Fall 2014

In Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy, we explored a visual nexus of African urban subjectivities through an innovative consideration of the Jean Pigozzi Contemporary Art Collection (CAAC). We gathered a stunning array of ninety-eight works from twenty-one African artists: photographs, models, sculptures, paintings, and videographies that express vital, contemplative, and imaginative visions of city life. The individual works chosen by curators David Adjaye and Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt were each extraordinary and yet they resonated together as a melodic chorus on the city, offering nuanced close readings and vivid renditions of the ordinary and the mundane.

Luminós/C/ity.Ordinary Joy: From the Pigozzi Contemporary African Art Collection celebrates the inaugural exhibition of the same name at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art at the Hutchins Center in Fall 2014. Curators David Adjaye and Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt shared their interpretative insights on a distinctive selection of objects from Jean Pigozzi’s superb Collection of Contemporary African Art (CAAC).

The works range from photography of the 1940s to video produced seventy years later, and offered the viewer entry into these cityscapes and the brilliant light of ordinary joy.