David Uzochukwu: Bodies of Water
Presented By
All exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art are underwritten by the MBMA Exhibition Fund.
Major annual support is provided by Kay Clark and Maggie and Milton Lovell, with generous annual funding from Anonymous, Gloria and Kenneth Boyland, Holly and Paul T. Combs, Deborah and Bob Craddock, Michael and Maria Douglass, Eleanor and William Halliday, Debi and Galen Havner, Buzzy Hussey and Hal Brunt, Jay and Kristen Keegan, the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust, Carl and Valerie Person, and Bill Townsend.
Artists & Curator
Artist
David Uzochukwu
David Uzochukwu is a Berlin-based artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work explores identity, cultural memory, and history. His images have appeared in the British Journal of Photography, i-D, Dazed, and have been exhibited at Saatchi Gallery (London), Fotografiska (New York and Shanghai), and Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City), among other institutions. His photographs are held in public collections including Collection Pictet (Switzerland), Musée de la Photographie de Saint-Louis (Senegal), and The Wedge Collection (Canada). A 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Uzochukwu has directed films such as Götterdämmerung (2020) and Civil Dusk (2021), and episodes of Black Fruit, which premiered in 2024 at the Tribeca Film Festival. Bodies of Water is his debut solo museum exhibition.
Artist
Calida Rawles
Rawles (b. 1976, Wilmington, Delaware; lives in Los Angeles) received a B.A. from Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, and an M.A. from New York University. She has had solo exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin, New York; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles; and Standard Vision, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions, including the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles; LACMA9 Art + Film Lab, Inglewood, California; Rush Arts Gallery, New York, among others. Rawles created the cover art for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s novel, The Water Dancer, and her work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
Artist
Yu-Wen Wu
Yu-Wen Wu is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in Taipei, Taiwan and is based in Boston, MA. She received her B.sc from Brown University in Providence, RI, and an MFA from the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Wu has received numerous awards including the 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Her work is in several private and public collections, and she has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, NY; the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.: Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA; Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece; Xippas Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland;and more.
Curator
Curator
Efe Igor Coleman
Efeoghene Igor Coleman is an independent curator and scholar specializing in African diasporic art. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Yale University, with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has served as Blackmon Perry Assistant Curator of African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, as well as Assistant Director of Academic Engagement at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.