cycle of poverty and
deterioration. Further, the 57-acre site within which the 33 apartment
complexes were situated was never integrated into the infrastructure
of downtown St. Louis: the original architectural plans for traffic and
pedestrian thoroughfares connecting Pruitt-Igoe’s community to the
larger city were deemed too expensive to execute. Thus, Pruitt-Igoe and
its inhabitants were left to live in what became a wasteland of concrete
towers isolated from the larger world—a metaphorical prison. 7
Olujimi explores the connection between human economies
and imprisonment in another body of work within the exhibition, a
series of altered handcuffs collectively titled Killing Time. Rather than
being joined by a chain these cuffs are linked together with ornamental
strands of rhinestones and costume jewelry, thereby transforming an
object of restraint into one of wearable fashion. The physicality of these
objects and their implied relationship to the human body, as circling
both the wrists and the neck, functions to animate the works, breathing
life into the law-and-order policies that disproportionately target
and incarcerate men of color. 8
5. Originally conceived of and designed as
segregated housing complexes, Pruitt Igoe
opened in 1955 as racially integrated, owing
to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling
in Brown vs. Board of Education, which
deemed unconstitutional the legal practice of
“separate but equal” segregation. In practice,
however, racial integration within Pruitt-Igoe
remained minimal, and segregation became
a de facto reality: by the late 1960s, Pruitt
Igoe’s population was 98% Black. This can be
attributed to many factors, including whiteflight
to the suburbs and city’s long history
of racism and segregated housing practices.
See: Elizabeth Birmingham, “Refraining the
ruins: Pruitt-Igoe, Structural Racism, and
African American Rhetoric as a Space for
Cultural Critique,” Western Journal of Communication
63, no. 3 (1999): 291-309; Mary
C. Comerio, “Pruitt Igoe and Other Stories,”
Journal of Architectural Education 34, no. 4
(1981): 26-31.
6. The 1949 Housing Act that funded the
development of Pruitt-Igoe was used as a
tool of racial segregation and as justification
for the clearance of impoverished neighborhoods
in downtown St. Louis. Discriminatory
practices such as redlining further deepened
existing patterns of racial segregation.
The Myth of Pruitt-Igoe, directed by Chad
Freidrichs (2011; St. Louis, MO: First Run
Features, 2012), DVD.
7. For a more comprehensive evaluation on the
social, political, and economic forces that
contributed to the failure of Pruitt-Igoe,
see, for example: Katherine G. Bristol, “The
Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural
Education 44, no. 3 (1991): 163-71.
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Absent physical bodies, Olujimi’s modified cuffs could be
mistaken for jewelry on display, commodities for purchase. Formally,
the lyrical line work of the draping jewelry recall labyrinthine networks
of commercial trade routes, a possible allusion to the commodification
of human life during America’s 250-year history of slavery. A visual
reminder of the global economy of the slave trade, Killing Time can be
read as a metaphorical map of stolen time and lost lives. These works
also gesture toward a much more contemporary capitalistic endeavor:
the economics of our criminal justice system. In the astute words of
scholar and activist Angela Davis, prisons perform a “feat of magic”
by tricking people into thinking that disappearing vast numbers of
human beings is the same thing as disappearing the social problems
that result from ingrained racism and the cycle of poverty. This act of
rendering people invisible by placing them effectively out of sight is
highly profitable for private industries providing goods and services to
those behind bars. 9 But as glittering reminders a system that enriches
some through the forced imprisonment of others, the works in Killing
Time suggest that our present approach to crime and punishment has
effectively re-commodified human life.
Perhaps, then, it is appropriate to conclude this essay with
discussion of Olujimi’s installation titled T-Minus Ø, a dignified arrangement
of thirteen flags, each displaying violent explosions of failed
rocket launches. Whether or not Olujimi’s objective was to circle back to
the legacies of Western colonialism by alluding to the original thirteen
British colonies in North America, the flags nevertheless vibrate with
nationalist intention. In the United States, we make public affirmations
of loyalty to our flag, which we see as a symbol of our country, our history,
and our pride in both. But if a flag represents such an idea, or even
an ideal, what exactly are we are being asked to salute? The veiled legacy
of a dehumanizing economy? Olujimi’s flags, with their grand imagery
of collapse, point to the failures in our nationalist agenda, both past and
present, visible and invisible. With T-Minus Ø, Olujimi suggests that we
are, indeed, out of time; that we have entered a moment in time when we
must face those failures, acknowledge the subtleties of institutionalized
biases, and make visible those bodies that are being kept out of sight
through underhanded strategies of subjugation.
8. Garrick L. Percival cites numerous studies
showing Blacks are 6 to 8 times more likely
to be incarcerated relative to whites, and
Hispanics are 3 ½ times more likely to be
incarcerated than whites. Garrick L. Percival,
“Ideology, Diversity, and Imprisonment:
Considering the Influence of Local Politics
on Racial and Ethnic Minority Incarceration
Rates,” Social Science Quarterly 91, no.4
(2010): 1064-1082. See, also, Leah Sakala,
“Breaking Down Mass Incarceration rates in
the 2010 Census,” https://www.prisonpolicy.
org/reports/rates.html.
9. Angela Davis, “Masked Racism: Reflections
on the Prison Industrial Complex,” in Race,
Class, and Gender in the United States (7th
edition), ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York:
Worth Publishers, Inc., 2007), 683-87.
16, 21:
Ville Radieuse, habiteà-machine
(The Radiant
City, the living machine)
(installation detail)
22–23:
The Black That Birthed Us
(installation detail)
24 25

