Programmed February 2022

Ulysses Jenkins: Video Griot

There has never been another artist like Ulysses Jenkins. For over fifty years, the Los Angeles–born and –based polymath has produced an expansive and unclassifiable body of work that tackles, in idiosyncratic and often wickedly humorous ways, thorny issues of race, gender, national history, and their intersections with pop culture. An early adopter of, and staunch advocate for, video and digital technology, Jenkins minted a jagged, jolting style in confrontational short works like Mass of Images , Inconsequential Doggereal , and Two-Zone Transfer , all of which feature him as a performer. Jenkins has never stopped innovating and experimenting in the ensuing years, and recently became the subject of his first major career retrospective—a joint venture between Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art and LA’s Hammer Museum. Jenkins’s work is timeless, blazingly contemporary, and, once experienced, never forgotten. Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation is on view at the Hammer Museum February 6–May 15, 2022.

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