If you ever find yourself in San Jose, California, I recommend making time to visit the city’s art museum - the San Jose Museum of Art. I’ve been a handful of times of the last few years and have never been disappointed. The exhibits are wonderfully curated, and visits always fill my head with new conjectures about how the world works - and not just from an aesthetic point of view.
A few weeks ago I decided I needed to take a final visit as a Silicon Valley resident. Once there, I made my way up the central staircase to find the largest gallery space housing the museum’s newest exhibit: Kambui Olujimi: North Star. I left aghast at the joy and beauty of the works.
For artist Kambui Olujimi, two questions framed North Star: “What does the Black body, devoid of the ‘inescapable’ gravity of oppression, look like? What is the Black body in zero gravity?” In this way, gravity becomes a metaphor for white supremacy. Both are invisible forces that push against us and restrict our movements. At times, both gravity and oppression can feel insurmountable, codified as they are into laws both political and physical.
As a companion to North Star, Olujimi convened a two-day symposium on boundlessness hosted by the Lincoln Center in New York City in October 2023. The program convened artists, scientists, and scholars to dialogue on boundlessness from a variety of perspectives. Olujimi has made 8 chapters from the symposium available on his website.
One panel from the North Star symposium particularly piqued my interest: the final chapter of the meeting, focusing on the question “What makes us?” The panel was moderated by curator Jasmine Wahi and featured architect Amina Blacksher, crafter Azikiwe Mohammed, and artist Hank Willis Thomas in conversation. The panel examined boundlessness exists across multiple planes of being. For example, while we may be culturally bound by the cruelties of white supremacy, we may still find boundlessness in metaphysical space where we can live joyfully in spite of an oppressive culture and institutions.
Olujimi’s themes of anti-gravity, oppressive systems, and boundlessness resonate with today’s blockbuster movie musical:Wicked. On stage and screen, Wicked intentionally uses color as a vehicle to craft a story of outsiderism and rebellion against dominant systems of oppression and tyranny.
In particular, the movie (based on the first act of the stage musical) ends with a marquee song entitled “Defying Gravity.” In this number, Elphaba (played by Cynthia Erivo) is fleeing from Oz after realizing how the Wizard of Oz had used her powers to inflict wanton cruelty. In this moment, she realizes her worth as a powerful sorceress and chooses to ascend into the western sky rather than continue to do the wizard’s bidding. In doing so, Elphaba literally defies gravity while resisting to be bound by a sociopolitical system that centers the egomaniacal demands of a milquetoast demagogue.
As the end of the movie, her ascension contrasts with the descent of Glinda (played by Ariana Grande-Butera) which marks the movie’s opening scene. Despite ultimately being known as the “good witch,” Glinda is fundamentally assimilationist (fleshed out in the second act of the musical and upcoming Wicked: Part Two film), obeying the wizard’s demands in exchange for the advancement of her social status.
Here, the contours of our society are reflected back at us in sharp relief. Glinda is bound by her own ambition and therefore the expectations of others, while Elphaba frees herself from these constraints and relies on her own powers to defy gravity. In the same way, Olujimi’s North Star exhibition asks us to reimagine our lives without the bounds of oppressive forces. In fact, he invites us to transcend them altogether. In doing so, we can begin to chart a path toward that future for all of us to live in harmony.
Kambui Olujimi: North Star is on view at the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, California, until June 1, 2025.