Crit Night with Pioneer Works featuring Amirtha Kidambi and Azikiwe Mohammed

Crit Night, presented in partnership with Ace Hotel Brooklyn, is a series of intimate evenings featuring Pioneer Works artists-in-residence. In the spirit of experimentation and critique, they share works in progress for feedback and discussion.

This year’s Crit Nights center the practices of our Rockefeller Working Artist Fellows. For this iteration, Amirtha Kidambi and Azikiwe Mohammed will share their work, and engage in a conversation moderated by Morgan Bassichis.

About the artists  –

Azikiwe Mohammed is a crafter who builds physical spaces for Blackness and indigenous stories. Sometimes that land is physical, and other times it lives in our bodies. These attempts at land shapings have taken place at Canada Gallery, NY; Transformer, Washington, D.C.; The High Line, NY; California African American Museum, LA; Fairmount Water Works, Philadelphia, PA; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and MoMA PS1, NY, among others. He lives in New York and has his studio in Newark, as part of Project for Empty Space.

Based in New York City-Lenapehoking, Amirtha Kidambi is an improviser and composer focused on critical intervention. She responds to our fraught times with collaborators that include musicians Luke Stewart, Angel & Demons with Darius Jones, Neti-Neti with Matt Evans, Moor Mother, Mary Halvorson, William Parker, and Matana Roberts. She is also the composer for the anti-colonial films of Suneil Sanzgiri and leader of the protest ensemble Elder Ones, which recently released its incendiary third album New Monuments on We Jazz. Kidambi has toured extensively around the world, and co-founded South Asian Artists in Diaspora, Musicians Against Police Brutality, and Amplify Palestine. As a scholar and an educator with degrees from Columbia and CUNY, she has taught and engaged in decolonizing curriculum at Brooklyn College, Bennington College, and The New School.

Morgan Bassichis is a comedian, musician, and writer who has been called “a tall child or, well, a big bird” by The Nation and “fiercely hilarious” by The New Yorker. Their shows include Can I Be Frank?, which explores the life and work of performer Frank Maya and returns to Soho Playhouse in July; A Crowded Field at Abrons Arts Center, about the use and abuse of Jewish holidays; and Questions to Ask Beforehand at Bridget Donahue, as part of their exhibition there; Don’t Rain On My Bat Mitzvah with Creative Time, as part of their ongoing exploration into anti-zionist Jewish activations. They were in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and the 2015 Greater New York at PS1. They edited and wrote the introduction for Nightboat Books’s 2019 reissue of the cult classic The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions and have published two books with Wendy’s Subway: The Odd Years (2020) and Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah (2023), co-edited with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky and published in August 2023.

Crit Night is co-presented with Ace Hotel Brooklyn. This program is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.