ARTIST TALK:
Kambui Olujimi in conversation with Jessica Lynne and Katherine Cohn. Moderated by Hank Willis Thomas.
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016.
Doors open at 5.30pm. Talk begins at 6pm sharp. Seating is limited, arrive early to secure a seat.
Exhibiting artist Kambui Olujimi discusses his solo exhibition Solastalgia, with Katherine Cohn and Jessica Lynne, who contributed texts to the exhibition catalogue. Moderated by exhibition curator, Hank Willis Thomas.
Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Kambui Olujimi received his BFA from Parsons School of Design, NY and MFA from Columbia University, NY. He has had solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, MA; apexart, NY and Art in General, NY. His works have premiered nationally at Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY and The Museum of Modern Art, NY. Internationally he has exhibited at The Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, Thailand; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland and Para Site, Hong Kong. Olujimi has been awarded residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ME; apexart, NY; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY; Civitella Ranieri, Italy and Fountainhead, FL, among others. He has received grants and fellowships from A Blade of Grass, The Jerome Foundation, and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Numerous periodicals, newspapers and journals have written about Olujimi’s work, including The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times and Modern Painters.
Katherine Cohn is an M.A. candidate in Columbia University’s Modern Critical and Curatorial Studies program. Previously, Cohn co-founded the curatorial collaborative A.D. Projects, and was Associate Curator at the Calder Foundation. Recently, she co-curated Collaborative Archives: Connective Histories at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, NY. She is currently producing the podcast “Lines in Real Time” as critical educational programming for the exhibition Lines of Flight launching April 2016 at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.
Jessica Lynne is a Brooklyn based writer and arts administrator. She received her BA in Africana Studies from NYU and has been awarded residencies and fellowships from The Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar, Callaloo, and The Center for Book Arts. Jessica contributes to publications such as Art in America, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Pelican Bomb. She's co-editor of ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives, and a founding editor of the now defunct (but still special) Zora Magazine.
Hank Willis Thomas is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad and is in numerous public collections including The Museum of Modern Art New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed permanently at the Oakland International Airport, The Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California, and the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a recipient of the New Media grant from Tribeca Film Institute and New Media Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography for his transmedia project, Question Bridge: Black Males. He was recently appointed to the Public Design Commission for the city of New York. Thomas is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City and Goodman Gallery in South Africa.