Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation at Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum presents Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation, the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of pioneering video artist Ulysses Jenkins, following its original presentation at The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania.

Co-curated by Meg Onli, formerly of the ICA, and the Hammer's Erin Christovale, the exhibition includes Jenkins’ video pieces, collaborative works, mural paintings, photography, and the restaging of two of his major performance works, Bay Window (1991) and Talking Hut (1994).

Jenkins, who resides in Los Angeles, emerged as a pioneering video artist in the late 1970s and was enormously influential for Black video artists of the 1990s and early 2000s. Through his use of archival footage, photographs, music, sound, and performances, Jenkins expanded upon and explored new expressions of the medium. His work interrogates questions of race and gender and identifies white supremacy as a disruptor of subjectivity.

The exhibition is accompanied by the first publication devoted to the artist’s work, jointly produced by ICA and the Hammer and designed by Los Angeles–based design studio ELLA.