David Uzochukwu

This is the first major exhibition and monograph on contemporary artist David Uzochukwu. 

David Uzochukwu: Bodies of Water is a poetic meditation on identity, migration, and belonging. Marking the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, the book introduces readers to Uzochukwu’s visionary practice, where mythology, fantasy, and personal history converge. In his photographs, hybrid beings—part human, part animal—move through surreal, aqueous landscapes. Here, Blackness resists fixed definition: fluid, shifting, and vibrantly alive. 

Rejecting portrayals of African diasporic people as displaced or alien, Uzochukwu imagines figures equipped to thrive in challenging worlds—adorned with fins, scales, and other transformative traits. His seamless digital collages merge precision and wonder, dissolving the boundaries between reality and imagination. The resulting images echo the adaptive strategies of diasporic communities navigating environments often shaped by hostility and exclusion. Featuring newly commissioned essays and reflections, Bodies of Water gathers leading curators, writers, and cultural critics to explore Uzochukwu’s work as a meditation on transformation, survival, and the limitless possibilities of Black existence.

Exhibition Schedule

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art,

June 10 – December 2026

The Weisman Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota

 in Spring or Fall 2027

+ other national venues TBC

Published by Paul Holberton Publishing/Distributed by Yale University Press

Efeoghene Igor Coleman is a curator and scholar specializing in African Diasporic art.

Ekow Eshun is a curator, writer and broadcaster.

Stefanie Hessler is Director of the Swiss Institute in New York and editor of several books.

Troy L. Wiggins is an award-winning writer and editor