exhibition open call: music of many colours

Exhibition on view: November to December at The Local NY, Long Island City

This exhibition brings together artists exploring the enduring relationship between music and cultural identity. Across traditions and generations, music serves as both archive and amplifier—carrying ancestral memory, voicing resistance, and shaping collective belonging. The works presented here have a broad range of references connected to personal experience, memories, specific albums, songs, genres, subcultures and performances through which identities are shaped, contested, celebrated, and reimagined.

The title Music of Many Colours takes its name from a collaborative album by Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì and American jazz-funk pioneer Roy Ayers. Fela stands out globally as the influential innovator of Afro-beat who used his music to speak truth to power.

By exploring the intersections of auditory and visual form, the artists foreground the ways music transcends language and borders while remaining rooted in lived experience. From references to folk traditions and diasporic soundscapes to reinterpretations of contemporary popular culture, these works invite viewers to consider how music shapes personal and communal narratives.

Exact dates for installation, reception, and special performances and events will be announced in early October.