Nari Ward Brings Migration and Memory to Hydra’s Slaughterhouse
On a Greek island known as much for its summer glamour as its working harbor, Nari Ward has staged an exhibition that refuses easy sentiment. The Jamaican-born, New York-based artist opened “Until That Day” on June 23 at the Deste Foundation’s Slaughterhouse project space on Hydra, presenting 10 new works that will remain on view through October 31.
The venue itself sharpens the show’s meaning. Set in a former abattoir on a cliff above the Aegean, the space gives Ward’s work a physical and geographic charge. His central sculpture, “Fire Hose Man,” is built from old luggage lashed together with fire hose, a material combination that turns displacement into something weighty, precarious, and unmistakably human.
Ward has long returned to the immigrant experience in his practice, often through large-scale assemblages made from urban debris. Here, that concern widens into a broader meditation on migration, memory, and the Afro-Greek community. The exhibition’s other elements reinforce that emphasis: emergency-blanket flags stand along the path and on a rocky outcrop by the sea-facing wall, while domino tables outside suggest a social space shaped by endurance and exchange.
The opening drew a notable crowd, including curators Cecilia Alemani, Ann Temkin, and Larry Ossei-Mensah, along with artists Raúl de Nieves and Maurizio Cattelan. Athens-based singer Aggelos Aggelou performed on the slaughterhouse roof and recited from Haile Selassie I’s 1963 U.N. address, linking Ward’s installation to a wider language of rights, diaspora, and international belonging. Jeff Koons’s large sun sculpture also spun in the breeze overhead, adding a surreal counterpoint to the evening.
What gives “Until That Day” its force is not only its subject, but its refusal to isolate it. Ward treats migration as a shared condition rather than a distant crisis, and Hydra’s layered setting — island, port, pilgrimage site, summer refuge — makes that argument feel immediate. In a season defined by escape, the exhibition asks what it means to arrive, to gather, and to remain visible.
