John Jennings: Build Your World

Client:Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience

Exhibition on view June 20, 2026–March 27, 2027

John Jennings: Build Your World presents the extraordinary storytelling and worldbuilding of Mississippi native, New York Times Best Seller graphic novelist, Harvard Fellow, and Hugo- and Eisner Award-winning artist John Jennings. His groundbreaking work in Afrofuturism, folklore, and comics is revealed through multiple creative projects, including Silver Surfer: Ghost Light (Marvel), Kenny Dreadful and the Hainted Hoodie, Blue Hand Mojo: Hard Times Road (Rosarium Publishing), and Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Abrams ComicArts). Visitors discover Jennings’s creative process and learn how layered worlds of comics and graphic novels can challenge historical erasure, reframe trauma, and imagine radical futures. 

Exhibition design draws upon familiar fonts and layout from comics, as well as bold colors from the artist’s works. Featured publications are presented in order of development, with sidebars providing context about worldbuilding and about the history of Black characters in comics. Process videos are presented in two locations, an iPad allows visitors to flip through the graphic novel The Keeper (Megascope), and an engagement space encourages visitors to sharpen their own worldbuilding skills by developing and sharing their vision of a better Mississippi.