The Possible You Don’t See Yet: Samora Pinderhughes and Carrie Mae Weems in Conversation

On the occasion of his upcoming exhibition, Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response,the artist spoke with one of his mentors, Carrie Mae Weems, about how they have both been influenced by collaboration, activism, and music. Exhibition curator Martha Joseph and content producer Naeem Douglas helped facilitate the conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Naeem Douglas: Samora, let’s start with your exhibition at MoMA. What were your first thoughts about how to approach it, and how did you decide what to do?

Samora Pinderhughes: My exhibition grew from being an Adobe Creative Resident this past year at MoMA. It was effectively a community residency, so that I was making work of my own, but also making that work in call-and-response with four different community organizations, and trying to thread the issues that these organizations wanted to speak about through the work. That has ended up in the pieces that are in the exhibition, one of which is a two-channel film called REAL TALK—which is definitely very influenced by Carrie’s work and many other artists I admire, including Jason Moran—along with a series of performances and community showings of work that have been produced throughout the year.

One of those community organizations happens to be Brotherhood Sister Sol, which I know Carrie has been involved with. And it was crazy because when I first went there I saw all your photographs on the wall and I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a great place for us to work.” That space is a beautiful example of how community has really been a part of this work and how one of the core ideas inside of this work has been the relationship between how people of color and people dealing with structural violence are labeled by society versus how they would choose to label or see themselves.

I use the title “Who Gets to Name You?” as this catch-all question threading through these different community organizations, whether the high school students at BroSis or formerly incarcerated people in re-entry programs at the Fortune Society. I think that was also a question that was inside of the Monuments symposium that Carrie put on at MoMA, that I was lucky enough to be a part of earlier this year, which asked many important questions. How do we at once refuse the terms that are imposed on us by these structural violences while also setting the record straight about what we have faced? I’m trying to be a part of a community process of marking our territory, but in a very vulnerable way that’s subtle, but still powerful.