Nari Ward Revisits Haile Selassie’s 1963 UN Speech Through Found Materials

Nari Ward Brings Haile Selassie’s 1963 Speech Into the Slaughterhouse on Hydra

DESTE Foundation presents Nari Ward’s Until That Day at the Slaughterhouse Project Space in Hydra, through October 31, 2026.

Haile Selassie’s 1963 address to the United Nations has continued to circulate long after it was delivered, most famously through Bob Marley’s song War.

In Until That Day, Nari Ward returns to the speech without illustrating it directly. Its language instead moves through the exhibition in fragments, objects and sound, connecting the historical address to the conditions in which the work is encountered today.

The building remains an active part of that encounter. Bare concrete holds the heat of the day into the evening, iron beams cut low across the ceiling, and arched windows built for ventilation rather than light throw square patterns onto the floor.

The former slaughterhouse gives Ward’s materials a direct setting in which the history and physical character of the space remain clearly present.

Selassie’s words form a central reference throughout the exhibition, but Ward does not present the speech as a historical document. Selected fragments instead appear across the installation and are encountered gradually as the visitor moves through the building.

Near the entrance, a standing figure taller than anyone in the room is bound from head to base in dark red strapping, tightened and crossed around its surface. Underneath, the outlines of packed suitcases push against the weave. Fluorescent tubes illuminate the figure from above, while the straps extend toward the floor and spread across the tiles in a broad radial pattern.

Further in, three sound-system towers rise through a row of adjoining doorways, with cabinets and speaker cones wrapped in the same red webbing. Their scale and repetition connect sound with the materials that recur throughout the installation. Ward’s Jamaican background and his engagement with sound-system culture are visible here, while the work also connects to wider histories of movement, displacement and collective memory.

Running along the wall-to-ceiling seam throughout the building, red banners spell out fragments in raised dot-pattern lettering. Discredited. Inferior. Abandoned. Pursued. Illusion. Attained. The words are taken from Selassie’s address and appear separately across the space, requiring visitors to encounter and connect them while moving through the exhibition.

The exhibition also places these historical references within the contemporary setting of Greece, where migration, citizenship and belonging remain part of the wider social context.

The participation of Afro-Greek musicians in the project further connects Ward’s installation to experiences situated within the country rather than treating the speech only as a historical reference.

Outside, on the terrace above the water, a ship’s anchor is bound in the same red weave and positioned toward the strait crossed by boats approaching and leaving Hydra.

The work extends the installation beyond the interior of the Slaughterhouse and brings Ward’s recurring materials into direct contact with the island and the surrounding sea. The anchor introduces associations with movement, arrival and restraint while leaving its meaning open.

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