“The first museum survey in New York of the work of Nari Ward (b. 1963, St. Andrew, Jamaica), the exhibition brings together works spanning Ward’s twenty-five-year career, installed across the three main floors of the Museum. Nari Ward: We the People is curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator; Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director; and Helga Christoffersen, Associate Curator. 

The exhibition features over thirty sculptures, paintings, videos, and large-scale installations from throughout Ward’s career, highlighting his status as one of the most important and influential sculptors working today. Since the early 1990s, Ward has produced his works by accumulating staggering amounts of humble materials and repurposing them in consistently surprising ways. 

His approach evokes a variety of creative acts of recycling and folk traditions from Jamaica, where he was born, as well as the material textures of Harlem, where he has lived and worked for the past twenty-five years. Yet Ward also relies on research into specific histories and sites to uncover connections among geographically and culturally disparate communities and to explore the tension between tradition and transformation.” — New Museum 

Photographs by Corrado Serra.

Hunger Cradle, 1996. Private Collection

Amazing Grace, 1993. Private Collection

Amazing Grace (detail), 1993. Private Collection

Crusader, 2005, Brooklyn Museum

Sky Juice, 1993, Whitney Museum of American Art

Front: Blue Window-Brick Vine, 1993, Columbus Museum of Art. Back: Iron Heavens, 1995, Collection Jeffrey Deitch

Glory, 2004. Courtesy the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul; and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, and Havana

Installation view. Third floor

Exodus, 1993. Collection Jeffrey Deitch

Super Stud Salt Table, 1995/2019. Collection the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul; and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, and Havana

Right: Carpet Angel, 1992, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Installation view. Fourth floor