MoMA Mixtape: Samora Pinderhughes Wants You to Experience Donny Hathaway and Roy DeCarava IRL

For this mixtape, I was looking for something that moved me emotionally. I’m also interested in the alignment between the work, the practice, and the story behind each artwork and piece of music. It was important to me to choose pieces that represent diverse disciplines, generations, and ways of working. When choosing these musical compositions, I imagined someone listening to them as they encountered these artworks in real time.

Roy DeCarava’s No Work Today + Donny Hathaway’s “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”

I am most familiar with Roy DeCarava’s incredible photographs, so seeing this screenprint piece knocked me out. The details are incredible: the man standing by the window made me feel like it could be me. The title No Work Today seemingly implies that the subject in the print is struggling to find a job, so I paired it with a song that speaks to the idea of caring for folks around you when they need you. Donny Hathaway’s version of this song is profoundly vulnerable in the musical arrangement.

Roy DeCarava. No Work Today. 1946. Screenprint

Faith Ringgold’s American People Series: Die + Kendrick Lamar’s “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”

Faith Ringgold. American People Series #20: Die. 1967. Oil on canvas, two panels

Faith Ringgold’s painting ruminates on the nature of American violence. Few pieces of music speak to the complexities of violence better than Kendrick Lamar’s “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.” We all experience the effects of violence to varying degrees, but many of us outsource our questions about its causes to the prison system. Both Ringgold’s painting and Lamar’s song suggest that the cycles of American violence touch everyone and sit at the root of the American project.

David Hammons’s African American Flag + Riley Mulherkar’s “No More” (ft. Vuyo Sotashe)

This recording is a modern interpretation of a song sung by prisoners incarcerated at Angola and Parchman, the Louisiana and Mississippi penitentiaries. These prisons represent a direct connection between slavery and the modern carceral system. Songs like this one have exerted a huge influence on American music but are rarely acknowledged. I wanted to pair it with David Hammons’s iconic African American Flag to represent the labor that helped build this country and the realities of African American lives.

David Hammons. African American Flag. 1990. Canvas and grommets

Samora Pinderhughes at MoMA with Romare Bearden’s The Train (1975)

Romare Bearden’s The Train + Duke Ellington’s “Such Sweet Thunder”

Duke Ellington wrote many songs about trains, mainly because his band traveled by train throughout the US during the decades they toured the country. Romare Bearden’s brilliant collage The Train includes so many textures that I wanted to pair that with a large-ensemble composition that features a collage of sounds.

Chris Ofili’s Black Shunga + Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Andata”

The gradations of color and texture in Chris Ofili’s pieces and the delicate details that require close looking remind me of the subtle details in Sakamoto’s blooming composition “Andata.” Both works require that you take time and allow them to develop alongside you.

Chris Ofili. Black Shunga. 2008–15. Set of 11 etchings with gravure on pigmented paper

Samora Pinderhughes at MoMA with Rubem Valentim’s Untitled (1956-62)

Rubem Valentim’s Untitled + Sintesis’s “Aguanileo”

Rubem Valentim’s piece is inspired by symbols from the Candomble religion in Brazil. I paired it with a devotional song to those same orishas (divine spirits or deities in the Yoruba religion), but in the Santeria tradition, which is practiced in Cuba. In “Aguanileo,” Sintesis pairs these texts with fusion and rock music—a beautiful complement to the deep colors of Valentim’s painting.

When choosing these musical compositions, I imagined someone listening to them as they encountered these artworks in real time.

Samora Pinderhughes at MoMA

Glenn Ligon. Warm Broad Glow. 2005. Neon and blackout paint

Glenn Ligon’s Warm Broad Glow + Samora Pinderhughes’s “Stare Straight Ahead”

Glenn Ligon’s piece Warm Broad Glow is extremely powerful because of the way it forces an examination of language, history, form, identity, stereotype, and sociopolitics all at the same time. Ligon has been such an inspiration and a mentor to me personally, and has had such a great influence on my artistic work. So, I wanted to pair his incredible piece with a song I wrote titled “Stare Straight Ahead.” The song speaks to the experience of people who have been pushed out of their gentrifying neighborhoods, and to the realities of racism and structural violence.

Samora Pinderhughes at MoMA with Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis’s La Conquista del America (1989–2019)

Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis’s La Conquista del America + Violeta Parra’s “La Carta”

Las Yeguas note that their performance piece draws parallels “between the colonial process of ‘The Conquest’ and the support that North American imperialism had provided to Latin American military governments.” In particular, their focus was on the Chilean dictatorship under Pinochet. In this piece they reference the cueca sola: “a symbolic appropriation of the national dance by the mothers and daughters of the detained and disappeared.” I decided to pair this with the Chilean revolutionary singer Violeta Parra singing about the arrest of her brother, who gave up his freedom for a just cause.

Ana Mendieta’s Untitled: Silueta Series + The Bulgarian Voices’ “Kaval Sviri”

I learned about Ana Mendieta’s work through my partner, Amanda Krische, who’s a choreographer and an herbalist. In her work Mendieta used both the presence and absence of her body, and spoke to the tremendous responsibility that people have to the land. The power of her work is overwhelming; I thought it deserved a song that overwhelms you with the force of a chorus. “Kaval Sviri” moves between tension and release through tone and harmony, leaving an imprint on the listener.

Ana Mendieta. Untitled: Silueta Series. 1978. Film

Sam Gilliam. 10/27/69. 1969. Acrylic on canvas

Sam Gilliam’s 10/27/69 + Odetta’s “Masters of War”

Made between 1968 and ’69, Sam Gilliam’s stained and folded canvas pieces were abstract responses to the Civil Rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. I decided to pair his work with “Masters of War,” written by Bob Dylan and covered by the great artist and singer Odetta. Dylan’s lyrics were written just as the US was about to join the Vietnam War, and Odetta’s version gives the song an extra layer of meaning through the insistent strumming and interlocking movements of the guitar, her powerful clarion call of a voice, and her positionality as a Black woman singing this song while both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement were going on simultaneously.

Samora Pinderhughes, the 2025 Adobe Creative Resident at MoMA, is a multidisciplinary artist who uses his practice to examine sociopolitical issues and fight for change. Pinderhughes is the artistic and executive director of the Healing Project. This community arts organization creates narrative change and collective healing in partnership with individuals impacted by structural violence, striving to build a world based around healing rather than punishment.