Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes

At the centre of the Whitney's lobby gallery stands a group of freestanding shapes painted in bold stripes. Each is modeled on a depleted uranium shell, and the stripes come from the flags of the United States, Gabon, Niger, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, countries whose uranium has fed US nuclear weapons programs since the Second World War.

It is one installation, made for this room by the Harlem-born Samba (born 2000), and her first solo museum show. The label lists acrylic on extruded polystyrene, oil on wood, an electric fan and an LED light. You get the history from the wall text: the Congo's Shinkolobwe mine supplied most of the uranium for the Hiroshima bomb, and in 2003 a claim that Iraq had sought 500 tons of ore from Niger helped justify the invasion.

Samba calls the piece "bright and dark". The Floor 1 gallery is free to everyone during Museum hours, so you can walk in without a ticket. The Whitney is closed Tuesdays.