On view at the District’s Jungle Plaza between January 15 - February 9, 2026, J’OUVERT is a major public art installation by British-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové. Bringing together two of Ové’s most significant monumental works, The Mothership Connection and The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness, the installation transforms Jungle Plaza into an immersive environment where Afrofuturist imagination converges with ancestral memory, ritual and public space.
At the center of the Plaza rises The Mothership Connection (2022), a nearly 30-foot-tall totemic sculpturethat fuses African iconography with futuristic form. Composed of stacked architectural elements referencing sources as wide-ranging as the Great Mosque of Djenné, Masonic geometry and Western civic arches, the sculpture is crowned by an enlarged female Mende mask. Both a cultural monument and a speculative vessel, the work gestures toward the expansive reach of the African diaspora. Its title nods to the seminal Parliament-Funkadelic album of the same name, underscoring Ové’s long-standing engagement with music, movement and collective consciousness.
Encircling this central work are forty identical graphite figures from The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness (2016), each standing just over six feet tall with arms raised in an open, declarative gesture. The series is based on an ebony sculpture gifted to Ové by his father, pioneering filmmaker Horace Ové, and draws from a layered constellation of references, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Renaissance masque traditions, and West African sculptural lineages. Presented together in Jungle Plaza, the figures assert dignity and resilience in the public realm while activating a powerful dialogue around visibility and collective identity.
The exhibition will be complemented by public programming including an artist talk, hands-on workshops, live music performances and sensorial experiences.
Join us for an artist-led visit to the installation on Friday, January 16 at 6pm.
Image courtesy of the artist and NALA Projects. Installation view, Meatpacking district, New York 2025