30

28, 29:
The Drop, from
InDecisive Moments
30, 32:
The Chase, from
InDecisive Moments
31, facing:
A Sheltered Wish, from
InDecisive Moments
33:
Blue Ebb, from
InDecisive Moments
32

ZULU
TIME
On the Art of Kambui Olujimi
Gregory Volk
Along with many artists of his generation, Kambui Olujimi
often deals in found objects and Internet images. He has, however,
a transformative—at times almost magical—way of reconfiguring
these objects and images into artworks that defy easy categorization:
sculptures, flags, and large-scale wall works incorporating transmuted
photographs; sculptures that have attributes of painting and drawing;
protean sculptures with variable dimensions. These works are
suffused with ideas about race, class, politics, urban environments,
space exploration, cosmic structures, history, nature and the sublime,
and technology. Olujimi is an expansive thinker and eclectic research
underpins his projects. He is also a consummate maker who lavishes
attention on all aspects of his works. Characterized by a concentrated
engagement with forms and materials, these works emanate a peculiar
power. Granted, they are sculptures or photographic images, but they
also operate as uncanny forces.
Stowaway (2017), one of several wall sculptures from Olujimi’s
ambiguously titled Killing Time series, seems at first lovely and stately.
Silver, gold, and black metal circles, a small blue ball (almost like a
mini-globe), black brocade, and a gleaming, multicolored pendant
form an exquisite mesh of textures, colors, and shapes. This austere
yet lush work rivets one’s attention like some sort of potent talisman.
With Never Adds Up (2017), four metal circles are arrayed on the wall.
Descending from each and connecting the whole work are gracefully
curving silver and gold chains, a gold braid, earrings, glittery trinkets,
and blue beads. Solitaire (2017) is even more elaborate, arcing up the
wall with multiple circles, curving strands, pendants, and assorted
small objects.
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Although these works register as largely abstract, they are
made of non-abstract objects from the world at large, as opposed to
components created by the artist in his studio. They loosely hint at
human figures—perhaps even totemic figures or deities—with circles
suggesting heads and strands and chains suggesting bodies and limbs.
Elegantly sweeping across the wall, these strands and chains also
resemble the gently arching lines drawn on maps to indicate great circle
routes—the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a
sphere. Although great circle routes appear arched on two-dimensional
maps, the actual flight paths are straight lines along our threedimensional
earth.
Zulu Time, the title of the exhibition, similarly signals a
clash between different systems of information and different ways of
representing the world. This is the military and civil aviation term for
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), an even more accurate calibration
that supersedes Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Based on zero degrees
longitude, which runs through the Royal Naval Observatory southeast
of London, GMT originated in the nineteenth-century during the
heyday of the British Empire when Great Britain fancied itself as the
center of the world. It is paradoxical and ironic, to say the least, that
the term Zulu time points inescapably to the Zulu people of Southern
Africa, who fiercely battled the invading British in late 1878 and 1879
before being brutally defeated and colonized. However unwittingly,
this term is encoded with conquest, colonialism, ethnic and racial
identity, and flat out racism.
Look more closely at the works I’ve mentioned and you
discover—perhaps you are startled to discover—exactly what the
materials are. The metal circles are actual handcuffs. They come with
shuddering connotations. In this era of devastating mass incarceration,
these are the restraining devices routinely used by (predominately
white) police officers on (disproportionally black) arrestees. They
are not a symbol of power and subjugation, but rather the actual tools
used by the powerful to subjugate others, tools at the front lines of
systemic racism. That’s one reference. Another is to the gruesome
shackles and manacles used—again routinely—in crammed ships,
auction blocks, and plantations throughout the centuries-long ordeal
of the Middle Passage. The other elements of these works are low-end
costume jewelry, not Cartier or Bulgari from the flagship stores where
the wealthy (largely white) people shop, but affordable adornments
from the neighborhood. Still, this lowbrow bling does not look
tacky, trashy, or abased. Instead it looks downright resplendent.
Olujimi’s works allow you see how transformative and
disruptive he really is, as he shifts familiar objects from their normal
contexts, positions, and functions, combining them not just into fresh
and surprising new conditions, but also into a fresh and surprising
new life. Otherwise threatening and scary handcuffs now look fanciful
and inviting. Cheap costume jewelry looks energetic and bedazzling.
Small, enthralling, sensual details abound: a single pearl nestled
against one link in a gold chain, the sensitive way that a light blue
teardrop earring reflects both light and neighboring gold chains.
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In fact, there is a great deal of visual poetry in Olujimi’s
work—tiny catharses, moments of retinal splendor. His chandelier
installation, titled Fathom (2017), is likewise transformative and
disruptive. Typically identified with (white) privilege and wealth,
chandeliers normally hang high overheard. In Olujimi’s sculpture, six
ornate and opulent working chandeliers have been jarringly dislocated
from their usual position and context. Now on the floor, they retain
a residual elegance but also look ungainly and precarious. They are
much closer now, not remote and magisterial, but right here, next
to us, intimate chandeliers suggesting human bodies with slightly
sagging postures. On the floor, Olujimi’s chandeliers function not just
as sources of light but also as fragile sources of power. The chandeliers
rest like figures on a structure that refers to the improvised crafts
used by refugees as they make dangerous ocean voyages. Fathom thus
addresses a political and moral crisis. At a time when millions of
vulnerable refugees are desperately seeking some measure of solace
and safety, virulent hostility to immigrants is a rising force in many
countries, including the United States.
Importantly, despite their completely altered conditions,
these chandeliers continue to function as they normally would; they
continue to illuminate the room, or at least parts of it. This helps
explain why Olujimi’s art is so distinctive, especially when it comes to
his use of found objects and images. His objects—be they a chandelier,
handcuffs, earrings, necklace, or photograph—retain a residual
familiarity that points to their original function, while simultaneously
existing as completely transformed. Olujimi leaves it for the viewer
to move between these two contexts, the one familiar and at times
mundane, and the other eccentric, destabilizing, misbehaving, and
invigorating.
Here it is worth recalling the great Russian literary critic and
philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), and his idea of the carnival,
which he applied to literature (especially to Dostoevsky’s novels),
but which can also be fruitfully applied to certain kinds of visual
art, including Olujimi’s. 1 For Bakhtin, the “carnivalized moment” or
“carnivalized situation” (or, in this context, the carnivalized object) are
1. All quotes from and references to Mikhail
Bakhtin are from his Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984),
122–124.
Facing, 42–43:
Fathom
40

