Italo

2021

Italo, 2021. Kambui Olujimi (American, b. 1976). Ink and graphite on paper; 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.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Partial Gift of the Contemporary Art Society and Partial Purchase from the J.H. Wade Fund 2021.147 © Kambui Olujimi 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. To simulate floating bodies, the artist used video and photographs of people jumping on trampolines as models for this series.