Mendi + Keith Obadike Artists in Residence at Weeksville

Mendi + Keith Obadike installation at Weeksville Heritage Center. [image description: previous page, photograph of artists, male on left with black hat and red scarf, woman on right with curly hair, they are smiling. This page, white frames with white pieces of paper are arranged on gray floor leaning against white walls, in the center of room a white horn from an old record player stands like a flower on the floor]

Weeksville Heritage Center partners with acclaimed artists and musicians Mendi + Keith Obadike for a new commission – a suite of artists’ works entitled Utopias: Seeking for A City.

Mendi + Keith are serving as the first artists in residence at Weeksville Heritage Center. The artists are known for making site-specific projects that use sound and music to address history. With the unveiling of their installation Utopias: Seeking for A City, the artists ask visitors to think about what songs and stories were in the minds of the people who created Weeksville and other intentional communities. These thriving places, including the historic Weeksville, Brooklyn (est. 1830), served as a haven for its citizens as well as an incubator for Black artists, scientists, educators, and entrepreneurs. For this project the Obadikes traveled across the country recording ambient sounds from Black towns. They used these recordings to create installations using fragments of African-American songs that express this desire for a utopian city.

The exhibit was made possible through the generous support of The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Read more on the exhibition at: weeksvillesociety.org