“What if we built a world around healing rather than punishment?” asks artist and composer Samora Pinderhughes. In 2014 he created The Healing Project, a community arts organization founded in the spirit of prison abolition. It grew out of a work in which the artist interviewed people impacted by incarceration across the US. As the 2025 Adobe Creative Resident at MoMA, Pinderhughes has expanded on this project to develop “sonic healing rooms” in collaboration with community-based organizations across New York City, offering performance as a communal space for repair.
Call and Response will feature a series of evening performances at the Kravis Studio and a public program developed with community partners. The multimedia performance I Hope This Finds You Well brings together a choir, musicians, and audio recordings to tell stories about healing from structural violence. In the musical performance We Welcome the Moments When Our Questions Have Not (Yet) Found Answers, Pinderhughes and other artists improvise in response to poetry in an attempt to understand this moment in history. An installation of Pinderhughes’s new film REAL TALK will be on view during Museum hours. The two-channel film combines narrative fiction, archival footage, music, and interview clips to uncover the toll of incarceration on individuals and their communities, asking what it means to grieve someone who is still living.
To accommodate the performances, the exhibition Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response will be closed on January 27, February 1, and February 12, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. on January 29 and January 31, and from 1:00 to 5:30 p.m. on February 11.
Organized by Martha Joseph, Associate Curator, with Sibia Sarangan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, and Hannah Fagin, Associate Educator, Artist Programs, Department of Learning and Engagement. Performances produced by Kate Scherer, Senior Manager and Producer, with Kayva Yang, Assistant Performance Coordinator, Performance and Live Art.
