ABOUT SANDRA MUJINGA
Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989, Goma, DRC) is a multidisciplinary Norwegian artist and musician who works between Berlin and Oslo. Thinking through speculative fiction in Afrofuturist tradition, Sandra Mujinga plays with economies of visibility and disappearance. Her work negotiates questions of self-representation and preservation, appearance, and opacity, through an interdisciplinary practice in which she often reverses traditional identity politics of presence. The artist’s works depart from a purely anthropocentric approach to understanding the transient world we are living in now, for that reason Mujinga is looking for inspiration in how animals are developing survival strategies and adapting to hostile surroundings.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Skin to Skin, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2025); Sløyfe, Den Frie Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2025); Time as a Shield, Kunsthalle Basel (2024); Fleeting Home, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (2023); Love Language, Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2023); Closed Space, Open World, Malmö Konsthall (2022); LACK, Sandefjord Kunstforening, Sandefjord (2022); Solo Oslo Munch, Oslo (2022); ‘I Build My Skin With Rocks,’ curated by Daniel Milnes, Hamburger Bahnhof (2022); Sandra Mujinga, Gothenburg Art Museum (2021); Worldview, Swiss Institute, New York (2021); Spectral Keepers, The Approach, London (2021); and Midnight, Vleeshal, Middelburg (2020).
She has been included in group shows: for the time being, Kochi Muzuris Biennale, Kochi, India (upcoming); Skincare, Antenna Space, Shanghai (2025); Ellipse and Ellipsis, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, London (2025); Time After Time Group Show, Nordic House, Reykiavik (2025); Apparitions, GREY gallery, Chicago (2025); Postkort fra Fremtiden, PoMo, Trondheim (2025); Black Ancient Futures, MAAT, Lisbon (2024); Post Scriptum: a museum forgotten by heart, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2024); Forms of the Surrounding Futures, Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal, Gothenburg Biennale, Porto (2024); Wild Grass: Our Lives, Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama
PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
serena wong Lighting Designer
Ben Wygonik Audio Engineer
Sophie Franziska Schultz Studio Manager
(2024); Loving the Alien, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2024); Soft Power, DAS MINSK Kunsthaus, Potsdam, Berlin (2024); Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2023); Pervasive Light, MoMA, Hyundai Card, Storage, Seoul (2022); Angst, Tønder Art Museum, Denmark (2022); ‘Soft Water, Hard Stone,’ New Museum Triennial (2021); Our Silver City, 2094, Nottingham Contemporary (2021); Safe House, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2021); EUROPA, Oxalá, MUCEM (Marseille), Fondation Gulbenkian, Lisbon Musée Royale de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren (2021); Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021); Sensing Nature, 17th edition, Momenta Biennale (2021); Techno, MUSEION museum of modern & contemporary art, Bolzano (2021); Sandefjord Kunstpris, Sandefjord Kunstforening (2021); Inconstant World, ICALA, Los Angeles (2021). She has participated in the 2023 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art and The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia ‘The Milk of Dreams’ curated by Cecilia Alemani in 2022.
Her works are included in the collection of Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art and Design, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; Gothenburg Museum of Art Collection, Sweden; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany; KORO-Public Art Norway Collection; Trondheim Museum, Trondheim, Norway; Oslo Municipality Collection, Norway; Staatliche Museum, Berlin, Germany; Marieluise Hessel Foundation, FL, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA, USA; Saastamoinen; Foundation, Helsinki, represented by the EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland; National Museum, Oslo, Norway; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway.
Mujinga has been awarded a 2013 Sparebankstiftelsen DNBs art grant, 2015 Fredrik Roos Art Prize, 2021 Sandefjord Art Prize, the 2021 Preis der Nationalgalerie, and a 2024 ISCP residency.
SEASON SPONSOR
2025 ARTISTS STUDIO IN THE RESTORED VETERANS ROOM
SANDRA MUJINGA: SUNLESS MOUTHS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2025 AT 7:30PM FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2025 AT 8:00PM with Iffy Alachebe and Marcelline Mandeng and Terese Mungai-Foyn as the Voice of the Sun
PUBLIC SUPPORT
The Artists Studio is made possible with support from the Norwegian Consulate General in New York. Bloomberg Philanthropies is Park Avenue Armory’s 2025 Season Sponsor. Leadership support for the Armory’s artistic programming has been generously provided by the Anita K. Hersh Philanthropic Fund, Charina Endowment Fund, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Starr Foundation, and the Thompson Family Foundation.
