Merging themes of interstellar journey and cultural convergences, Zak Ové creates large-scale sculptures and multimedia installations that discover African ancestry, traditions, and historical past. The British-Trinidadian artist’s follow is deeply rooted within the narratives of the African diaspora, specializing in traditions of masquerade. He delves into its function in efficiency and ceremony, in addition to masks as potent devices for self-emancipation and cultural resistance.
Ové’s interdisciplinary work spans sculpture, portray, movie, and pictures, exploring hyperlinks between mythology, oral histories, and speculative futures. “His sculptures often incorporate symbols, iconography, and materials drawn from African, Caribbean, and diasporic traditions, merging them with modern aesthetics to celebrate the continuity and adaptability of culture,” his studio says.
Ové typically delves into the connection between modern lived experiences and the spirit world, like in “Moko Jumbie” or a glass mosaic set up in London titled “Jumbie Jubilation.” In these works, the artist brings an ancestral spirit rooted in African and Caribbean folklore referred to as a Jumbie to life as a spectral dancer, cloaked in banana leaves with a torso of a golden, radiant face.
The motif of rockets has emerged in Ove’s current installations, like “The Mothership Connection” and “Black Starliner,” which function totem-like stacks of African tribal masks and lattice-like Veve symbols—intricate designs employed within the Vodou faith to symbolize religious deities referred to as Lwa.
“The Mothership Connection” combines architectural components referencing the Capitol Constructing in Washington, D.C., and a hoop of Cadillac lights nodding to Detroit, “Motor City.” The crowning component is a huge Mende tribal masks that glows when the 26-foot-tall sculpture is illuminated at evening, with a pulsing rhythm suggestive of a heartbeat.
The title can be a reference to the enduring 1975 album by Parliament-Funkadelic, Mothership Connection, in with outer house is a through-line within the group’s celebration of what BBC journalist Frasier McAlpine described as a response to the waning optimism of the post-civil rights period. Mothership Connection soared at a time when “flamboyant imagination (and let’s be frank, exceptional funkiness) was both righteous and joyful,” he wrote.
Ové echoes this exuberance by means of vibrant colours, repetition, and monumental scale. Library Avenue Collective, which exhibited “The Mothership Connection” on the grounds of The Shepherd in Detroit late final yr, describes the work as a nod “to a future where Black people are included in all possible frames of reference.”
In a monumental meeting of African masked figures titled “The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness,” Ové conceived of 40 graphite sculptures organized in a militaristic grid, every six-and-a-half toes tall, which have marched throughout the grounds of Somerset Home, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, San Francisco Metropolis Corridor, and Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork.
The title of this piece references two groundbreaking works in Black historical past—Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, which was the primary novel by a Black writer to with the Nationwide Guide Award, and Ben Jonson’s 1605 play The Masque of Blackness, noteworthy for being the primary time blackface make-up was utilized in a stage manufacturing.
Ové reclaims and reframes dominant narratives about African historical past, tradition, and the diaspora, interrogating the previous to posit what he calls “potential futures,” the place potentialities remodel into realities. “By fusing ancestral wisdom with Afrofuturist ideals, Ové ensures that the voices of the past remain integral to shaping the futures we envision,” his studio says.
“The Mothership Connection” shall be exhibited later this summer season and fall at 14th Avenue Sq. in New York Metropolis’s Meatpacking District, accompanied by a gallery present at Chelsea Market. Dates are at the moment being confirmed, and you’ll comply with updates on Ové’s Instagram.