42 43

36, 37:
Christmas Bus,
from Killing Time
38–39:
Litmus Test,
from Killing Time
This page and facing:
Solitaire,
from Killing Time
44, 45:
Never Adds Up,
from Killing Time
when the normal rules, values, hierarchies, and modes of apprehension
are temporarily suspended in favor of a new and radical freedom.
This freedom can be simultaneously bewildering and illuminating,
unsteadying and exhilarating. For Bakhtin, the carnivalized situation
“… combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the
great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.” It involves a
decisive upending of normal life with all its rules, categories, hierarchies,
and stratification. Bakhtin called this “life drawn out of its usual
rut” and “life turned inside out.” I’m not suggesting that Olujimi is
beholden to Bakhtin, but rather that what Bakhtin might have called a
“carnival impulse”—involving eccentricity, disruption, fresh identities,
an elevation of humble things, a humbling of powerful things, and
vigorous transformation—is essential in Olujimi’s work, and indeed is
a major reason why his artworks are so unusual and cathartic.
As humans pursued ever more advanced rockets for space
exploration, satellite transportation, and sophisticated weaponry,
technological marvels have been attended by whopping failures, when
rockets and missiles ignited into chaotic infernos. Images of these
events are commonplace in the popular culture. For his wall installation
consisting of flags from his T-Minus Ø series (2017), Olujimi
selected Internet images of exploded rockets, with all their flash points
and fireballs, hurtling debris and oddly delicate smoke tendrils. He
44

