New York
Kambui Olujimi did not invent the concept of “Solastalgia,” but his memorable exhibition launched it as a universal concern today. Coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, the word refers to the psychic distress that results from displacement from one’s home whether by natural, social, or economic causes. In the U.S., gentrification, violence, and police brutality disproportionately affect African American and low-income neighborhoods— a fact that Olujimi underscored in this show with a series of memorials to his neighbor and mentor Catherine Arline and to fallen victims of violence on both sides of the police badge. The entrance to the exhibition was blocked by two large chandeliers placed on the floor and powered by two battered suitcases. Midnight on Myrtle and Broadway alludes to the 2014 murders of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in Brooklyn. A large painting and several smaller ink portraits of Catherine Arline, a deceased community leader in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood where Olujimi grew up, faced the sculpture…see the entire review in the print version of October’s Sculpture magazine.
