Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response

January 24, 2026 – February 15, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art

The Kravis Studio hosts Call and Response, an exhibition of new work and live performances by composer, filmmaker, and artist Samora Pinderhughes. His multidisciplinary practice addresses structural violence through sonic layering, choral performance, film projection, and audio testimonial. Relying on improvisation and collaboration, Pinderhughes centers performance as a communal practice that can facilitate healing in the face of oppression, racism, and incarceration.

What if we built a world around healing rather than punishment?” asks 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 (January 29–February 1) 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, (February 12) 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.

A Celebration for The Healing Project Artists (February 7), will unite artists from the community-based organizations Brotherhood Sister Sol, Archive-Based Creative Arts (of the Parole Preparation Project), South Bronx Unite/the Land Stewards, and the Fortune Society for a daylong celebration. As part of the 2025 Adobe Creative Residency, participants worked with Samora Pinderhughes and his organization, The Healing Project, to create collaboratively made video, audio, and photography works. Through screenings, conversations, and music, this program will invite audiences to listen and learn from the perspective of those directly impacted by structural violence, environmental racism, and the prison industrial complex.

Please refer to the full performance schedule here.

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 Arts.

Media and performance at MoMA are presented through a partnership with Richard Mille.

Support for Samora Pinderhughes’ Studio project is provided by the Adobe Foundation through the Adobe Creative Residency program.

Annual support for programming in The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio is generously provided by the Wallis Annenberg Director’s Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art and by the Sarah Arison Endowment Fund for Performance.

Images

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Samora Pinderhughes. I Hope This Finds You Well. 2025-26. Performed by Samora Pinderhughes, Elliott Skinner, Rafiq Bhatia, Joshua Crumbly, Elena Pinderhughes, Nio Levon, Nia Drummond, Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson, Nina Moffitt, Dani Murcia, and Argus Quartet on January 29, 2026 in conjunction with the exhibition Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Digital Image © 2026 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Installation view, Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from January 24 through February 15, 2026. Photo by Jonathan Dorado © The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Samora Pinderhughes and Christian Padron. Still from REAL TALK. 2025. 35mm and Super 8mm film transferred to 4k video (color, sound). Courtesy the artist.