46 47

Below:
Frederic Edwin Church
(American, 1826–1900)
Twilight in the Wilderness,
1860
Oil on canvas
framed: 124 x 185 x 13 cm
(48 13/16 x 72 13/16 x 5
1/16 in)
unframed: 101.6 x 162.6 cm
(40 x 64 in)
The Cleveland Museum of
Art, Mr. and Mrs. William
H. Marlatt Fund 1965.233
Facing:
Untitled (detail),
from T-Minus Ø
digitally altered the images to create layered, composite works that are
both found and meticulously constructed, and then digitally printed them
on both sides of the flags. The images are harrowing, but they are also
gorgeous, even sublime. Printed directly on cotton fabric, this imagery
constitutes a highly unorthodox kind of digital-era painting sans paint.
Furthermore, these twenty-first-century “paintings” of high-tech mayhem
connect visually with Romantic nineteenth-century landscape paintings.
One of Olujimi’s untitled flags from this series shows curving white smoke,
billowing pink smoke, and delicate smoke tendrils tinged with turquoise.
Like other works in the series, it evokes a nineteenth-century aptitude for
vastness and wonderment in nature—think of the stunning white, blue,
and orange skies of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840); the overwhelming,
multicolored sky in Frederic Church’s masterpiece Twilight in the Wilderness
(1860), and the many awe-inspiring paintings of the American West by
Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) and Thomas Moran (1837–1926). Streaking
across a deep blue sky, the smoke and debris, colored white, turquoise,
dark red, orange, purple, and yellow, in the image on the back side of
this same work, would look fine paired with any number of landscape
paintings featuring similar colors and surging energies by J.M.W. Turner.
Unlike traditional paintings, Olujimi’s canvases extend from the
wall on aluminum poles, thus providing more complexity and another layer
of meaning. This row of flags resembles what one might see in a conference
room at the United Nations, but instead of signifying countries, the flags
display disaster after disaster. In a time when so much of the world is
convulsed by strife, and when the utopian promise of a gorgeous, high-tech
future seems deeply suspect, this work by Olujimi is exceptionally apt.
View Kambui Olujimi’s wall-sized composite photograph Ville
Radieuse, habite-à-machine (The Radiant City, the living machine), 2017,
with Bakhtin’s notion of carnivalization in mind. The work is rooted in two
familiar items: wheat-paste posters common on city streets and decorative
wallpaper in a home. Twenty-five paper sheets form a rhythmic, almost
percussive, image of the massive St. Louis housing project Pruitt-Igoe
being detonated in 1972. Rarely has such a grand and monumental urban
renewal project gone so wrong so quickly, and its demise is documented
here with sagging buildings and erupting smoke. Pruitt-Igoe was the first
major project for architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), an American of
Japanese descent who later designed the World Trade Center. Pruitt-Igoe
opened in 1954 and rapidly declined for socio-political reasons involving
poverty, government neglect, incompetence, racial bias, and a chronic
lack of funding for basic maintenance. Based on an iconic photograph of
the project’s demolition, Olujimi’s composite image revisits a signature
historical event but also suggests that the issues surrounding Pruitt-Igoe
remain pertinent. It also connects a planned, manmade disaster with
world-shaping natural forces like earthquakes. On a neighboring wall,
48 49

25 wheat-paste sheets form a complex, nearly pulsating, image of
outer space, including abundant stars and galaxy clusters. Titled
The Black That Birthed Us (2017), this work gives a fresh and vast
meaning to the idea of blackness, which is now linked with the
universe. One work is from Earth, the other is cosmic, and both evince
eternal cycles of creation and destruction, cohesion and entropy.
In addition to Olujimi’s surprising connection with the
19th century nature-based view of the sublime, he also, surprisingly,
connects with Transcendentalist poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803–1882). Emerson advocated immersive experiences
in nature that could then be channeled into writing and art; this
directive greatly inspired many of the preeminent landscape painters
of his day. Olujimi’s immersive experiences are not with nature per
se, but instead with mediated nature, and many of his works offer
a mediated sublime, including his wonderful iceberg sculptures.
Icebergs fascinate us, in part, because such a small part of
the whole structure is normally visible above the surface of the water.
Olujimi’s iceberg sculptures from the series InDecisive Moments (2017),
meticulously crafted from glass and with hourglass shapes, are based
on photographs of icebergs that show both their protruding tops and
their great, looming, underwater bulk. Things overt and hidden,
nature and technology, photography and sculpture, abstraction and
representation all conjoin with talismanic force in Olujimi’s small glass
sculptures. The hourglass shape is also telling, and ominous. Global
warming is likely the most pressing issue facing the world today, as
icebergs break off from Greenland and Antarctica. As gorgeous as
they are, and as seductive, Olujimi’s iceberg sculptures constitute a
warning. Time to address this impending ecological crisis is running
out. Time is running out as well on the anthropocentric fantasy that we
humans—comparatively recent additions to a planet more than four
billion years old—are somehow above nature, or masters of nature.
Addressing handcuffs and icebergs, rocket disasters, a housing
complex, costume jewelry, outer space, climate change, and chandeliers,
Kambui Olujimi is obviously a questing artist intent on making
his own refreshingly idiosyncratic way and pursuing his own wideranging
interests and obsessions. As such, he again connects with the
visionary Emerson. “Art is the path of the creator to his work,” Emerson
enigmatically wrote in his 1844 essay “The Poet.” For Emerson, art
is not the finished painting, sculpture, or drawing; photograph or glass
object; performance or musical score, but instead the comprehensive
path that leads to all of those things: the artist’s individual way of
working, thinking and being. This exhibition reveals that Olujimi
is clearly on a path that matters, and that he is living, as opposed to
just making, a spirited, challenging, and altogether compelling art.
50 51

