NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art presents Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes. The exhibition marks the first solo museum presentation devoted to New York-based Senegalese American artist Coumba Samba (b. 2000), whose ambitious installations examine the social, political, and economic systems embedded within the built environment.

In Stars and Stripes, Samba draws on the geometric forms and bold colors of modernist abstraction to explore the entanglement of resource extraction, militarism, and systems of global power. Sculptures modeled after depleted uranium shells are painted in the colors of the flags of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Namibia, Niger, and the United States. By using elements of national identity—including stripes, colors, and graphic forms—Samba interrogates the histories concealed within these familiar symbols and the systems that have shaped the global military-industrial complex and the development of nuclear weapons.

The African nations referenced in the installation were among the world’s principal sources of uranium ore during the Cold War, when many of their mines were operated by foreign companies. Reverberations of these histories run throughout the exhibition. The Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, supplied much of the uranium ore used for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Decades later, allegations that Iraq had sought five hundred tons of uranium ore from Niger became part of the case presented by the U.S. government for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.





Samba considers the global nuclear order in relation to a geography of extraction established under colonial rule. While resource-rich African nations have often not received the full economic benefits of their natural resources, their communities and landscapes have borne significant environmental consequences. Through Stars and Stripes, Samba examines the enduring effects of colonial systems on African people, places, resources, and sovereignty.

The exhibition is presented in the Whitney’s Lobby Gallery, organized by Rujeko Hockley, Guest Curator, with Antonia Pocock, Curatorial Assistant.

Born and raised in Harlem, Couma Samba studied at the Rhode Island School of Design before earning her BA from Camberwell College of Arts in London. Working across sculpture, installation, sound, and light, she draws upon the histories of modernist abstraction and minimalism while revealing the structures of power that can be concealed within seemingly neutral forms. Alongside her visual art practice, Samba is also the vocalist for the experimental pop music duo NEW YORK.

The exhibition opens at a pivotal moment in Samba’s career, following her recent participation in Greater New York 2026 at MoMA PS1 and Fade at the Studio Museum in Harlem. While her work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes marks a significant homecoming and milestone of recognition in New York, the city where she was born and raised.