Literary Arts

Abdu (Mongo) Ali is a musician, writer, cultural organizer, and multidisciplinary artist who works in sound, collaboration, video, and performance art. Ali sees their work as poetic inquiries of identity and often interrogates binary ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. They are in the midst of creating work that speaks to the interiority of Black (butch queen) queer life, unpacking the aesthetics of Black femininity and investigating for them, what it means to show up as one's authentic self.

Ali has exhibited performances and work at MoMa PS1, the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum, and The Kennedy Center. They have residencies with Red Bull Music, Pioneer Works, Surf Point Foundation, and was a visiting artist at the Brown Arts Institute. Ali was featured in Cultured Magazine's Young Artists 2020 list, was a recipient of the 2023 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and is a 2023 USA Fellow. Ali is a Literary Arts / Cross-Disciplinary MFA Candidate at Brown University.