52 53

PROCESS OR
INSTALLATION
VIEW
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is honored to
publish this catalogue in conjunction with Kambui Olujimi’s solo exhibition
in the museum’s State Street Gallery, from May 6 through August
13, 2017. In Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time, the artist presents five interrelated
bodies of work, each of which offers a thoughtful examination
into the underlying structures that shape the way we understand and
experience the world and each other. From the cosmic origins of the
universe to today’s contested socio-political climate, Olujimi disrupts
the space-time continuum and asks us to consider how historic and
contemporary systems of power are deeply layered, interconnected, and
mutually reinforcing.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the significant time and talent
Kambui Olujimi has invested to make this project a reality. It has been a
rewarding process to watch his ideas became tangible. For this exhibition,
he created all new artworks that have yielded a visually cohesive
and conceptually powerful exhibition. MMoCA is honored to showcase
his work in its galleries.
I am extremely grateful to the sponsors who have made this
important project possible. Generous funding for Kambui Olujimi: Zulu
Time has been provided by The DeAtley Family Foundation; MillerCoors;
Terry Family Foundation; WhiteFish Partners LLC; a grant from
the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and
National Endowment for the Arts; and MMoCA Volunteers.
I would like to recognize and express my gratitude to the guest
authors: Sampada Aranke, a scholar and professor in the History and
Theory of Contemporary Art at the San Francisco Art Institute, whose
essay grounds Olujimi’s work within a theoretical framework; and New-
York based art critic and curator Gregory Volk, who contributed an
insightful essay about the transformative power of the artist’s practice.
My thanks also go to Melissa Gorman for her design of the catalogue,
which seamlessly translates Olujimi’s artistic intentions into a beautiful
publication. In addition, it is a particular pleasure to thank former
MMoCA staff member Katie Kazan, who edited this publication.
I am also pleased to acknowledge the museum’s Board
of Trustees for their generous and continuing support. Finally, it is a
great pleasure to recognize the talented staff of the Madison Museum
of Contemporary Art, especially associate curator Leah Kolb, who organized
and oversaw this project, with the dedicated assistance of exhibition
manager and registrar Mel Solomon Becker; Rick Axsom, senior
curator; Brian Bartlett, technical services manager; Sheri Castelnuovo,
curator of education; Erika Monroe-Kane, director of communications;
Elizabeth Tucker, director of development; and the rest of MMoCA’s
hard-working staff.
Stephen Fleischman
Director
54 55

