Performance
abdu mongo ali presents: between every breath, there is atmosphere
Join us in the Meyerhoff Auditorium for a special BMA Violet Hour presentation by abdu mongo ali, the BMA’s inaugural Alice and Franklin Cooley Composer in Residence.
Experience a sonic and visual performance that considers how the atmospheric and ecological conditions of the Southern Atlantic state of Maryland affect contemporary Black Baltimoreans. The phrase between every breath, there is atmosphere is derived from a collection of ali’s poems that speaks to the interconnectedness of Blackness, gay life, and the afterlives of slavery.
Ali’s performance is a response to a creative prompt using the Museum’s collection and exhibitions as a site of exploration and inspiration.
This event will include ASL interpretation and live captioning by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and assistive listening devices are available. Please see Accessibility at the BMA for additional resources to support your visit.
Schedule
6 p.m. – Doors open
6:30 p.m. – Program begins
7:30 p.m. – Talkback moderated by Terence Nance
8 p.m. – Program ends
Tickets
Free. Online registration is now SOLD OUT.
Limited walk-up seating may be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
About the Artist
abdu mongo ali
abdu mongo ali is a musician, poet, and cross-disciplinary artist who works with sound, video, text, and performance. They see their work as poetic inquiries of identity, often deconstructing binary ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Ali has performed and exhibited work at many institutions such as MoMa PS1, Carnegie Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, and the Kennedy Center. They have participated in residencies with Red Bull Music Academy and Pioneer Works and was recently a visiting artist at the Brown Arts Institute. They have also presented lectures and talks at Harvard University, Stanford University, and Towson University, and their writing has been supported by Bread Loaf and published in Pin Up Magazine, NiiJournal, Art Papers, and the Little Patuxent Review. Ali is a recipient of the 2023 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and is a 2023 USA Fellow. They hold an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.
About the Moderator
Terence Nance
Terence Nance is an Artist, Musician, and Filmmaker born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013.In 2014, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In the summer of 2018, Terence’s Peabody award-winning television series Random Acts of Flyness debuted on HBO to great critical acclaim, and was renewed for a second season by the network. The New York Times hailed the show as “a striking dream vision of race” and “hypnotic, transporting and un-categorizable” adding that “it’s trying to disrupt and re-disrupt your perceptions so that, finally, you can see.”In the fall of 2018, it was announced that Nance was tapped to write, produce and direct Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring Lebron James. The film premieres in theaters and on HBOMAX this summer. In 2020 Terence released his first EP, THINGS I NEVER HAD under the name Terence Etc. He also partnered with filmmakers Jenn Nkiru, Bradford Young, Nanette Nelms and Mishka Brown to form The Ummah Chroma Creative Partners – a directors collective and production company. This team released KILLING IN THY NAME in collaboration with Rage Against The Machine in January of 2021. Nance is currently at work on healing, curiosity, and interdimensionality, while making season II of Random Acts of Flyness and preparing to release his debut album VORTEX.
Co-Performers
Mark Navarro
Mark Navarro is a Baltimore-based sound artist and composer whose work explores cultural memory, identity, and shared storytelling through sound. Under the alias Baatchoy, Navarro works as a music producer and audio engineer. Drawing from his Filipino heritage and Baltimore upbringing, his practice bridges musical traditions while examining themes of loss, transformation, and cultural dialogue. He was a Baker Artist Award finalist in 2023 and 2025.
Navarro’s work has showcased at Current Space with Daoure Diongue and Ellery Bryant as part of the improv group A.S.H. He collaborates with his sibling, visual artist Kat Navarro, exploring Filipino-American identity through installation, animation, and sound. Their projects include Kalapati (2023), and the animated short Bug Box (2022), which was recognized at the Sweaty Eyeballs Festival and screened at MdFF 2024. His theatrical sound design and composition includes productions by AJ Clauss, Paula Vogel, Meghan Tyler, and Tatiana Nya Ford.
Daoure Diongue
Daoure Diongue is a Baltimore‑based Senegalese‑American sound essayist. Daoure studied saxophone and oboe at the Baltimore School for the Arts, culminating in a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance at Oberlin College & Conservatory. Supported by multiple grants, he juxtaposed the study of jazz in New Orleans with traditional Wolof music in Dakar, Senegal. He incorporates kamele ngoni, keyboards, percussion, and voice to create first-order experiences that are both mysterious and whole. He serves on the board of the contemporary collaborative ensemble Mind on Fire and has worked with notable local artists, including Dan Deacon, Bartees Strange, and Lafayette Gilchrist.