Last summer, I was lucky enough to stop by “Kismet, A Midsummer Reading presented by aloneinmyroom and featuring some of my favorite artists: Jalynn Harris, Geo Mccandlish, andabdu mongo ali. ali is a friend, but it was my first time seeing them perform since we both moved out of Baltimore and started attending grad school, me at UCLA, in Los Angeles, and ali at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, two years ago.
The reading was a classic Baltimore house show, hosted by Kelly Kio. We all squeezed into a warmly lit living room to hear a wide range of poems back to back. People watched and listened from the floor right next to the performers, and bodies spilled from the living room to the kitchen. ali performed a selection of poems they created while at Brown, including one titled “between every breath there is the hold.” As in ali’s musical performances, the room was still and in awe at the poetry reading. The poem used exhaustive breathing, breaks, and intense repetition — it went beyond a written word and into the sonic, ethereal, and performative space.
A Baltimore born and based electronic musician, writer, cultural worker, and multidisciplinary artist, ali has toured the United States and Europe as a musician, and shifted arts and culture in Baltimore with the iconic, genre-blending party “KAHLON,” and artists collectives “As They Lay” and “Earthseed.” In 2025, ali launched “twurl,” a sociocultural journal for Black gay writers, poets, and photographers.
After months of study, research, and preparation, ali will be concluding their time as the inaugural Alice and Franklin Cooley Composer in Residence at the Baltimore Museum of Art with a new piece, “between every breath, there is atmosphere.” We sat down at Cafe Fili in Mount Vernon to discuss their time in the residency, what it means to be the first composer in residence at the BMA, and their inspiration for their upcoming performance on January 22 at the museum’s Meyerhoff Auditorium from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The composer in residence position is the result of a long collaboration between the artist and the museum. From performing at the Art After Hours to exhibiting collaborative video work with Karryl Eugene as the collective “As They Lay” for Mickalene Thomas’ “A Moments Pleasure,” ali’s relationship with the Baltimore Museum of Art is seven years strong now. Most recently, ali created a collaborative sound work with artist, composer, and professor Wendel Patrick for“The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century,” an exhibition that commemorated the 50th anniversary of hip hop and its influence on society through art and fashion.
“The curation of the projects they’ve included me in makes sense and it feels kind of nice to have this kind of growing relationship that marks different points in my career as a practicing artist,” ali said of the longstanding partnership.
Museums have historically prioritized traditional fine arts like painting, drawing, and sculpture. The goal of the composer-in-residence initiative is to give musicians the opportunity to explore the collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art as inspiration for a compositional work.
“I was prompted to create this residency as a result of some of the cross-disciplinary artistic presentations that have inspired me the most,” said BMA Director Asma Naeem.
With residencies like this, there is potential for institutions to further embrace and support sound, performance, and other forms of art that often get cast to the wayside.
“I love that museums in general now are finally seeming to have an understanding that it’s important for them to support sound work, sound art, and sound composition,” ali said. “And to see it as a fine art in itself, because it should be respected as so.”
“It makes sense to have a composer in residence in Baltimore, in such a rich musical city, and to be the first one to do it is a huge honor.”
“between every breath, there is atmosphere” consists of two acts, the first one being solo and the second featuring improvisational musical performances from fellow Baltimore artists Mark Navarro and Daoure Diongue. In speaking about the performance, ali references the iconic electronic music composer Laraaji and discusses the beauty in ethereal works that only exist for one particular moment in time, and after that, only in memory and the body.
“I think there’s something beautiful about hearing this one sonic piece that’s not going to live anywhere else in real life except for this one moment,” ali said. “I think that it brings back a magic that I think we’re missing in life and society.”
“I think there’s something beautiful about hearing this one sonic piece that’s not going to live anywhere else in real life except for this one moment,” ali said. “I think that it brings back a magic that I think we’re missing in life and society.”
ali used inspiration from the collection to create a sound and poetry performance that considers the ecology of Baltimore and the complicated conflicts and contradictions of humans’ relationship with the environment.
“I’m considering what does it means for us to consider the environments that we grow up in as human beings,” they said. “How does the ecology of Baltimore and Maryland influence us in various ways: politically, somatically, mentally, artistically? When it comes to the ecology of Baltimore and Maryland — how did the trees here, the landscape here, the air, the animals that are local to this region — the fact that we are crab eaters — like how does that affect us artistically?”
“Baltimore has some of the highest asthma rates amongst Black people in the country. And if you’re born in poor or impoverished communities the chances of you having poor lung health is even higher. And it’s not a coincidence, it’s because of pollution and other causes that are man-made that’s affecting us, and not just us, but the animals.”
The BMA’s current exhibits — “Deconstructing Nature: Environmental Transformation in the Lucas Collection” and “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” — share a kinship with “between every breath, there is atmosphere.” Sherald paints portraits of Black folks, many being Baltimoreans, creating a symbiotic relationship between the colorful environment and the monochromatic figures. The George A. Lucas Collection in “Deconstructing Nature” explores the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. It’s exciting to consider the relationship between contemporary art, archival collections, ecology, and lived experience that bleed in and out of this upcoming performance. One can enter “Deconstructing Nature” and “American Sublime,” experience “between every breath, there is atmosphere,” and then step outside and meditate on their relationship with the environment of Baltimore and Maryland as a whole.
“between every breath, there is atmosphere” takes part of its inspiration from ali’s interests in working with breath and scientific research.
“There can be different portals and realities” between breaths, ali said. What comes to mind is not only the molecules and atoms that come with the breath, but also the stories that we hold and share through breathing.
“When I was researching the concept I saw this scientific article that was explaining how when we breathe, we’re literally breathing in the ocean every time we breathe, like remnants of the ocean, especially as mid-Atlantic folks,” they said. “We’re beings of the atmosphere. The atmosphere is in our bodies, like it’s not just something that we’re surrounded in. The atmosphere is also inside of us. For me that’s what the whole project is about, this atmosphere, this environment, and this ecology and this place that we grew up in.”
The performance merges poetry, music and improv, extending beyond the museum walls and into the air, the soil, the buildings of Baltimore through environmental exploration. Like most of ali’s work, “between every breath, there is atmosphere” will be a live show that reminds us of the power of experiential performance.
ali describes the performance and conclusion of their residency as a sonic love letter for the city. “At the end of the day it’s just about speaking to the city,” they said. “A city that has done so much for me as an artist and as a person.”
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The BMA’s inaugural Alice and Franklin Cooley Composer in Residence abdu mongo ali presents “between every breath, there is atmosphere” at the Meyerhoff Auditorium on Thursday January 22 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Free registration at artbma.org