KAMBUI OLUJIMI
was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn and received
his MFA from Columbia University in New York City. Olujimi’s work
challenges established modes of thinking that commonly function
as “inevitabilities.” This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary
bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography,
writing, video, and performance. His solo exhibitions include: A
Life in Pictures at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Solastalgia at Cue
Arts Foundation, and Wayward North at Art in General. His works
have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Studio
Museum in Harlem, MoMA P.S.1, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles and Mass MoCA. Internationally his work has been featured
at The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, Museo Nacional
Reina Sofia in Madrid, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in
Finland, and Para Site in Hong Kong, among others. Olujimi has
been awarded residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting and
Sculpture, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Civitella Ranieri.
He has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions
including A Blade of Grass, The Jerome Foundation, and MTA Arts
& Design for the City of New York. Newspapers and journals such
as The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, The
New York Times, and Modern Painters have written about Olujimi’s
artwork. Monographs on his past projects include Walk the Plank
(2006), Winter in America (in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas,
2006), The Lost Rivers Index (2007), and Wayward North (2012).
Education
2013 MFA, Columbia University School of the Arts, NY
2006 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME
Residencies
2017 Robert Rauschenberg Residency, FL
2015 Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy
Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic
LMCC: Process Space Residency, NY
2013 Tropical Lab 7, Singapore
2010-11 Acadia Summer Arts Program, ME
Santa Fe Art Institute, NM
2007-09 Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown (2nd Year Fellow), MA
2007 Apexart: Outbound Residency to Kellerberin, Australia
Commissions / Awards
2016 New York City MTA Arts & Design
2015 Urban Glass Merit Scholarship
2014 FSP/ Jerome Fellowship
2013 A Blade of Grass, Artist File Grantee
2010 Art in General’s New Works Commission
Solo Exhibitions
2017 Zulu Time, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI
2016 What Endures, Catherine Clark Gallery, New York, NY
Solastalgia, Cue Arts Foundation, New York, NY
2015 What’s Left to Burn?, Bindery Projects, Minneapolis, MN
2014 Blind Sum , Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, NY
A Life in Pictures, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, MA
The Conspiracy of Good People, Young World, Detroit, MI
2012 A Life in Pictures, Apex Art, New York, NY
2011 Love to Lose, Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2010 Wayward North, Art in General, New York, NY
2009 The Clouds Are After Me, Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, NY
2008 Winter in America, de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2017 The Exposed Suture, Rond-Point Project, Marseille, France
The Half-Life of Love, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
More Than A Two Step, MoMA P.S.1 / For Freedoms Laboratory, NY
2016 Paradoxical Stranger, Momo Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2015 Draw: Mapping Madness, Inside Out Museum, Beijing, China
Winter in America, Jack Shainman Gallery: The School, Kinderhook, NY
2015: 1947, Artist Equity, New York, NY
2014 Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Performing for Cyclops, The Pitch Project, Milwaukee, WI
2013 Mnemonikos, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, Thailand
2011 Pictures are Words-Not-Unknown, LiShui Museum of Photography,
LiShui City, China
2011-09 StreetWise, Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
On Screen: Global Intimacy, Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico
2010-09 Fax, The Drawing Center, New York, NY
Selected Bibliography / Publications
2016 All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party, Minor Matters,
edited by Michelle Dunn Marsh pp. 54-7
2015 Draw: Mapping Madness, Exhibition Monograph published by
Inside/Out Museum, pp.152-3
2012 Wayward North, Exhibition Monograph published by Art in General
2011 Violence, Visual Culture, & the Black Male Body, Cassandra Jackson,
published Routledge / UK, p.74
2006 Frequency, The Studio Museum in Harlem, edited by Thelma Golden,
pp. 82-3, 89
Winter in America, 81 Press (W.I.A. is a collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas)
Walk the Plank, Exhibition Monograph published by Gallery 138
2000 Reflections in Black, W.W. Norton, edited by Deborah Willis, pp.247-8
56 57

Contributors
Sampada Aranke is an Assistant Professor in the History and
Theory of Contemporary Art at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work
has been published in e-flux, Art Journal, Artforum, Equid Novi: African
Journalism Studies, and Trans-Scripts: An Interdisciplinary Online Journal
in the Humanities and Social Sciences at UC Irvine. Sampada and Nikolas
Oscar Sparks (Duke University) have co-edited a special issue of Women
& Performance entitled “Sentiment and Sentience: Black Performance
Since Scenes of Subjection (March 2017). She is currently working on her
book manuscript entitled Death’s Futurity: The Visual Culture of Death in
Black Radical Politics. Aranke received her PhD in Performance Studies
from the University of California, Davis.
Melissa Gorman is a designer living and working in Brooklyn,
NY. She has collaborated on numerous artist books and projects;
including Olafur Eliasson: Your colour memory (Arcadia University Art
Gallery, 2006), Taken With Time (The Print Center, 2006), and Sun
Pictures and Other Broken Images, (The Print Center, 2008). Her design
practice encompasses a wide range of projects, including visual identity,
social impact design, and illustration. She received a BA from Bennington
College and a Masters in Design from The School of Visual Arts, NY.
Leah Kolb is Associate Curator at the Madison Museum of Contemporary
Art. Recent curatorial projects include Claire Stigliani: Half-
Sick of Shadows (2016) and Kim Schoen: Have You Never Let Someone Else
Be Strong? (2015). With Dr. Richard Axsom, she worked on the travelling
exhibition and catalogue raisonné Frank Stella Prints: A Retrospective
(2016); Axsom and Kolb are currently undertaking a catalogue raisonné
of Terry Winters’ prints and drawings. In partnership with artist Jason S.
Yi, she co-founded Plum Blossom Initiative and its accompanying exhibition
program, Bridge Work, which aims to platform emerging artists and
forge a more interconnected arts community throughout the Midwest.
Gregory Volk is a New York based art critic and freelance
curator, and associate professor in the School of the Arts at Virginia
Commonwealth University. He writes regularly for Art in America, where
he is a contributing editor, and his writings have appeared in many other
publications, including Parkett and Sculpture. Among his contributions
to exhibition catalogues are essays on Bruce Nauman (Milwaukee Art
Museum, 2006), Joan Jonas (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona,
2007), Ayse Erkmen (Turkish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2011), and
HiIdur Asgeirsdóttir Jónsson (Tang Teaching Museum/Reykjavik Art
Museum, 2014).
58 59

