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Project Atrium: Nari Ward

Great Greetings

March 5 - August 16, 2026

Rendering of Great Greetings installation in MOCA's Atrium

Nari Ward, Great Greetings (rendering for MOCA Jacksonville), 2025.

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For his Project Atrium installation, Ward is utilizing emergency blankets­—reflective silver and gold acetate sheets commonly used for survival, post-marathon recovery, and intense physical exertion. These blankets regulate body temperature by retaining heat and shielding the body from wind and moisture. Their dual identity as both protective and disposable objects makes them ideal material for exploring states of crisis, care, celebration, and instability. Ward, along with students from the University of North Florida’s Enlivened Spaces sculpture class, will transform these blankets into a series of sculptural and graphic elements including text-based wall works and pennant banners.
 
On the Atrium walls, sections of The Financial Times will be collaged onto emergency blankets to form oversized words derived from greeting-card categories, such a Get Well Soon, Birthday, Sympathy, Wedding, Anniversary, Condolences, Father, Mother, Daughter, and others. These words, expanded to monumental scale, reframe prepackaged emotional expressions that reflect relationships, rites of passage, and social expectations. Their construction from fragmented newspaper articles and advertisements lends them the visual effect of absurd ransom notes, layering humor and tension onto language often treated as benign or sentimental.
 
Animating the space, pennant banners made from the emergency blankets will be suspended from wall to wall. The movement, shimmer, and subtle sound created by the banners will offer an immersive, celebratory atmosphere that simultaneously signals exuberance and overwhelm, with an undercurrent of chaos.
 
By combining these elements, the artist aims to create an environment that merges anonymity, vulnerability, and celebration, while examining how language shapes emotional exchange, how materials carry histories of crisis and care, and how viewers navigate spaces where joy and anxiety coexist. Ward invites museum visitors to reflect on the contrast between mass-produced sentiments and lived emotional experiences; the dual roles of emergency materials as protective yet precarious; the tension between festivity and crisis in contemporary life; and the power of recontextualizing materials to shift meaning and perception. The work’s accessibility—through recognizable materials and familiar language—is meant to encourage public engagement and conversation.
 

ABOUT PROJECT ATRIUM

Since its launch in 2011, Project Atrium has commissioned artists to create site‑specific and site‑sensitive installations that engage the museum’s public-facing architecture, inviting audiences to witness the making process and experience immersive art from multiple vantage points across three floors. The Atrium serves as a visual anchor for the entire building and a hallmark of MOCA’s commitment to bold contemporary practice. This project serves as a significant contribution to MOCA Jacksonville’s mission to promote the discovery, knowledge, and advancement of the art, artists, and ideas of our time—presenting contemporary art that provokes inquiry and fosters community connection.

Sponsors 

Exhibition Presenting Sponsor 
Florida Blue

Exhibition Sponsor 
Wende Wilson

Project Atrium Series Sponsor
Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow, PLLC

OPENING CELEBRATION

Mar 5 | Donors 6 p.m., Members 7 p.m., Community 8 p.m.
Enjoy an evening of art and community featuring a new exhibition by artist Nari Ward. This event is free and open to the community from 8-9 p.m. Learn more and reserve your spot.

MOCA Members are invited to an exclusive early access preview of the exhibition. Not a member? Join today for your early access invitation! 

Extend Your Evening

MOCA Jacksonville has partnered with local restaurants to provide dining options for event guests. Show your event tickets to your server at any of the restaurants below to receive 10% off your order before or after attending the Opening Celebration event at MOCA!

Portrait of artist Nari Ward in studio 

ABOUT NARI WARD

Nari Ward (b.1963, St. Andrew, Jamaica) is a Jamaican-American artist based in New York City. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Hunter College, where he completed a B.A. in 1991, receiving his MFA from Brooklyn College in 1992. Solo exhibitions have been hosted at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2024); at the historic Piscina Romano, Milan, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi (2022); Vilcek Foundation, New York (2022); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2020); the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2019); the New Museum, New York (2019); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2017); The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2016); Pérez Art Museum Miami (2015); Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2015); Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA (2014); The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2011); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2011); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2002); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2001, 2000).

Nari Ward is currently participating in the 2025 Taipei Biennial, Whispers on the Horizon, and the 2025 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, For the Time Being, in India, and most recently participated in the 2025 Sao Paulo Biennial, Not All Travelers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice. Other group exhibitions featuring his work include Objects Like Us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2018-2019); UPTOWN: nastywomen/badhombres, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2017); Black: Color, Material, Concept, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); The Great Mother, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York (2013); Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Rotunda, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); and Landings, Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany (2003).

Ward has received numerous honors and distinctions such as the Joyce Award, The Joyce Foundation, Chicago (2015), and the Rome Prize, American Academy of Rome (2012), and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Ward has also received commissions from the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

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