Permanent Collection

4420 Warwick Boulevard
Kansas City, MO 64111

Contact

Kemper Museum Policies

The Kemper Museum website uses cookies. By continuing to use the site, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use.

Hours

Employment

Docent Portal

Policies

News

Atrium Project

Café Sebastienne

Visit

Free Admission

Free Programs

Location & Directions

Free Parking

Programming is generously supported by the Jack and Karen Holland Visiting Artist Program​.

Kemper Museum is a free art museum in Kansas City, Missouri that presents global contemporary art.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Accessibility

Exhibitions

Exhibitions & Collection

Calendar

Groups & Tours

Volunteer

Public Programs

Programs

Mission

History

Architecture

Leadership

Community Partners

About

Memberships

Legacy Society

Gala

Annual Report

Support

Museum Shop

Special Event Rentals

Join

Shop

Worlds Otherwise Hidden features the work of three international artists who interpret the complexities—both beautiful and challenging—of cultures shaped by migration, immigration, displacement, and exile. Nevin Aladağ (b. 1972), Kimsooja (b. 1957), and Nari Ward (b. 1963) combine and transmute specific objects, designs, and symbols from divergent cultural contexts in their video and sculptural installations. They explore issues of fractured geography, creating new space for dialogue and revealing worlds otherwise hidden.

Born in Turkey and based in Berlin, Nevin Aladağ employs practicable objects such as carpets, wire, and instruments in her two- and three-dimensional works and video installations that engage purposefully with meditations on cultural heritage and identity. She harmonizes patterns, materials, and sounds of varying origins through symmetry, rhythm, and symbiotic balance to reveal an underlying connectedness between individual and collective histories.

Korean-born, New York–based artist Kimsooja synchronizes public and private identity and experience as she brings attention to the potency of everyday objects and actions, and the memory and narrative therein. Using designs, icons, and colors from all of the world’s national flags, without hierarchy or political prejudice, Kimsooja’s installation To Breathe—Zone of Nowhere creates a visual canopy where national differences exist on an equal plane. 

Jamaican-born Nari Ward employs found objects, which imbue his works with a tactile and visceral relationship to both history and the real world. His sculpture and video works in this exhibition reveal messages and meaning through recurring forms that change over time and in different geographic locations. Ward’s references include urban space, performance and the body, the dynamics of power and politics, ideas of migration and movement, and vernacular traditions in his native Jamaica and where he lives and works in New York.

Worlds Otherwise Hidden is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. The exhibition is presented as a prelude project providing a broader trajectory and thematic investigation of artists featured in Open Spaces: A Kansas City Art Experience, taking place August 25–October 28, 2018.

This exhibition has been generously supported by the R. Crosby Kemper Jr. Exhibition Fund, UMB Bank, n.a. Trustee.

Sustaining Sponsors:
 The Copaken Family Fund
 Sharon and John Hoffman

from the exhibition Worlds Otherwise Hidden, May 17–September 2, 2018 
 ​Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
 Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2018.

Kimsooja - To Breathe–Zone of Nowhere, 2017
 installation consisting of 30 nylon flags, 243 x 152 cm each.
 Courtesy of Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth and Kimsooja Studio. © Kimsooja.

from the exhibition Worlds Otherwise Hidden, May 17–September 2, 2018 
 ​Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
 Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2018.

Kimsooja - To Breathe–Zone of Nowhere, 2017
 installation consisting of 30 nylon flags, 243 x 152 cm each.
 Courtesy of Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth and Kimsooja Studio. © Kimsooja.

Nari Ward
 Mango Tourist, 2011 
 foam, battery canisters, Sprague Electric Company resistors and capacitors mango pits, 3 figures, each approximately 120 inches in height, In collaboration with MASS MoCa, North Adams, Massachusetts. 
 and
  We the People, 2011 
 shoelaces, 96 x 324 inches 
 In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
 Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Gift of the Speed Contemporary, 2016.1 
 © and Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York, and Hong Kong. 

Nari Ward
 Sweater, 2011 
 single-channel video, color, sound, 4 minutes, 56 seconds 
 In collaboration with MASS MoCa, North Adams, Massachusetts 
 © and Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York, and Hong Kong. 

Exhibition Preview

Worlds Otherwise Hidden

Installation view
 Nevin Aladağ
 works from the Social Fabric series, 2017

Worlds Otherwise Hidden, May 17–September 2, 2018 
 ​Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
 Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2018.