09 Sep Pink Kool-Aid Menagerie | Zachary Fabri
October 2nd, 2026 – January 3rd, 2027
Opening Reception: October 2nd, 2026
Members Only Happy Hour from 4-6pm
Open to Public from 6-9pm
Zachary Fabri Performance at 6:30pm
Zachary Fabri presents a surreal, collage-like exhibition including painting, photography, video, sculpture, and performance. The Brooklyn-based artist draws from his immersive experiences during a two-month residency in Ogden, weaving together observations of the Great Salt Lake’s natural environment with encounters, conversations, and community engagement throughout the region.
Central to the exhibition are experimental works created at the Bonneville Salt Flats and Stansbury Island within the Great Salt Lake ecosystem. An important point of reference is Robert Smithson’s iconic earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970), located on the northeastern shore of the lake. Influenced by Smithson’s approach to site, landscape, and material, Fabri created photographs and videos along the lake’s striking pink shoreline.
The exhibition also draws playfully from a wide range of cultural and artistic references, including the work of Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Pope.L, and David Hammons. Rather than following a single narrative, Fabri layers these influences with his own experiences, allowing seemingly different histories, images, and ideas to collide.
Pink emerges as a recurring visual and conceptual thread throughout the exhibition. It originates in the landscape, in the halophilic microorganisms that thrive in the Great Salt Lake’s hypersaline waters, but quickly shifts toward the artificial pink of Kool-Aid and the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid.” This association led Fabri to the history of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, whose followers at Jonestown were predominantly Black and whose deaths in 1978 have become embedded in American cultural memory. Through these associations, color becomes a vehicle for moving between ecology, popular culture, belief, collective identity, and historical memory.
Fabri’s experience as a Black American is an ever-present subtext within his practice. In several sculptures, videos, and performances in the exhibition, he engages with the history and contemporary presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His work considers what it means for a Black artist to encounter an institution that, until 1978, restricted Black men of African descent from priesthood ordination and Black women and men from participation in temple ordinances.
Rather than approaching this history from a distance, Fabri has used his residency as an opportunity for conversation and analysis. Throughout his time in Ogden, he has met regularly with local Latter-day Saint missionaries, seeking to better understand the Church, its beliefs, and the role it plays within the Ogden community. These exchanges became part of the exhibition’s larger exploration of faith, belonging, history, and the ways communities construct and sustain shared identities.
By bringing together seemingly disparate places, histories, materials, and ideas, Pink Kool-Aid Menagerie creates a web of unexpected connections. Through salt, color, landscape, faith, food, race, and memory, Fabri invites viewers to consider the bonds that connect us to one another and our shared responsibility to the environments and communities we inhabit.
OCA’s Artist in Residence program is made possible by: Weber County R.A.M.P., George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Utah Arts & Museums, Ogden City Arts, Utah Office of Tourism, and Sam and Diane Stewart Family Foundation
About the Artist
Zachary Fabri is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist engaged in lens-based media and public space. He works across video, drawing, and installation, often complicating the boundaries of studio research and performance. He is the recipient of awards that include The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and the BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize. Fabri’s work has been exhibited at Art in General, The Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, The Walker Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Hungary. Collaborative projects include the Museum of Modern Art, the Sharjah Biennial, and Pace Gallery. Zachary Fabri is the recipient of the 2024 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. Currently his film is in the exhibition Beyond Representation 2, at Pérez Art Museum Miami, Caribbean Cultural Institute.
Schedule of Events:
September 10, 2026, 6 p.m. | Lecture at Weber State University: Zachary Fabri artist lecture hosted by Weber State University
October 2nd, 2026, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. | VIP Members Only Happy Hour: First look at exhibition, small bites and beverages will be served at OCA. Artist Zachary Fabri will be in attendance.
October 2nd, 2026, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. | Public Opening: Artist Zachary Fabri will be in attendance
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
Thur – Sat, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sun, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.