an immersive listening session that invites participants to explore history, migration and Afrofuturism through music
Curated soundscapes—including experimental, ambient and world music—will evoke the emotional depth of Firelei Báez’s visual art, providing a multisensory experience that connects music and art.
Led by cultural producer Hafiz Akinlusi and presented in partnership with Space Lab, the session will feature high-fidelity sound, interactive elements and a guided reflection, offering new ways to engage with Báez’s powerful narratives. This program is an opportunity to explore the intersection of sound, culture and art in a deeply immersive environment.
Audience participation—rooted in call and response—is central to Akinlusi’s practice. Event attendees are invited to bring records from home that they feel align with the themes, creating a collaborative soundscape that reflects our shared and divergent experiences. Together, we will explore how art and music, while not solutions, can act as fuel for resistance and a catalyst for imagining new futures.
Event tickets include admission to Firelei Báez on the Gallery’s 2nd Floor, and we encourage participants to come early to discover the exhibition before the program begins.
Doors will open at 5:45 PM and the performance will begin at 6:30 PM. The Gallery is closed to the public at 5 PM on Thursday, February 6.
This event is being presented as part of the Gallery’s Celebrating Black Futures programming. Find out more »
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hafiz Akinlusi (he/him), also known as ANYHOW, is a cultural producer whose interest spans visual art, sound, music and system architecture. Grounded in an exploration of Africanness within the Black diaspora, Akinlusi’s practice is driven by an interest in the spaces where ideas, people and sounds converge. His work probes this point of convergence, producing new and counter ways of being as we navigate coexistence in spaces often oppositional to Black life. Play is crucial to his work—a force that activates both deep collaboration and marginalization. It operates as a site of transformation, inviting flexibility and relationality and pushing us to dismantle norms of what is allowed in favor of what is possible. In doing so, play becomes a tool for stretching meaning, creating space for more accessible, open worlds of contact. In his DJ practice, ANYHOW refuses the limits of genre, blending techno, hip hop, jazz, amapiano, gqom, Fuji, alté and other genres to create spaces of convergence and friction. His sets invite listeners to loosen their hold on what they know, encouraging them to move with the unpredictable and confront their own assumptions about sound, movement and rhythm.