Name: Second Sundays: November 2024
Start: 2024-11-10
End: 2024-11-10
Location: Pioneer Works

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Pioneer Works's galleries and garden are closed to the public on Friday, October 25th and Saturday, October 26th for the United Sounds NYC Festival 2024. 

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Own the Archive Sale

This week only, we’re heavily discounting our #PWPress publications to make way for new projects. Find artist-created books for $5, $10, & $15—sales raised from the PW Store are reinvested into funding new, ambitious projects by emerging and underrepresented artists and writers.

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From November 28 through December 14, take 20% off products in the Gift Guide with code: ULTRAFESTIVE. 

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Pioneer Works will be closed for normal gallery hours this October 14 & 15 for Ragas Live Festival 2023, learn more 

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Celebrate 10 years of Pioneer Works by shopping the PW Press Archive Sale! Through October 31, take 10% off Pioneer Works Press items with code 

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Building Closures Due to Flash Floods

Due to weather conditions, Pioneer Works is suspending open gallery hours for Friday, September 29. MHYSA's performance has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 1, with all tickets being transferred to the new date.

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 will close early at 5pm on Saturday, May 27. Learn more and plan your visit 

CEO Announcement

Just Announced: Pioneer Works Names Mara Manus Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Directors of Pioneer Works is pleased to announce that Mara Manus, former Executive Director for New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), has been appointed as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. 

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We're closed all day Friday, November 11 for our annual Village Fête Benefit. To learn more about the After Party and get tickets, visit 

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Our galleries and garden are closed to the public today for a United Sounds NYC Festival 2024. Learn more about the festival 

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We're pleased to announce the first major renovation of Pioneer Works! To accommodate the first phase of our construction, we're temporarily relocating to 133 Imlay Street opening in Spring 2022.

Early Closure 5/10/23

Due to programming, Pioneer Works will be closed to the public on Wednesday, May 10. We will be open from Thursday through Sunday for the remainder of the week. Learn more and plan your visit 

Thanksgiving Closure

Pioneer Works will be closed on 11/28 - 11/29 in observance of Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day.

Since 2013, Pioneer Works has hosted Second Sundays, a free monthly open house. Highlighting our programs, artists in residence, and Red Hook community members, Second Sundays features open studios, exhibitions, workshops, live music, and food across all three floors and our garden. As always, Second Sundays are free and open to all. 

Pioneer Works is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.September’s Second Sunday is made possible by Nissan.

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dissects the ways that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. The artist contemplates how this alteration manifests in the physical body, especially when presented with, and situated in, the sonic rhythms that reverberate across these sites of violence. Comprising a new series of work co-commissioned with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the exhibition marks LeSeur’s first institutional solo presentation in New York.

 centers on a titular video inspired by Stone Mountain in Georgia—a public park distinguished by a three-acre-wide carving that depicts Confederate leaders on horseback, begun in 1923 and completed in 1972. In spite of this, the park remains the state’s most popular attraction, frequented by local residents and tourists alike for its recreational offerings. LeSeur spent the majority of her adolescence in Atlanta and recalls many family gatherings at Stone Mountain. She began researching the site’s history after revisiting it as an adult in 2017 and started to consider its corporeal impact, which eventually gave way to this series.

A poetic translation of the body in collapse, the video stitches together slow-motion captures of the artist falling, unabated and repeatedly, on the mountain’s peak. The work borrows its title from an abridged autobiography written by Alice Coltrane, in which the avant-garde composer recounts her journey through physical and mental tests continuously self-imposed in the pursuit of spiritual transcendence. Similarly, LeSeur pushes herself to extreme physical limits within her own performance practice, as a way of confronting, and subsequently transcending historical acts of violence as a queer Black person. This process of perseverance and self-discovery is captured within the spoken word poetry written and narrated by LeSeur, which provides the basis for the film’s score.

In the artist’s own words: “My work aims for a more intentional and sensitive connection to, participation with, and activation of, sites of violence, sparking continuous dialogue around the impact these sites have had on Black communities. This work is communal, historical, social, political, and environmental. It is, for me, health care. At the core of this project, I introduce new forms of healing and reconciliation within the midst of trauma and violence, through repeated gestures and the transformation of sound into a physical presence. My practice continuously considers ways in which art can transform violence into something beyond. 

transforms memories of violence, remnants of violence, and even physical embodiments of violence into transcendences.”

