Kambui Olujimi ’13 Brings ‘North Star’ to San Jose Museum of Art

Visual Arts alum Kambui Olujimi '13 is taking a deep dive into questions of race, history, and the universe in his new exhibition, North Star at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) in California. 

The exhibit spans multiple disciplines, from large-scale watercolor and ink paintings to film and audio, and a specially designed mural that turns the San Jose gallery into a celestial space.  

Core to the experience is the idea of weightlessness and what this could look like for the African diaspora. Where racism and white supremacy are a force like gravity, what does it mean for black bodies to be free of those bonds? For Olujimi, the answer may lie in the cosmos.

Olujimi’s process for creating the various works in this exhibition included conversations with scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center, and charting a parabolic flight for artists from the African diaspora to literally experience weightlessness. The trip to NASA resulted in a new sculpture and video installation, and the parabolic flight features in the film North of Never, another highlight of the exhibition.

“Olujimi’s work is deeply joyful,” said Lauren Schell Dickens, Chief Curator for the SJMA. “With his North Star installation, he’s offering us a way to navigate away from the entrenched politics of representation, to imagine possibilities of boundlessness, within bodies, between bodies, and with the universe.”

North Star is the latest exhibition for Olujimi, whose rapidly growing body of work has been featured in platforms as diverse as the Sundance Film Festival in Park City and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His recent portfolio includes several pieces in the group exhibition Inheritance, which took place earlier this year at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

The North Star exhibition will also be presented in a book designed by Melissa Gorman for publisher Gregory R. Miller & Co.

Kambui Olujimi: North Star runs from November 1, 2024 to June 1, 2025.