For this unique Music at MoMA presentation in the Sculpture Garden, Camae Ayewa, who performs under the name Moor Mother, will premiere a site-specific set, Return to the Garden, inspired by MoMA’s unique green space and its legacy as a home for jazz concerts during the second half of the 20th century. Return to the Garden incorporates a new poem by Ayewa, whose practice brings attention to shared histories that are often missing from mainstream narratives, acknowledging not just the present but a multitude of past realities and future possibilities. The performance is inspired by mothers, grandmothers, neighborhood gardens, Effie Lee Newsome, Milford Graves, the Last Poets, Anne Spencer, Asa Sims, Ethel Earley, and Babs González. Moor Mother will be joined by their frequent collaborators, the free-jazz quintet Irreversible Entanglements and DJ Haram.
Set times
4:00–6:00 p.m. DJ Haram
6:00–6:50 Moor Mother
6:50–7:45 DJ Haram
Music at MoMA is included with general Museum admission. No additional ticketing required, and members get in free.
Please note: Sculpture Garden capacity is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. Be advised that the Museum closes at 7:00 p.m. Our checkroom closes one hour before this program ends, and re-entry to the garden is not guaranteed. In case of inclement weather, Music at MoMA will take place inside.
Camae Ayewa is a touring musician, poet, visual artist, and professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. Her work speaks to many genres, from electronic to free jazz and classical. Ayewa’s work has been featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Hall, Documenta 15, the Berlin Jazz Festival, and the Glastonbury Festival. Through the lens and practice of Black Quantum Futurism, the art she makes is a statement for the future, as well as a way to honor the present and its historic connections to a multitude of past realities and future outcomes. She specializes in practical concepts, but works in speculation and historical concepts. Moor Mother creates soundscapes using field sounds and archival sound collage to create sonic maps that allow us to journey to our buried histories and futures. She is an artist who, through writing, music, film, visual art, socially engaged art, and creative research, explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience, and solutions for transforming oppressive linear temporalities into empowering, alternative temporalities. Her work seeks to inspire practical techniques of vision and agency against a forever expanding reconquering of land, housing, and health in Black communities. Ayewa has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pew Fellowship, the Kitchen’s inaugural Emerging Artist Award, the Leeway Transformation Award, a Blade of Grass Fellowship as part of Black Quantum Futurism, and Rad Girls Philly Artist of the Year. She has been an artist-in-residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, WORM! Rotterdam residency, and the Creative Capital and CERN Collide residency with Black Quantum Futurism.
Irreversible Entanglements (IE) is a free-jazz quintet with an experimental punk ethos, featuring poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (often known as Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes. Formed spontaneously in April of 2015 at “Musicians Against Police Brutality,” in Brooklyn, IE improvises rhythms with an emphasis on communal spirit and social engagement. Ayewa and Neuringer hail from Philadelphia, Stewart from Washington, DC, and Holmes and Navarro from the New England Conservatory. Their studio albums, including Who Sent You? (2020) and Open the Gates (2021), showcase their pioneering, genre-defying style.
DJ Haram is an electronic music producer and multidisciplinary artist from New Jersey who is currently based in Brooklyn. Her work spans a range of styles, integrating bass and club music with meticulous analog sound design, rap collaborations, and Middle Eastern instrumentation reflecting her Circassian/Syrian heritage and diasporic experience. In December 2023 Haram released her second EP, Handplay, making her first solo lyrical exploration as “lover, daughter, and comrade.” Haram’s discography also includes three solo EPs: Grace (2019), Mixed Berries (2019), and Era (2021). Her previous residency at Rinse FM with Rage Radio spanned five years. Haram curates Monday Night Raw at Brooklyn’s Lot Radio, featuring open-format DJ b2bs and live rap and experimental performances. She is also one of hip-hop/noise project 700 Bliss with Moor Mother, whose 2022 album Nothing to Declare received critical acclaim. Haram’s debut solo album is slated for release in 2025.