Brandon Ndife
Upcoming exhibition
Drop Pin will explore notions of the public and the private through a dialogue between recomposed fragments of the built environment and domestic furniture in Ndife’s sculptural vernacular. Given Ndife’s upbringing in Louisville, the work situates itself at the intersection of municipal infrastructure, ecology, and interior architectures. It will question what emerges from a city when conditions of power decide who, when, or what is invested in and what the outcome of those urban planning decisions might be for systemically disenfranchised groups of people.
About Brandon
Brandon Ndife (born 1991) creates sculptures that merge domestic forms with elements of the natural world through meticulous hand-building, casting, and painting. His work considers how everyday objects index life under capitalism while imagining alternative futures in which human-made and natural worlds converge. Ndife has presented solo exhibitions at Greene Naftali, New York (2024); Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); and Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2022), and has been included in major group exhibitions such as the New Museum Triennial (2021). His work is held in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives and works in New York.
Portrait photography credit: Ashley Mclean
SGVAP Presents: FIELD TRIP– A Community Led Bus Tour of Louisville’s Black Architecture and Cultural Landmarks
October 17th
12pm – 4pm
Speed Art Museum
Ahead of Brandon Ndife’s forthcoming exhibition, the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program invites community members to co-lead a bus tour of architecture and public spaces significant to Louisville’s Black cultural history. Inspired by “Claiming Open Spaces,” a 1996 documentary by Austin Allen about public parks told from the perspectives of the African American communities who use them, this program archives and educates people on the way Black Louisville life has shaped and been shaped by the built environment of the city. In this contemporary era of mass gentrification and land theft that has worn away predominantly Black communities nationwide, this program rejects that erasure and offers local community members, scholars, and artists a moment to historicize their landmarks themselves.
Each location on the bus tour has been pre-selected by community stewards to educate us on their chosen location and will allow for a non-traditional collection of sites and locations. Some of the sites chosen have been Shawnee Park, Portland Memorial Baptist Church, Flock of Finns, Parkland Library, and more!
To archive Louisville Black public space filmmaker Imani K. Dennison has been commissioned to join this tour and turn FIELD TRIP into a short documentary.