Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time

Kambui Olujimi is a Brooklyn-based, multidisciplinary artist who questions the assumptions underlying our understanding of the world around us. In Zulu Time, Olujimi’s solo exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the artist pays particular attention to contemporary race relations and associated power disparities, addressing the contradictions, misconceptions, and failures embedded in America’s social, economic, and political landscape.

Zulu Time is the short-hand term for the world’s standardized mode of marking time. Specifically, it references Coordinated Universal Time, or the time at the prime meridian (longitude 0 degrees) from which all global time zones are calculated. Since Great Britain was the world’s foremost maritime power when the concept of latitude and longitude came to be, the starting point for designating longitude is based on the location of the British Naval Observatory in Greenwich, England. Thus, Zulu Time, as the basis for all civil time, literally revolves around western norms for structuring a day. This notion of universal time as an expression of dominance and an imposition of control serves as Olujimi’s jumping off point for creating a body of new work that explores invisible hierarchies that benefit some groups of people while disregarding and disadvantaging others. On view May 6 through August 6, 2017, Kambui Olujimi: Zulu Time will offer an opportunity to consider these timely concepts through the artist’s compelling two-dimensional and sculptural work.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website