John Akomfrah's first survey exhibition in America opens at New Museum

20 June 2018

'John Akomfrah: Signs of Empire' is the artist's first American survey exhibition, on view at the New Museum in New York from 20 June to 2 September 2018.

The centerpiece of the exhibition at the New Museum is Akomfrah’s celebrated three-screen video installation Vertigo Sea (2015). The work, which premiered at the 2015 Venice Biennale and has its first New York presentation at the New Museum, focuses on the ocean as an environmental, cultural, and historical force, connecting literature and poetry, the history of slavery, and contemporary issues of migration and climate change. The exhibition also includes The Unfinished Conversation (2012), Akomfrah’s complex reflection on the life and ideas of cultural theorist Stuart Hall; Expeditions One: Signs of Empire (1983), the first work produced by Black Audio Film Collective; and a new version of Akomfrah’s Transfigured Night (2013/2018), a two-channel work looking at the relationship between the US and postcolonial African history.

The exhibition is curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator, and Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Tina Campt, T.J. Demos, Okwui Enwezor, Aram Moshayedi, Diana Nawi, and Zoe Whitley.