Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes

19 Sep 2026 — 18 Jan 2027 at Whitney Museum of American Art · New York

Coumba Samba

Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes is the first solo museum presentation devoted to artist Coumba Samba. A Senegalese American artist based in New York, Samba is known for her site-specific installations that draw on histories of modernist abstraction and minimalism, taking seemingly neutral non-objective forms from the global built environment and exposing the social, political, and economic structures embedded within.

For this lobby gallery exhibition, Samba presents an immersive installation titled Stars and Stripes that critically examines the development of nuclear power and the African resource extraction that has sustained it. Named after a common figure of speech for the American flag, the installation continues Samba's practice of deconstructing the symbols and forms that uphold the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Guest Curator, with Antonia Pocock, Curatorial Assistant.

Official page →

About the venue

Whitney Museum of American Art · New York

The Whitney Museum of American Art is a modern and contemporary American art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The institution was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a prominent American socialite…

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