Mendi + Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists and composers whose projects weave together sound, language, and light to explore how art can shape shared public experience. Working across music, media art, and public space, the Obadikes create works that connect communities through listening and dialogue.

Their practice began with early internet-based artworks that treated the web as a public space for creative and social exchange, including Blackness for Sale (2001). Over time, their work has expanded into architecturally scaled sound and light installations, including Blues Speaker [for James Baldwin] at The New School, Free/Phase at the Chicago Cultural Center and Rebuild Foundation, Compass Song in Times Square, SlowDrag in multiple cities, and GuideStar at Seattle’s Space Needle.

Their works have been presented at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Whitechapel Gallery in London. Their honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

Current and upcoming projects include DreamTrain (with the American Composers Orchestra), The Skeuomorph (an AI-based installation), and RingShout (a musical satellite project). Mendi holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University, and Keith holds an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. They are professors at Cornell University and serve on the boards of Rhizome and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.