Join us in the Meyerhoff Auditorium for a special BMA Violet Hour presentation by abdu mongo ali, the BMA’s inaugural Alice and Franklin Cooley Composer in Residence.

Experience a sonic and visual performance that considers how the atmospheric and ecological conditions of the Southern Atlantic state of Maryland affect contemporary Black Baltimoreans.

The phrase between every breath, there is atmosphere is derived from a collection of ali’s poems that speaks to the interconnectedness of Blackness, gay life, and the afterlives of slavery.

abdu mongo ali

abdu mongo ali is a musician, poet, and cross-disciplinary artist who works with sound, video, text, and performance. They see their work as poetic inquiries of identity, often deconstructing binary ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Ali has performed and exhibited work at many institutions such as MoMa PS1, Carnegie Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, and the Kennedy Center. They have participated in residencies with Red Bull Music Academy and Pioneer Works and was recently a visiting artist at the Brown Arts Institute. They have also presented lectures and talks at Harvard University, Stanford University, and Towson University, and their writing has been supported by Bread Loaf and published in Pin Up Magazine, NiiJournal, Art Papers, and the Little Patuxent Review. Ali is a recipient of the 2023 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and is a 2023 USA Fellow. They hold an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

FREE. Registration required.