Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time exhibition catalog

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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