Ulysses Jenkins

DirectorActorProducerWriter

Ulysses Jenkins was born in 1946, in Los Angeles, California. He studied painting and drawing as an undergraduate at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and later received an MFA in intermedia-video and performance art from Otis Art Institute (now known as Otis College of Art and Design). Prior to enrolling at Otis, from 1970-72 Jenkins worked with the Los Angeles County Probation Department, teaching art to nondelinquent youth, and in 1989, taught video through a gang-intervention program in Oakland. Jenkins is the recipient of numerous awards, including individual artist fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, and named first place in experimental video by the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1990 and 92. His work has been included in major exhibitions, including America is Hard to See (2015), at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Now Dig this!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 (2012), at the Hammer Museum, and California Video (2008) at the Getty Center. Jenkins is currently Associate Professor in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and an affiliate professor in the African American Studies program at the University of California, Irvine.

01-01-1946

Birthday

Capricorn

Zodiac Sign

Genres

Total Films

Also known as (male)

Los Angeles, California, USA

Place of Birth

01-01-1946

Birthday

Capricorn

Zodiac Sign

Genres

Total Films

Also Known As (male)

Los Angeles, California, USA

Place of Birth

Popular works

Media

Creative career

actor

3 Works

producer

1 Works

director

22 Works

writer

1 Works

other

2 Works

Notions of Freedom

Ulysses Jenkins charts the history of jazz—what he calls “the first true American art form"—from its beginnings in New Orleans and the American South to the classic work of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and through the major innovations of Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Miles Davis. Also included are clips of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, explicitly linking the development of jazz to the Civil Rights Movement. Motion-capture animated figures are seen dancing, superimposed, over the archival footage of the musicians. Wearing colorful costumes, they perform Jenkins’ original choreography. The dancers exert a powerful influence over the historical documentation as their movements extend across the decades and, finally, into the future.

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Year:

2007

Dream City

Ulysses Jenkins composed "Dream City" from documentation of a twenty-four-hour performance he organized in collaboration with David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, and Senga Nengudi. A discordant, absurdist, and poetic montage, the video weaves together jazz and punk shows, recitations by Jenkins, and shots of the Los Angeles skyline and oil wells to comment on power and nation in the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.

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Year:

1983

Mass of Images

Mass of Images, a recorded performance that does indeed engage black stereotypes perpetuated by the American media. In the work, Jenkins appears on a set accompanied by a stack of televisions, his face obscured by a plastic mask and sunglasses, neck wrapped in American-flag-print scarf, and sporting an Adidas t-shirt underneath a bathrobe, arranged such that only the “ID” of Adidas is visible. The video cuts between this scene and examples of blackface and racist stereotyping from American films and TV. Jenkins repeats a mantra as he settles into a wheelchair and wheels himself toward center stage: “You’re just a mass of images you’ve gotten to know / from years and years of TV shows. / The hurting thing; the hidden pain / was written and bitten into your veins / I don’t and I won’t relate / and I think for some it’s too late!”

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Year:

1978