National Museum of African Art Presents

“Jim Chuchu’s Invocations”

“Jim Chuchu’s Invocations” opens at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art Wednesday, June 21, and will remain on display until June 24, 2018. The museum is the first institution to acquire and display Kenyan multimedia artist Jim Chuchu’s mesmerizing suite of video projections, Invocation: The Severance of Ties (2015) and Invocation: Release (2015). The exhibition is located in the museum’s Points of View Gallery.

Curated by Karen E. Milbourne, the two distinct videos loop in succession and follow the structure of initiation rituals. Surrounded by Chuchu’s pulsing house beats and evocative imagery, viewers are invited to contemplate the separations and releases that shape our individual and collective identities. “‘Jim Chuchu’s Invocations’ is politically charged, visually seductive and technically sophisticated. These works of art are a legacy of our times and a tribute to the vision of a uniquely multifaceted artist,” said Milbourne.