The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania is pleased to present Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation, the first major retrospective on the work of groundbreaking video/performance artist Ulysses Jenkins, on view at ICA this fall, September 17-December 30, 2021. The exhibition is co-curated by Meg Onli, ICA Andrea B. Laporte Associate Curator and Erin Christovale, Associate Curator, Hammer Museum at UCLA, where the exhibition will travel this winter, February 6-May 15, 2022.

A pivotal influence on contemporary art for over fifty years, Ulysses Jenkins (born 1946 Los Angeles, lives Los Angeles) has produced video and media work that conjures vibrant expressions of how image, sound, and cultural iconography inform representation. Using archival footage, photographs, image processing and elegiac soundtracks Jenkins pulls together various strands of thought to interrogate questions of race and gender as they relate to ritual, history, and the power of the state.

“Jenkins has made enormous contributions to the field of video art. Long overdue, this exhibition continues ICA’s deep commitment to supporting artists whose work and trajectories are often lost to art historical circles and placed on the margins,” says Zoë Ryan, ICA Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director. “Jenkins defines a practice that is rooted in both a local context—Los Angeles—and a format—video—that shifted the landscape of media-based art making. This exhibition has afforded ICA the opportunity to center the full sweep of his unparalleled and inspiring oeuvre within a greater art historical context for future scholarship.”

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