In Memoriam: Otis College Alum Ulysses Jenkins Has Died
The artist was a trailblazing figure in Black experimental video.
Otis College is saddened to announce that esteemed alum Ulysses Jenkins (’79 MFA Fine Arts) passed away on February 23, 2026.
Jenkins was a student of Otis instructor Charles White, who was a big influence on his work. In an interview with ArtNews, Jenkins talked about the two years he studied with White and how the instructor’s mentorship helped him make a breakthrough in his practice. “Having the opportunity to get the wisdom from Charles White helped me to formulate the direction of that work that I was about to create. That had a lot to do with the philosophical approaches in his work. I took that as a means of which I could do the work that I did,” Jenkins said.
Like White, Jenkins would go on to teach at Otis College in the 1980s.
The Charles White Archive shared this bio of Jenkins with the College:
“Ulysses Jenkins (1946–2026) was a Los Angeles–born artist whose practice spanned video, performance, mural painting, photography, and collaboration. A trailblazing figure in Black experimental video, he was widely recognized for works that used image, sound, and cultural iconography to examine representation, race, gender, ritual, history, and power. Across a career spanning more than five decades, Jenkins had a profound impact on contemporary art and media practices. His first major retrospective, Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation, was co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, and the Hammer Museum, and later traveled internationally. Jenkins was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of California, Irvine, and his work is held in major museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art.”
The Hammer Museum shared on its Instagram account that it will be organizing a memorial to Jenkins in Los Angeles, “to honor and celebrate the life and extraordinary career of Jenkins, a true video griot whose work and spirit touched many.”
Of Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation, the museum wrote that Jenkins was a “pivotal influence on contemporary art for over 50 years…. His video and media work is remarkable for its fusion of forms to conjure vibrant expressions of how image, sound, and cultural iconography inform representation. Using archival footage, photographs, image processing, and elegiac soundtracks, Jenkins pulls together strands of thought to construct an ‘other’ history that consistently interrogates questions of race and gender as they relate to ritual, history, and state power.”
In a profile in the Los Angeles Times on his Hammer retrospective, Jenkins likened what he does to the “storytelling done by West African musician/oral historians known as griots. ‘The histories and traditions come from the griots,’ he says. ‘They reassert the history and the culture.’”
The New York Times also documented the many collaborations Jenkins had with artists, including several in the Otis community: “... Jenkins also made his mark dialoguing with other SoCal artists—studying under [Otis instructor] Betye Saar and Chris Burden, mixing with David Hammons [’72 Fine Arts] and Barbara T. Smith, collaborating with Kerry James Marshall [’78 BFA Fine Arts] and Senga Nengudi and members of Asco, the East Los Angeles art collective [cofounded by Patssi Valdez, ’85 BFA Fine Arts].”
Jenkins also participated in an Otis-sponsored Alumnx Exploration Series conversation in March 2022 with Eloy Torrez ('79 BFA Fine Arts):
The College will share more information about the Hammer Museum’s memorial event and other obituaries as they are made available in updates to this article.
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