Over the last forty years, artist and musician Lonnie Holley has used found objects and discarded materials to create a prolific body of work comprising assemblage, sculpture, painting, performance, photography, film, and music, that mirrors and mines the complex trajectory of his life, beginning with his birth in Birmingham, Alabama, in the pre-Civil rights era South. Improvisational in his process, Holley collages an array of diverse objects and ideas together, creating new meaning from the familiar via radical juxtaposition, often taking moments from history as a lens with which to consider the present day and imagine possible futures.

Holley’s earliest memories are of making things, though he wouldn’t understand those things to be art until 1979. He purchased his first keyboard at a Goodwill store in the early 1980s and began recording a series of songs on a karaoke machine, a practice that continued in solitude for decades. His first album, Just Before Music, was released in 2012 when Holley was 62 years old. He has since produced 5 more critically acclaimed albums, including 2023’s Oh Me, Oh My. Holley’s lyrics often explore the reality of life as a Black person in America, incorporating seminal moments from history—often with humorous or poetic observations of the emotional and spiritual fabric of everyday life. Holley will perform live, accompanied by instrumental duo Nelson Patton and Shahzad Ismaily, followed by a discussion with his musical collaborator Lee Bains, improvising and exploring ideas of protest music, particularly in the context of the South and the abolitionist movement.

Protest and Performance: A Way of Life is supported by the Ford Foundation and as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.