Accompanying the video installation are other multi-medium pieces created by the artist through her experiential remembrance of recent encounters with Stone Mountain, including a painting completed during LeSeur's 2023 residency at Pioneer Works. While visiting the monument, LeSeur observed her bodily reactions—for instance, a nervous flick of her hand—and took note of the way that she breathed as she walked around the site. These movements, emotions and feelings are translated into mark-marking gestures on paintings and drawings and provided a rhythmic baseline for how LeSeur blew into glass during the creation of the sculptural works. In doing so, LeSeur captures natural responses, otherwise imperceptible to others, into tangible records that surpass the limits of time and place.

 (b. 1989 in Bronx, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a range of media including video, installation, photography, painting, and performance. Her body of work, a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity, seeks to dismantle systems of power and achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. Through the insertion of her body and voice into her work, LeSeur provides her audience with an opportunity to contemplate themes such as identity, family, Black grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and what it means to take up space as a queer Black woman—a rejection of the stereotypes which attempt to push these identities to the margins. The artist has received several notable awards including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024), Leslie-Lohman Museum Artists Fellowship (2019), the Time-Based Medium Prize as well as the Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 (2018). LeSeur has appeared in conversation with Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum, presented by the Tory Burch Foundation, and has lectured at The New School, NY, NY and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at MFA Boston, Boston, MA; Swivel Gallery, NY, NY; The Shed, New York, NY; Marlborough, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Assembly Room, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Arnika Dawkins, Atlanta, GA; and others. Residencies include Pioneer Works, iLab at The University of the Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, ArcAthens, NARS Foundation, Marble House Project, and MASS MoCA.

Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal is co-commissioned by Pioneer Works and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and curated by Vivian Chui. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by the Tulsa Artist 

 and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Monument Eternal

DUE TO OCCASIONAL PROGRAMMING, THIS EXHIBITION WILL BE CLOSED ON THE FOLLOWING DATE:


Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal

¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

Who hasn't tried to turn a stone into a memory?

marks the first institutional solo exhibition by 

. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, the artist is best known for elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate interests that range widely, from popular culture and eroticism, to global art history and the occult. Inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, the exhibition blends Contreras’s ceramic practice with earlier interests in concrete pouring, photography, and experimental video.

Within the exhibition, various components appear on mounds of sand, like remnants of a forgotten tomb. Concrete pillars and ornamental sculptures, cast on site during Contreras’ Summer 2024 residency at Pioneer Works, surround a porcelain skeleton that bears witness to the metaphorical passage of time. Various plants, both dead and alive, allude to a desolate desert landscape are also placed onto the sand—a material that not only provides the basis for ceramics but, more importantly, represents the final transformation from flesh to dust that is central to countless religious philosophies.

Adjacent to these sculptures and objects is a concrete wall frame, embedded with painted, ceramic eyes. Conceived as a portal into the artist’s personal memories, it becomes a container for a procession of landscape images, each shot in the various locales that he has visited in recent years. A video installation, captured by a cell phone camera and projected vertically, serves as a meditation on the mobile omnipresence that dominates how contemporary life is recorded and broadcast. By situating his own lived experiences within the sculptural environment, Contreras considers what defines personhood, from objects to memories and contemplates their meaning within the context of life and death.

In conceiving these works, Contrerast studied a wide range of referential sources including relics and beliefs from ancient pagan civilizations; Jungian archetypes; the writings of Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Campbell; and television series such as Thundercats and Sailor Moon. Also of particular significance are two architectural sites: Le Palais Idéal in Hauterives, France, which was intended to become a mausoleum for a postal worker who toiled fastidiously for over three decades to create an eventual burial site for himself and the Temple of the Inscriptions in Chiapas, Mexico, a Mayan burial site that Contreras recalls as an important representation of his childhood.

¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

 explores the dichotomy between the ephemerality of human beings and the material objects that they leave behind. Contreras asks, “What defines us as individuals? Is it the things created and accumulated in life, or is it the memories of the soul? Do we keep anything with us in our transition to death?”

 is curated by Gabriel Florenz. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

 (b. 1982 in Tapachula Chiapas, Mexico) characterizes his creative work by experimentation and dialogue between different materials and technical resources, making his work a mix between various media such as painting, sculpture, photography, video and graphics. The themes of his work are linked to his personality and through his artistic projects, he explores topics and themes inspired by contemporary popular culture, Mexican folklore, myth, occultism and religion. He holds a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Mexico City, Mexico. His work was the winning acquisition of the 2006 Artfest WTC and he is a two-time recipient of the FONCA / Young Creators Scholarship. Contreras has held solo exhibitions at Proyecto NASAL, Gamma Galleria, House of Gaga, Travesia Cuatro, Saenger Galeria and Eito Eiko, among others. He has been included in art fairs including NADA, New York and Miami with Swivel Gallery and ArtOsaka with Eito Eiko. Contreras recently completed a residency in Paris, through Art Explora in collaboration with Cité internationale des arts.

Alejandro García Contreras: ¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne are artists whose work examines the shifts in behaviors, desires, language and economics catalyzed by computational systems and the internet. In their collaborations they have simulated international organizations, run a real dating service in NYC, and read the entire Enron email archive. Recent works include Synthetic Messenger commissioned by STRP Festival, The New York Apartment commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Good Life commissioned by Rhizome. They are 2023 Creative Capital awardees and their work has been widely discussed in the media, in outlets such as Art Forum, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, The Ellen Show, Art in America, The World Almanac, Slovenian Public Radio and India Today. In 2015, the UN filed a complaint with the US Department of State about their work.

Brain and Lavigne are inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne

 (IE) is a free-jazz quintet with an experimental punk mentality, that consists of poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (often known as Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes.

It is a community band playing deeply improvised, rhythm music full of love and social commitment. IE came together spontaneously, organically, in April of 2015 at “Musicians Against Police Brutality,” a day of protest sound and discussion in Brooklyn. All were artists and activists of varying degrees: Philadelphia-based Ayewa and Neuringer, and D.C.-based Stewart as veterans of the Mid-Atlantic noise-hardcore-experimental scene, while Holmes and Navarro as recent New England Conservatory grads. Each of the studio albums that followed — 2020’s Who Sent You? and 2021’s Open The Gates — developed this legend further.

In 2023, IE signed to the fabled Impulse! Records and released its most accomplished work to date, Protect Your Light, on September 8, 2023, primarily recorded at New Jersey’s historic Van Gelder Studios. It features eight examples of how IE’s collaborative composition strategies and Ayewa’s in-communion verses result in some of the most potent music being made in the third decade of the 21st century, music with communal light and love at its heart. Get to that love on time — don’t force history to guide you.

Irreversible Entanglements is an inaugural Working Artist Fellow. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Irreversible Entanglements

Erin Johnson (b. 1985, US) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in New York. Her immersive installations and short films explore notions of collectivity, dissent, and queer identity. In her shape-shifting videos, constellations of artists, biologists, and film extras address the imbrication of science and nationalism. Johnson received an MFA and Certificate in New Media from UC Berkeley in 2013, attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2019, and recently completed residencies at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), Lower Manhattan Community Council (LMCC), Hidrante (San Juan, PR), and Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY). Her work has been exhibited or screened at BIENALSUR 2023 (Buenos Aires), MOCA Toronto (Toronto), Munchmuseet (Oslo), Sanatorium (Istanbul), Times Square Arts (New York), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Boston), Billytown (The Hague), and REDCAT (LA).

Johnson is an inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Erin Johnson

vanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography. Her practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity, tenderness and connection as vital forces of reckoning, redemption and transformation.

german’s public art works include, THE MUSEUM OF EMANCIPATORY OBJECTS, a co-created, experientially devised museum of objects and performance at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, in 2022, and THE SPIRIT HOUSE for Hazelwood Green, a community co-created structure, In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2022, and OF THEE WE SING, part of Monument Lab and Beyond Granite’s inaugural art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

vanessa german

Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist who works with video, sound, installation and glass. Laitinen composes situations that inquire into the porous interconnectedness of language, body, and matter within morphing ecosystems. In recent years, Laitinen has been working around questions of ecology, mythology, and processes of knowledge production.

Since 2016, one strand of Tuomas A. Laitinen’s artistic practice has touched upon the research into cognition and consciousness in other-than-human minds, focussing on octopuses in particular. This endeavor is emerging through different forms: glass objects made for octopuses, multiple video and audio works, and a series of glyphs—made with glass and as a font—derived from research on octopus arm movements.

