Keith Obadike

Keith Obadike is an artist and composer who works collaboratively with Mendi Obadike (Department of Performing and Media Arts). Working across internet art, video, experimental music-theater, public installation, and civic space, their practice is grounded in sound, music, language, and light. Mendi + Keith Obadike examine how historical experience is encoded, transmitted, and re-heard across architectural, media, and social systems. Their works include Blackness for Sale, named one of ARTnews and Art in America‘s 100 Best Artworks of the 21st Century; 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 St. Louis, Seattle, and Philadelphia; and GuideStar at Seattle’s Space Needle. Among their current projects are DreamTrain, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra; The Skeuomorph, a smart speaker and speculative AI entity; and RingShout, a musical satellite project.

Their honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, and a 2026 United States Artists Fellowship. Prior to joining Cornell, Obadike taught in William Paterson University’s Department of Communication. He has served as a visiting artist and lecturer at Princeton, Columbia, Northwestern, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He holds a B.A. in Visual Art from North Carolina Central University and an M.F.A. in Sound Design from Yale University.