Gulf

2024

Gulf, read “Strike Gulf,” is an exhibition by Imani Jacqueline Brown
On view June 22 – August 31, 2024
Storefront for Art and Architecture
97 Kenmare
NYC




Install photos by Luís Corzo 
Opening photos by Hatnim Lee
Opening performance by Les Cenelles
Featuring several new experiments, research in progress, and collaborations with Tobechukwu Onwukeme, Mark Mushiva, Mohamad Safa and Les Cenelles.
Listen to the Audio Guide for Fractal catastrophes generate new solidarities

Gulf by Imani Jacqueline Brown examines geographies of oil and gas, spanning from their cosmological origins to our emancipatory futures. For a decade, Imani has traced the fractal catastrophes that unfurl along the continuum of extractivism in her homeland of Louisiana, from colonialism and slavery to fossil fuel production.

Now, through audiovisual layering, sonic reimagining, and archival recontextualizing, this exhibition envisions a blackout of fossil power across the territories affected by the legacies of Gulf Oil Corporation. This exhibition illustrates the ways in which the planet’s surface, depths, and biosphere have been depleted for the extraction of financial value. Imani maps out the intertwined ways in which the production of oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico is part of an expansive politico-economic, socio-technological, and cosmological system. This work intricately ties the celestial with the geological, emphasizing the manifold ways in which fossil capitalism perpetuates epistemic, ecological, and economic violence, but also creates the impetus for the formation of fractal solidarity networks among peoples, places, and species branching from Louisiana to Angola to Palestine.

The exhibition’s title, Gulf  (read “Strike Gulf”) is inspired by the power of boycotts and other formations of solidarity to defend and tether lifeworlds. In this critical moment, the exhibition maps the persistent threat of extractivism, which spawns planetary crises from colonialism and slavery to the present climate crisis, and communicates the urgency of advocating for corporate accountability and ecological reparations. This exhibition invites us to engage directly with the conflicts and solidarities that shape our interconnected worlds and yet orient us towards collective liberation.

Special thanks from the artist to Sasha Birman, Frank Dexter Brown, Scott Eustis, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Adrian Lahoud, Godofredo Perreira, Mario Rebolledo Vieyra, Nuno Simoes, Tom Turnbull, Eyal Weizman, Jeanne M. Woods, The Rivers Institute, Amistad Research Center, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

Sign Painting by Dascool
Graphic design by Estudio Herrera