Laitinen released his debut album Sapiduz (Öm sound / Svart Records) as TAL in 2022. Sapiduz is a shapeshifting body of sounds containing traces of early music, mutated vocals, and granular electronic composition techniques. Analogous to Laitinen’s other works as an artist, the album is an entanglement of symbiotic processes and worldbuilding where the ancient past is attuned to submit questions about emerging futures. 2022 marked the premiere of TAL & Sapiduz Ensemble’s audiovisual performance at Flow Festival Helsinki.

Laitinen´s works have been seen at the 21st Biennale of Sydney, 1st Helsinki Biennial, the 7th Bucharest Biennale, Kai Art Center (Tallinn), Screen City Biennale 2019 (Stavanger), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Radius CCS (Delft), Vdrome, SADE LA (Los Angeles), Amado Art Space (Seoul), Moving Image New York, A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam), Art Sonje Center (Seoul), Helsinki Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, and MOCA Shanghai.

Laitinen received The Fine Arts Academy of Finland award in 2013, the AVEK prize for media arts in 2021, and was nominated for the 2023 Ars Fennica prize.

Tuomas A. Laitinen

Carrie Sijia Wang is an artist and educator whose work investigates the humanization of machines and the mechanization of humans. Merging art, technology, and research, she creates participatory experiences, videos, and performances that integrate algorithmic interactions and artificial intelligence. Wang is a 2023 More Art fellow, a Year 8 member of NEW INC, and a 2020 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient. She has shown and presented work with venues including Rhizome, New Museum, Onassis Foundation, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, ACM SIGGRAPH, and A.I.R.Gallery. Her work has been featured in publications such as the Business Insider, Slate, and Computerworld. Wang currently teaches at New York University. Additionally, she leads a series of hands-on workshops designed for underserved youth to explore AI and its social implications.

Wang is an inaugural Working Artist Fellow. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative. To learn more, visit our 

Carrie Wang

Valentýna Janů’s installations, films, and performances are narratives full of hope and reflective essays in one. They playfully address fundamental questions and challenges of life, as she creates scenic arrangements often featuring moving image. While critically examining the interplay of stereotypes and archetypes, choices and clichés, labor, and spectacle, her work remains almost obsessively romantic. In 2018, she received the Other Visions award at PAF Olomouc and is the holder of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize. Since 2021 she has been the head of the Intermedia Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno.

Janů's residency is part of the PAF in Residence project no. 0314000401, supported by the National Recovery Plan (EU, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic) and Czech Center New York. 

PAF is an international platform for moving image, animation and contemporary art.

 It has its focus in curating moving image across various fields of cinematography, art and music, organizing exhibitions, screenings or workshops and publishing. Its main event is the annual PAF Olomouc – Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art.

Valentýna Janů

Vojtěch Fröhlich works with installations and live event gestures. Since his early works, he exposed himself to physically and mentally challenging situations often related to climbing. His practicekis not only about the physical act itself; through quasi-ritual exercises, he examines and contextualizes situations that unfold for himself as well as his surroundings, while exploring the limits of art categories. For several years, he has been developing Klub AVU—a project balancing on the line in between gastronomy, performance and live sculpture. In 2015, he was a finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, and completed a residency at Villa Arson in France. In 2022, Fröhlich created the project 

 in the closed Czechoslovak Pavilion during the Venice Biennale to raise awareness of the institutional system gaps.

The program is part of the PAF in Residence project no. 0314000401, supported by the National Recovery Plan (EU, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic) and Czech Center New York. 

Vojtěch Fröhlich

A special place, a favorite memory, or a joyous occasion—what precious moments do you wish to immortalize for eternity? Inspired by the current exhibitions of Le’Andra Le Seur and Alejandro Garcia Contreras, Learn and Engage invites you to join us in crafting miniature clay statues that celebrate your cherished memories. Let your imagination guide you as you capture the essence of what matters most. Come express your unique story in a celebration of your personal history!

ETERNAL RECUERDOS: CRAFTING MEMORIES IN CLAY

Discover the unique bird songs and acoustic landscapes of India's rainforests, where ornithologist Vijay Ramesh is conducting field research. Soundscapes and recordings of not only birds, but mammals and insects from Western Ghats of south India are filling the science studios. 

