Crit Night at the Ace Hotel Brooklyn

Pioneer Works

Crit Night is a seasonal series, where Pioneer Works artists-in-residence share works in progress during an intimate evening.

Ace Hotel Brooklyn

Crit Night is a seasonal series, where Pioneer Works artists-in-residence share works in progress during an intimate evening focused around experimentation and discourse. Presented in partnership with Ace Hotel Brooklyn, this year’s programs will center the practices of our Rockefeller Working Artist Fellows.This iteration will feature presentations by Amirtha Kidambi and Azikiwe Mohammed, who will then join for a conversation moderated by Morgan Bassichis. About the ArtistsAzikiwe Mohammed is a crafter who builds physical spaces that include Blackness and the stories of the people of this land. 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. Mohammed is the recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant (2023), a Rauschenberg Artists Fund grant (2021), a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016), an Art Matters Foundation Award (2015), and, via his Black Painters Academy, has received support from The Ruth Foundation. He lives in New York, and has his studio in Newark, as part of Project for Empty Space.Amirtha Kidambi is “heavily invested in decolonization and deconstruction of borders physical, mental, and musical.” (NPR, 2024) Based in New York City-Lenapehoking, she is an improviser and composer focused on critical intervention, responding to our fraught times, in collaboration with musicians that include Luke Stewart, Angel &amp; 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.  About the ModeratorMorgan 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; 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 &amp; Their Friends Between Revolutions, published two books with Wendy's Subway: The Odd Years, published in 2020, and Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah, co-edited with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky and published in August 2023.

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