Mendi Obadike (; born 1973) and Keith Obadike (born 1973) are a Black American couple who are artists and educators, of Igbo Nigerian heritage. They create music, writing, and art. Their music, performance art, and conceptual internet artwork have been exhibited internationally. They are both professors at Cornell University.
Mendi is a poet and Keith is a composer and sound artist, they are married. Their writing and art projects have been featured in Art Journal, Artthrob, Meridians, Black Arts Quarterly, El País and Tema Celeste, in books such as Internet Art (2004) by Rachel Greene, Sound Unbound (2008), edited by DJ Spooky, and featured several times on WNYC's New Sounds since 2007.
Early lives and educations
Mendi Lewis Obadike
Mendi Lewis Obadike was born in 1973 in Palo Alto, California, while her parents were completing graduate work at Stanford University. She was raised in Nashville. Her mother is Shirley A. R. Lewis, a former president of Paine College with a education background; and her father Ronald McGhee Lewis, was a social worker. Early on, she experimented making songs with cassette overdubs of her Casio keyboard and computer graphics on a Commodore computer. Later Mendi studied Latin, became fluent in Spanish.
Mendi wrote her first play and edited Focus literary journal while living in Atlanta and studying at Spelman College. She graduated with highest honors in English and was awarded a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature and Sound Theory at Duke University, and joined the Cave Canem Poetry Collective. Her poetry book Armor and Flesh (2004) was awarded the Naomi Long Madgett prize from her publisher Lotus Press (now Broadside Lotus Press). She was faculty at Pratt Institute for many years.
Keith Obadike
Keith A. L. Townsend Obadike was born in 1973 in Nashville, Tennessee. His mother worked as an administrator at the post office and his father (who studied briefly with inventor Buckminster Fuller) was an electrical engineer from Nigeria. While growing up in Nashville, Keith studied classical piano, woodwinds and began programming BASIC on a TRS-80 computer, and worked as a sound designer and producer on the local hip-hop scene. He was subsequently discovered by Kedar Massenburg (Motown Records president) and was signed to MCA records where he worked with R&B artists such as D'Angelo and Angie Stone as well as performed in concert with Lauryn Hill/the Fugees and P-Funk. He later met and was influenced by electronic music composers like Paul Lansky and Olly Wilson while working at Duke University. Keith went on to study painting and digital art at North Carolina Central University and later became the first African-American to earn an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University.
Career
In 1996 Mendi and Keith started making conceptual Internet art and sound art works together with the goal of creating Internet operas. In 1998 they studied the art and conducted interviews with artists in Ghana on electronic media. After requesting sound submissions from friends by email, they created the Uli Suite a sound art piece based on the Igbo abstract art form.
In 2000 they created "My Hands/Wishful Thinking", an Internet art memorial for Amadou Diallo. This work, exhibited at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in the 2001 group show "Race in Digital Space," generated much discussion both online and off when they offered Keith's Blackness for sale on eBay in 2001 as an Internet performance. Mendi also created the minimalist hypertext piece Keeping Up Appearances, the first Black feminist net.art work.
In 2002 Mendi and Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder (Bridge Records, Inc.) which featured hypertext writings by literary critic Houston Baker, performance artist Coco Fusco and musician DJ Spooky among others. This was the first new media work commissioned by the Yale Cabaret, and the Obadikes launched The Interaction of Coloreds (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art).
In 2003 Keith worked with playwright Anna Deavere Smith as sound designer and composer for her play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at the Lincoln Center Institute, and Mendi's poetry was featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem in response to an exhibition of visual artist Gary Simmons’ work. Also in 2003 they launched "The Pink of Stealth", an Internet/ DVD surround sound work commissioned by the New York African Film Festival and Electronic Arts Intermix, and The Sour Thunder was broadcast internationally from 104.1 FM in Berlin and was released on CD from Bridge Records in 2004. Keith was also awarded a Connecticut Critics’ Circle Award for his sound design work at the Yale Repertory Theater.