Major support was also provided by the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, the SHS Foundation, and Wescustogo Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams. Cover image by James Ewing.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO
Launched in March 2016 alongside the inauguration of the revitalized Veterans Room, the Artists Studio serves as a space for artists to experiment, collaborate, create, and push the boundaries of their craft. This season, the series takes inspiration from the inventive spirit and collaboration present at the room’s inception with interventions by some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a visual aesthetic. Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran, these performances invite these imaginative innovators to explore exciting new directions in their practice.
Previous Artists Studio programs have featured performances by: jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran; Dutch contemporary composer Louis Andriessen and pianist Jason Moran; American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros and noted author, director, and dream specialist IONE; pianist and composer Conrad Tao and multifaceted percussionist, instrumentalist, and composer Tyshawn Sorey; seminal drummer and acupuncturist Milford Graves and drummer and musician Deantoni Parks; artist Lucy Raven; groundbreaking sound designer Ryan Trecartin with his primary collaborator Lizzie Fitch, music producer and DJ Ashland Mines (aka Total Freedom), and composer/ producer Aaron David Ross; acoustic ensemble Dawn of Midi; composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; tenor Lawrence Brownlee with pianists Myra Huang and Jason Moran; multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome; vocalist Dominique Eade and pianist Ran
Blake with composer Kavita Shah; experimental composer Alvin Curran; internationally renowned composer, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner Matana Roberts; pioneer of experimental music Charlemagne Palestine; art icon and DJ Juliana Huxtable; composer and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell; experimental composer, improviser, and performer Miya Masaoka; My Barbarian collective founders Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade; cutting edge visual artist Rosa Barba; Dominican accordionist Krency Garcia (El Prodigio); the late trumpeter jaimie branch and visual artist Carol Szymanski; pioneer of performance and video art Joan Jonas; conceptual artist, writer, and performer, Rodney McMillian; a full season residency by the revolutionary collective the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Inc. (AACM), featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill, drummer and percussionist Thurman Barker, musical partners Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson, scholar and composer George Lewis, composer and percussionist Reggie Nicholson, and multidimensional artist and creator Amina Claudine Myers; artist and musician Jasper Marsalis; American poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother with free jazz quintet Irreversible Entanglements (IE); performance artist EJ Hill; and filmmaker, writer, curator, and founder of the BlackStar Film Festival Maori Karmael Holmes
NEXT AT THE ARMORY
THE FAGGOTS AND THER FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS
DECEMBER 2 – 14
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
This cult book of fables and myths serves as the starting point for a new music theater adaptation from the creative minds of composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman. Together they conjure up a world that takes the original text on a kaleidoscopic journey that ignores boundaries just like the characters on stage do, drawing on theater, dance, and song from the Baroque to Broadway and beyond. The performers serve as actors, storytellers, and musicians all rolled into one, continually swapping roles while doing away with gender and genre norms and replacing them with unapologetic individuality and a lust for life. The resulting cabaret-like spectacle is both vulnerable and daring, a fantastic parable hiding a political manifesto for survival that gives voice to the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.
RECITAL SERIES ATTACCA QUARTET
DECEMBER 16 – 18
Attacca Quartet are recognized as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment, gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music, and contemporary collaborations. They come to the Armory with a wide-ranging program of classic quartets by Bartók and Felix Mendelssohn, quartet-arranged interpretations of signal works for other instrumentation, and the North American premiere of “Daisy”—a new Armory-commissioned composition by David Lang.
ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY
Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.
The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Chairman Emeritus Elihu Rose, PhD
Co-Chairs
Adam R. Flatto
Amanda J.T. Riegel
President
Rebecca Robertson
Vice Presidents
David Fox
Pablo Legorreta
Emanuel Stern
Treasurer
Emanuel Stern
Marina Abramović
Series that features presentations by scholars and writers on topics related to Park Avenue Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices.
The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institutions artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals.
The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.
B. Ehrenkranz
Garza
Greenberg Samhita Jayanti
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Edward G. Klein, Brigadier
(Ret.)
C. Ross Stephanie Sharp Joan Steinberg
Dabie Tsai
Ying Zhou
Avant-Garde Chair
Adrienne Katz
Directors Emeriti
Harrison M. Bains
Angela E. Thompson*
Wade F.B. Thompson* Founding Chairman, 2000-2009
Pierre Audi*
Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director
*In memoriam
