Azikiwe Mohammed + Stephanye Watts
Spring 2022
Invited Guest - Public ProgrammingAzikiwe Mohammed + Stephanye Watts were the Spring 2022 guests of our Artist + Writer Initiative. Over the course of several months, they embarked on studio visits and conversations about their practices, and with the specific goal of helping Watts develop two new pieces of writing about Mohammed’s practice. In this conversation, the two tell stories about the objects, organizations, and conversations that animate their work.
The two also collaborated on a limited edition postcard featuring an image from one of Mohammed’s projects. Watts contributed language to help us think about the image and the relationships it may conjure for us. The first 100 people to sign up using this Google Form will receive a copy in the mail.
BES’ mail art projects aim to send black art directly into people’s homes while also providing language and tools for thinking alongside that art.
About the ProgramAbout Azikiwe Mohammed
A 2005 graduate of Bard College, where he studied photography and fine arts, Azikiwe Mohammed received the Art Matters Grant in 2015 and the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in 2016. He is an alumnus of Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York, and Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey. His work has been reviewed in magazines and publications including Artforum, VICE, I-D, Forbes, BOMB and Hyperallergic. Azikiwe Mohammed's work has been presented in a number of solo exhibitions including the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia and the Knockdown Center, Maspeth, New York as well as group exhibitions at MoMa PS1, Queens, New York and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among others.
His multidisciplinary practice - which merges painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and found ephemera - prioritizes, at its core, the experiences, needs, and subjectivity of people of color in America.
Mohammed is the founder of the community enriching initiatives Black Painters Academy and New Davonhaime Food Bank.
About Stephanye Watts
A graduate of Clark Atlanta University, Stephanye Watts is the Community Engagement Coordinator for Historic Germantown, a partnership of 18 extraordinary historic houses, destinations, and museums preserving the history of Northwest Philadelphia. Stephanye served her community in her previous posts as Program Manager at Recess, an artist-led, youth focused alternative to incarceration empowering court-involved young people to take charge of their own life story and imagine a positive future through art and Community Engagement Manager at Weeksville Heritage Center, a historic site and cultural center commemorating one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America. She continues to do so as a member of The HBCU Hub, CAU's alumni association, and UNCF's Inter-Alumni Council..
In 2018, Stephanye founded the Brooklyn-based Be Reel Black Cinema Club, a group dedicated to amplifying independent, rare + previously inaccessible films by supporting Black filmmakers, one monthly meet-up at a time. When the Philadelphia native isn't pushing the Black agenda, she is the woman behind the world's only R&B trivia night, #RhythmNBodyroll and the music podcast, The Psyce.
BiographyPast Programs