Mendi + Keith Obadike

Mendi + Keith Obadike (established 1996, Nashville, Tennessee) are artists, composers, and writers whose works draw upon histories of experimental media art and performance. Their early collaborations were pioneering pieces for the Internet. Their projects include a series of large-scale, sound artworks that engage cities, architecture, and public space include the projects Blues Speaker (for James Baldwin) (2015) at the New School’s University Center, New York; Free/Phase (2014–15) at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Rebuild Foundation, Chicago; Sonic Migration (2015–16) at Tindley Temple, Philadelphia; Compass Song (2017), an app for New York’s Times Square; and SlowDrag (2023) in the St. Louis Place community, Missouri. Mendi + Keith Obadike have released recordings on Bridge Records and books with Lotus Press and 1913 Press. Their work has been shown in New York at the New Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art; and in exhibitions including Electronic Superhighway (2016–1966) (2016) at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; I Was Raised on The Internet (2018) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 (2018–19) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art (2021) at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. They have received a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship (2004), a Pick-Laudati Award for Digital Art (2007), a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction (2010), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2016), and have served as the David Tudor Composers in Residence at Mills College at Northeastern University, Oakland (2021). Mendi + Keith Obadike are professors at Cornell University, Ithaca, and serve on the boards of Rhizome and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York.