November 13, 2026 – Feb 21, 2027 

Presented by the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program 

Artist Brandon Ndife (b.1991) grew up in Louisville and attended duPont Manual High School in the 2000s. Ndife, who is now based in New York, creates sculptures that fuse forms often resembling domestic objects with elements pulled from the natural world. Through hand-building, painting, and casting in synthetic resin or polyurethane foam, Ndife creates meticulous replicas that subtly nod to ideas of the “readymade” objects that permeate our contemporary society. Expectant with ripening and rot, Ndife’s artworks can appear like relics unearthed from a distant past or envoys of a dystopian future. 

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. Sprouting from the sculpture’s interstices will be an amalgam of seeds, vines, and detritus that speak to the ecologies of life that entangle themselves within these geographies. After spending the month of July working from a University of Louisville studio in Portland, a historically low-income and disinvested side of town, these works are porous to the imposed hostile designs of our physical world and interrogate how these conditions may be reflected in our daily intimate lives. 

Brandon 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 he 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. 

This exhibition, which is realized as part of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program, is organized by Diallo Simon-Ponte, Sam Gilliam Assistant Curator of Artist Programs. This presentation is generously supported by the Sam Gilliam Foundation.  

ABOUT THE SAM GILLIAM VISITING ARTIST PROGRAM   

The Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Program, conceived of and presented by the Speed Art Museum, invites two contemporary artists each year to Louisville to foster fellowship and generate dialogue with Kentucky artists and community members. In addition to painters, sculptors, and photographers, this program recognizes writers, librarians, archivists, urban planners, community organizers, and agricultural scientists as creative practitioners necessary to the vitality of a local ecosystem. The Sam Gilliam Visiting Artists are invited to contribute a public presentation of their practice, educational workshops, studio visits, film screenings, and/or lectures, culminating in new approaches to public programming both at the Speed Art Museum and beyond. This program is made possible by the Sam Gilliam Foundation.  

ABOUT CURRENT SPEED  

Brandon Ndife: Drop Pin is part of Current Speed, a series of contemporary art exhibitions that introduce the Kentuckiana community to new and emerging artists as well as celebrated mid-career artists previously underrecognized in the region. Current Speed exhibitions are open to the public and included with general museum admission. The series is initiated and organized by Tyler Blackwell, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum. Previous iterations have explored the work of Vian Sora, Kathia St. Hilaire, Angel Otero/Leslie Martinez, and Sky Hopinka.