Artist’s Acknowledgements
Queenspace
The Pitch Project
RISD Glass
The Rauschenberg Residency
UrbanGlass
The Fam
Special Thanks
Anna Olujimi
Ann Brady
April Rodmyre
Audrey Yvette Washington
Ben Wright
Carrell Courtright
Carrie Mae Weems
Catherine Arline
Courtney J. Martin
Cybele Malone
Denise Markonish
Djelimory Diabate
Dorie Guthrie
Gari Lewis
Hank Willis Thomas
Isaac Saunders
Jason S. Yi
Jessica Todd
Kelsey Mitchell
Kerry James Marshall
Lisa O’Sullivan
Lori Hendricks
Marjorie Levine
Matt Hall
Michael Levine
Mike Brenner
Sandra Jackson-Dumont
Tim Finfrock
Wardell Milan
Madison Museum
of Contemporary Art
Board of Trustees
May 2016 – April 2017
Officers
Rick Phelps, President
Joe Alexander, Vice-President
Jason Knutson, Vice-President
Leslie Smith III, Vice-President
Kathie Nichols, Secretary
John Sylla, Treasurer
Other Trustees
Marian Bolz, Life Trustee
Bryan Chan
Karen Christianson
Charlotte Cummins
Tamara Dodge
John Fritsch
Sarah Guyer
Cedric Johnson
Valerie Kazamias, Chair, The Langer Society
Elizabeth Kirchstein
Oscar Mireles
Bret Newcomb
Margaret Pyle
JoAnne Robbins
John Ronzia
Ellen Rosner
Katheryn Howarth Ryan
John Sims
Sylvia Vaccaro
Marc Vitale
Kathleen Woit
Jim Yehle, Past President
Staff
Nick Anderson, Gallery Attendant
Richard Axsom, Senior Curator
Jason Bank, Public Operations Supervisor
Brian Bartlett, Technical Services Supervisor
Mel Becker Solomon, Exhibitions Manager and Registrar
Sheri Castelnuovo, Curator of Education
Carol Chapin, Associate Registrar
Gavin Christy, Gallery Attendant
Christophe Delaunay, Curatorial Intern
Simone Doing, Education Assistant
Annik Dupaty, Director of Events and Volunteers
Charlotte Easterling, Graphic Designer
Aunna Escobedo-Wickham, Gallery Attendant
Doug Fath, Preparator
Stephen Fleischman, Director
Leslie Genzler, Director of Retail Operations
Connor Green, Technical Services Assistant
Basha Harris, Gallery Attendant
Tom Hasting, Public Operations Supervisor
Ryan Holley, Gallery Attendant
Stephanie Howard, Public Operations Supervisor
Shelby Kahr, Gallery Attendant
Jamie Kolar, Public Operations Supervisor
Leah Kolb, Associate Curator
Kaitlin Kropp, Associate Director of Member Engagement
Janet Laube, Education Associate
Erika Monroe-Kane, Director of Communications
Dan Nergaugen, Gallery Attendant
Alyssa O’Conner, Associate Preparator/Assistant Registrar
Michael Paggie, Business Manager
Sydney Prall, Gallery Attendant
Judy Schwickerath, Accountant
Emma Shore, Gallery Attendant
Marilyn Sohi, Registrar, Permanent Collection
Laurie Stacey, Store Manager
Gabe Strader-Brown, Technical Services Assistant
Bob Sylvester, Director of Public Operations
Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Development
Miles Verana, Gallery Attendant
Tony Vincent, Gallery Attendant
Kenneth Xiong, Public Operations Supervisor
Stephanie Zech, Associate Registrar
60 61

