MoMA - Projects: Ufuoma Essi
Tue, Jun 03
|MoMA
Discover Ufuoma Essi’s poetic lens on memory and identity in Projects: Ufuoma Essi—a MoMA exhibition of experimental film that reclaims Black histories through image and sound.
Time & Location
Jun 03, 2025, 7:00 AM – Oct 13, 2025, 10:50 PM
MoMA, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA
About the event
On view through October 13, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Visit MoMA.org
“We carry history in the body.”With this powerful assertion, London-based artist Ufuoma Essi invites viewers into an exploration of memory, identity, and inherited history in Projects: Ufuoma Essi, the latest installment in MoMA’s long-running Projects series. Known for her richly layered film work, Essi fuses personal memory, found footage, and references to Black feminist thought to challenge dominant historical narratives and expand the meaning of archival storytelling.
The exhibition features two Super 8mm films that pulse with intimate resonance. Half Memory (2024) draws inspiration from Toni Morrison’s concept of “rememory”—how suppressed experiences echo into the present through involuntary recollection. Meanwhile, Bodies In Dissent (2021) examines performance as resistance, threading together visuals of dancer Loretta Abbott with audio from Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln to reveal how Black artistic expression encodes lived history across time and continents.
With grace and complexity, Essi’s films…