All I Got To Give — KAMBUI OLUJIMI

Time Gone, 2023
Watercolor, ink, graphite on paper
60.5 x 52 inches

All I Got To Give
Culminating a twelve year long project of mining the history of dance marathons in the United States of the 1920s and 30’s, Olujimi’s works depict intimate moments between dancing couples, meditating on the impact of touch, embrace, and leaning on another as sources of strength and willpower to overcome obstacles and represent acts of resilience.

The spectacle of dance marathons, popularized in the 1920s as a form of entertainment, continued through the Great Depression, taking on a different function as an act of survival. Contestants traveled far and wide to compete in several months long contests of endurance, seeking shelter, food and monetary rewards. The voyeuristic spectacle of the marathons became both fascinating and morbid in the wake of economic depression and social upheaval. For Olujimi, this phenomenon represents a form that is deeply American–watching peoples’ struggles as entertainment.

Olujimi’s figures embrace each other, leaning with their full weight onto the other, implying a sense of gravity and underscoring the balance between the bodies as necessity; they need each other to continue, they rely on each other to survive. The physicality of the figures reflects the essential quality of companionship and interdependence–in the dance marathons the contestants relied on one another in order sleep while continuing to dance. This history is particularly poignant, grotesque and wondrous and speaks to the construction and completion of the mythic landscape America. Installation views from Vielmetter Los Angeles, 2023. Photo credits: Jeff McLane

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