Ulysses Jenkins defies definition. Although the US artist started out in the 1970s working on videos and film – early enough to earn him the title of pioneer – he didn’t limit himself to the form. For more than 50 years, Jenkins’ work has encompassed painting, performance, music video, documentary and collage, and yet almost no one knows him. As a black artist from Los Angeles, he remained excluded from public discourse – a victim of American suspicion towards multimedia art. Without Your Interpretation, a new retrospective of Jenkins’ work at the Julia Stoschek Foundation (following shows at the ICA Philadelphia and the Hammer Museum) is, in a way, a new beginning. As the accompanying short documentary by JJ Anderson records, co-curators Meg Onli and Erin Christovale collected documents, archive material and films in direct exchange with Jenkins over four years. The result is a comprehensive exhibition that pursues media criticism in a very contemporary way. In “Two-Zone Transfer” (1978), Jenkins interprets two of the best-known stereotypes attributed to black men in the USA: the singer and the preacher.
Jenkins has always been concerned with how media representations affect the self-image of African-Americans. In video collages such as the 23-minute “Inconsequential Doggereal” (1981), he shapes them into a narrative of his own formed by identity, history and rituals. Jenkins’ works are in direct dialog with more recent artists like Arthur Jafa, Martine Syms and Kahlil Joseph, and direct our gaze to a hitherto unnoticed artistic cosmos: Los Angeles from the 1960s to the 1980s. A comprehensive interview, in which co-curator Meg Onli explains the relationship between pop culture and black culture, is also worth checking out.
Text: Hanna Komornitzyk / Photos: Alwin Lay / Credit: Ulysses Jenkins
Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin, Leipziger Str.60, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation runs until 30.07.2023
