Building on MOCA’s sound programme, the museum presents Suspension (2020), an audiovisual work by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi (b.1980, New York, United States), projected in the museum’s South Stairwell. The video moves through intimate close-ups of recognizable female gymnasts of colour at the height of their discipline. Rather than staging triumph or failure, it centres a shared state of concentration. Altered by haunting music, the sequence of portraits reflects the immense training and sacrifice condensed into these moments, while drawing attention to the overwhelming expectations these athletes must also train to resist and overcome.
About the Artist
Nkosi obtained her BA from Harvard University (2004) and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York (2008). She divides her time between studio work, performance, and navigating the field of art as social practice. Her work investigates the lived consequences of imperial histories and the personal dimensions of political identities, collectivity, and futurity, among other concepts.
Her solo projects and exhibitions include Arena V, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2024); Stadium, Stevenson, Amsterdam (2023); Equations for a Body at Rest, across public spaces in Birmingham as part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games; Landings, Stevenson, Cape Town (2022); Gymnasium, Stevenson, Johannesburg (2020); Gymnasium, The Africa Center, New York (2019); and The Beginning of Stories (Part 1 of Many), Seedspace Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee (2017).
Notable group exhibitions include Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (2024); Movements, Museum Hilversum, the Netherlands (2024); In Terms of Sports, New Taipei City Art Museum, Taiwan (2024); Power Plays, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, USA (2024); Thinking Historically in the Present, the 15th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2023); Resistance Training: Arts, Sports, and Civil Rights, the Broad Museum of Art, Michigan State University (2023); Fix Your Pony, Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University, Belfast (2023); CHAMPS, Granville Centre Art Gallery, Cumberland (2023); Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Orlando Museum of Art, Florida (2023); THE GYM, Soho Studios, Vienna (2022); When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2022), Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2024), BOZAR, Belgium (2025); New Formations, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Massachusetts, USA (2022); How to Make a Country, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France (2021); Mixed Company, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2021); Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2020); NIEPODLEGŁE, Women, Independence and National Discourse, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018); and Art Afrique, Le Nouvel Atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017), among others.
