Image: L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, London
The collective practice sweat variant, formed by artists Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, will extend their performance work into the gallery with ‘sweat variant (Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born): where you go full, volume 5’. The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, has organised the exhibition, curated by Curator of Exhibitions Rebecca Lowery. The installation is co-commissioned by the Wexner Center and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. It runs from 20 September 2026 to 24 January 2027.
Okpokwasili, a performer, choreographer and writer, and Born, a designer, writer and composer, create an immersive space through which visitors wander in what the Wexner Center describes as a landscape of embodied memory, with performers’ bodies transmitting emotion and experience through movement. The new installation draws on the physical research developed for adaku, part 2, which has its world premiere at the Wexner Center in October 2026, with the first performance on 20 October at 7pm.
Project credits list Okpokwasili and Born as directors, with performers Bria Bacon, Kris Lee, Okwui Okpokwasili, Ny Opong and AJ Wilmore. Kearra Gopee is video producer, with cinematography by Oresti Tsonopoulos and Alex Munro and Maria Cabra as gaffer.
The exhibition is part of the Wexner Center’s autumn 2026 programme, opening alongside ‘Sammy Baloji: When Extraction Becomes Form It Speaks in Borrowed Tongues’ and ‘Temitayo Ogunbiyi: You will have revelations along felled branches and longer roots/routes’. A Fall 2026 Exhibitions Opening Celebration is scheduled for 18 September 2026, with the galleries open from 4 to 8pm; it is free with a ticket, and is a preview event rather than the start of the exhibition’s public run.
Gallery admission is free for all audiences. The Wexner Center is at 1871 North High Street in Columbus and operates within The Ohio State University; its programme spans galleries, a Film/Video Theater, performing arts and education initiatives. The centre notes that its High Street entrance is currently closed for paver repair, with the College Road entrance remaining open.
Images accompanying the announcement include sweat variant’s performance ‘let slip, hold sway’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2025, picturing Okwui Okpokwasili and Kris Lee, photographed by Maria Baranova.
