This summer I had one of my favorite and most creative shows at one of the closing installments of the MoMA NYC’s Summer Thursdays 2017 edition. I recruited some of my favorite musicians to join me on stage in the MoMA sculpture garden to bring my music to life. I had Hanna Hentze, a graduate of SCAD whom I had met when I performed there earlier this year on my birthday, to body paint each of us with triangles that to me represent feminine power (the inversion of hierarchy and oppression) and Slashed by Tia, a Nigerian up and coming fashion designer in NYC to dress us in her most recent clothing line. Gizzle and I performed her Gandhi Blues remix together for the first time and my bestie Lara flew in from LA to do backing vox and tour manage. I had the honor of having Taja Cheek from L’Rain on bass and Quiñ on vox as well. DJ Sarah Farina, whom I met in Berlin years ago was also in the mix!!!
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3236
“The word disruption is thrown around a lot these days, in tech, in business, to describe upstarts’ interruption of the status quo with something better. But maybe it should be used more often in the music world, too; especially to describe someone like Kiran Gandhi.
On a warm summer evening in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, flocks of people have gathered to see Kiran Gandhi, aka Madame Gandhi, perform. The crowd is a sea of city dwellers in neutral tones and tourists trying to dress like them. And soon Madame Gandhi appears, a vision in bright yellow, her bleach-blonde hair with dark roots twisted into braids, yellow glasses on her face, body painted from neck to ankle in yellow, white, black, and red triangles (“Hierarchy is like this,” she will say later, joining her thumbs and forefingers into an upward-facing triangle.
“If you flip hierarchy,” she says, making a downward-facing triangle, “it’s like the female energy. It’s like a pussy. Hierarchy-free.”). Yellow, that color of brightness, of boldness, of joy, is a fitting one for Gandhi, whose first name actually means “First Light of Sun in the Morning” in Hindi and Sanskrit and who seeks to cast her own light upon those surrounding her. Speaking with a forceful presence and clarity into a yellow microphone, she introduces herself.”– Elyssa Goodman, Billboard, http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/7949234/madame-gandhi-feminism-gender-equality
Review by Diandra Reviews it All:
“Here is why I like Madame Gandhi; She is A FIERCE KWEEN! Now, kween has been the millennial version of “queen”, which, in essence, is for the everyday woman that owns her creativity, femininity, and complete power. Madame Gandhi is LITERALLY that person, and in her set at MoMa, showed why music is art.” – Diandra, http://diandrareviewsitall.com/concert-review-madame-gandhi-was-a-work-of-feminist-art-at-moma/
All photos and gallery below by Anne Whitman.
Madame Gandhi | BLOG 