Echoes of the Rainforest: Field Sounds and Birdsong from India 

This screening presents works by Shadi Harouni, Noor Abuarafeh, and Erin Johnson, each exploring complex intersections of myth, memory, and place. The films delve into histories—personal, political, and ecological—where animals such as cows, hippos, and dogs are marked by displacement and preservation. By examining how narratives are shaped, remembered, and resisted, the works invite viewers to question what is erased in the name of state power. The screening will be followed by a short Q+A with Shadi Harouni and Erin Johnson.

Film Screenings by Shadi Harouni, Noor Abuarafeh, and Erin Johnson

Join the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York in the PW garden for solar viewing. Telescopes will be provided between 1:00 and 4:00 pm. *Weather permitting*

SOLARGAZING WITH THE AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS ASSOCIATION

Join the Billion Oyster Project for a hands-on, creative crafting activity to transform recycled oyster shells into a collaborative art piece. Learn about the history and ecological importance of oysters in restoring the NY Harbor while painting and decorating your own oyster shell inspired by your connection to the local environment. The activity will include educational resources, interactive models, and opportunities to get involved in restoration efforts, making it a fun and engaging way to connect with the mission of the Billion Oyster Project.


Shell-ebration Creations: Paint for the NY Harbor with Billion Oyster Project

Pioneer Works Broadcast, our thriving online magazine, is now in print! Come peruse Broadcast Issue 01, and other publications from PW Press, in our cozy lounge on the third floor mezzanine.

PW Broadcast Reading Room

Inspired by the work of artist Marcus Coates, Leslie Ruckman invites participants to explore the intricate songs of birds at the frequency of human speech. Using recordings of species from the Northeast—like the Blue Jay, Northern Flicker, and Goldfinch—we’ll slow down their songs to uncover rhythms and melodies otherwise hidden from the human ear. In the spirit of Coates' Dawn Chorus, we’ll experiment with imitating these sounds, turning the experience into a playful, participatory exploration. 
 
Come listen and sing along as we explore how bird calls connect us to the natural world in surprising and delightful ways.

Anthropoharmonize: birdsong on the human tongue

Join artist Le’Andra LeSeur for a walkthrough of Monument Eternal, an exhibition that dissects the ways that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. LeSeur contemplates how this alteration manifests in the physical body, especially when presented with, and situated in, the sonic rhythms that reverberate across these sites of violence.

Gallery Dialogue with Le’Andra LeSeur

Join tech arts alum Umber Majeed for the third installment of her animation automobile media workshop. 

Made possible with generous support from Nissan.

(AUTO)MOBILE MEDIA 2.0

Learn more about the practices of our artists-in-residence during open studio hours. 

OPEN STUDIOS

Emily Raboteau joins PW Broadcast's contributing editor Lucy McKeon to discuss Raboteau's recent Broadcast essay "Daylighting a Brook in the Bronx."

PW Broadcast Radio Hour

Lollise is a multi-disciplinary artist from Francistown, Botswana, based in NYC. Using sound, color and movement, Lollise tells stories in real and imagined worlds that are multidimensional and nuanced, historical and futuristic. She performs with a potent energy and commitment to the music, in body and in spirit. After many years of recording and touring with Underground System and the FELA! band, Lollise now shares her own bold Afro-futurist pop sound, rich with layers of kinetic, danceable percussion and gentle waves of ambient noise. 
Lollise released her debut singles with captivating DIY music videos during the lockdown of 2020, then released two EPs – Looking At You (2020) and Unborn (2022) – before completing her forthcoming debut full-length I hit the water, coming September 6th via Switch Hit Records. She also co-wrote and featured on the Delasi song “Learn from Adversity” (Brownswood Recordings, 2024). 
Lollise creates hybrid songs for this moment, taking influence from the music she grew up with – Setswana and Kalanga folk songs, '80s and '90s South African electronic bubblegum and kwaito, Congolese soukous and Zimbabwean sungura – and the music she has been exposed to in New York, including Afrobeat, new wave, and art-pop. 


Lollise has performed extensively in New York, from DIY community spaces to arts institutions including Public Records, BAM, Little Island Festival, Sultan Room, Elsewhere, Brooklyn Museum and Symphony Space. She will perform at Celebrate Brooklyn July 13th, 2024, opening for Seun Kuti. Her music has been featured on Okay Africa, Bandcamp Daily and New Sounds with John Schaefer on WNYC radio.