Exhibition Checklist
Photography Credits
All work courtesy the artist. Height precedes length.
Unless noted below, all images ©Kambui Olujimi.
T-Minus Ø, 2017
Installation of 13 mounted flags: digital print on cotton with aluminum pole,
artist-made aluminum finial, and zinc pole mount
Flag: 24 x 36 inches; pole: 73 x ½ x ½ inches; finial: ½ x ½ x ½ inches
Ville Radieuse, habite-à-machine (The Radiant City, the living machine), 2017
Installation: 25 sheets of digitally printed paper, wheat paste, and found objects
132 x 120 inches
The Black That Birthed Us, 2017
Installation: 25 sheets of digitally printed paper, wheat paste, found photographs, vr goggles, and digital clocks
132 x 120 inches
The Drop, from the series InDecisive Moments, 2017
Hand-blown glass and water
12 x 7 ½ x 7 ½ inches
Blue Ebb, from the series InDecisive Moments, 2017
Hand-blown glass and water
12 x 6 x 6 inches
The Chase, from the series InDecisive Moments, 2017
Hand-blown glass and water
9 x 10 x 10 inches
A Sheltered Wish, from the series InDecisive Moments, 2017
Hand-blown glass and water
22 x 6 ½ x 6 ½ inches
Christmas Bus, from the series Killing Time, 2017
Handcuffs and costume jewelry
Variable dimensions
Litmus Test, from the series Killing Time, 2017
Handcuffs and costume jewelry
Variable dimensions
Never Adds Up, from the series Killing Time, 2017
Handcuffs and costume jewelry
Variable dimensions
Stowaway, from the series Killing Time, 2017
Handcuffs and costume jewelry
15 x 6 inches
Solitaire, from the series Killing Time, 2017
Handcuffs and costume jewelry
Variable dimensions
Fathom, 2017
Installation with 6 chandeliers, rubber inner tubes, wooden pallets
Variable dimensions
6–7 “United Nations Trusteeship Council Chamber in New York City” by MusikAnimal,
via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
8–9 “Earth Rise as Seen from Lunar Surface (5052124921)” by NASA/Apollo 11, via Wikimedia
Commons, licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
12 Melvin Edwards, Some Bright Morning, 1963. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
© 2017 Melvin Edwards/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
15 “New York City—United Nations Headquarters” by Norbert Nagel, via Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
19 “8. Interior, Ornate Time Zone Clock, Lobby, First Floor - Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Broad &
Walnut Streets, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA” by Historic American Buildings Survey,
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS PA,51-PHILA,344—8, via Wikimedia
Commons, licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
20–21 “Model of the Plan Voisin for Paris by Le Corbusier displayed at the Nouveau Esprit Pavilion
(1925)” by SiefkinDR, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed by CC-BY-SA 4.0.
22 “Pruitt-Igoe, low angle oblique USGA photograph” by United States Geological Survey,
via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
26–27 “The South Polar Trail” by Ernest Edward Mills Joyce from Biodiversity Heritage Library
via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
35 Image by Mufid Majnun, via Pixabay, licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
36–37 “Orthophoto of Rikers Island” by U.S. Geological Survey, via Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC0 Public Domain.
38–39 Main Cell block, Dublin Prison by Tony Hisgett, via Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0.
42 “Awaiting Rescue” by The National Archives UK, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed by
Flickr’s The Commons.
48 Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860. The Cleveland Museum of Art.
50–51, 58 Image ©Melissa Gorman.
54 Image ©Mark Poucher.
55 “Garuda Indonesia domestic and regional route” by Gunawan Kartapranata, via Wikimedia
Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
56–57 “Pray / Salah in Masjid ul Harram” by Najamuddin Shahwani, via Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
59 “STS-128 EVA2 Christer Fuglesang” by NASA, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under
CC0 Public Domain.
65 “Hindu public prayer in Haridwar” by Flickr.com user “lazyoldsun,” via Wikimedia Commons,
licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
62 63

MADISON MUSEUM of
CONTEMPORARY ART
Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time is a publication of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA),
created in conjunction with the exhibition Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time (May 6–August 13, 2017).
227 State Street
Madison, WI 53703
Copyright © 2017 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or information storage or retrieval
system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-913883-38-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aranke, Sampada. | Volk, Gregory. | Kolb, Leah. | Madison Museum of
Contemporary Art (Madison, Wis.) organizer, host institution.
Title: Kambui Olujimi : Zulu time / essays by Sampada Aranke, Gregory Volk,
and Leah Kolb.
Description: Madison : Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2017. | “Kambui
Olujimi: Zulu Time is a publication of the Madison Museum of Contemporary
Art (MMoCA), created in conjunction with the exhibition Kambui Olujimi:
Zulu Time (May 6-August 13, 2017).” | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016950 | ISBN 9780913883389 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Olujimi, Kambui--Exhibitions.
Classification: LCC N6537.O48 A4 2017 | DDC 709.2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016950
Catalogue design:
Melissa Gorman, New York
Manuscript Editor:
Katie Kazan, Madison, WI
Project Coordinator:
Leah Kolb
The exhibition and the publication Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time were made possible with generous funds
from The DeAtley Family Foundation; MillerCoors; Terry Family Foundation; WhiteFish Partners LLC;
a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and National Endowment
for the Arts; and MMoCA Volunteers.
Printed by Bookmobile Craft Digital, Minneapolis, in an edition of 1000.
In stated dimensions, height precedes width precedes depth.
All images courtesy of the artist.