My Barbarian is a performance collective made up of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade. Their work plays with social difficulties, theatricalizes historic problems, and imagines ways of being together. They make plays, masks, videos, events, drawings, music, installations, texts, and situations. The group serves as a platform for its members’ solo and other collaborative works in theater, art, music, and scholarship.


Since 2000, they have presented work in venues including the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, Studio Museum in Harlem, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, El Matadero, De Appel, Townhouse Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and Power Plant. They have had solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum and Human Resources, Los Angeles; The New Museum and Participant Inc., New York; Museo El Eco, Mexico City; Gallery 400, Chicago; Yaffo 23, Jerusalem, and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, and have participated in festivals at the American Repertory Theater, Abrons Art Center, REDCAT, Buddies in Bad Times, and others. They were included in two Performa Biennials, two California Biennials, the Biennale de Montréal, and the Whitney Biennial. They’ve received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Creative Capital, Art Matters, and the City of LA. My Barbarian originated in Los Angeles and today is based in Los Angeles and New York.


Portrait photo by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Robert Acklen-Brečko, and Ian Marshall.