Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"When the purpose of your music is so large that it has to be enacted through place and with other people . . . " Cauleen Smith's practice spans installation, sculpture, and performance, which bridge her interests between jazz and literature, spirituality and community, and feminism and Afrofuturism. Smith's video Pilgrim (2017) opens with Alice Coltrane introducing her live 1978 performance of "One for the Father," a piece dedicated to John Coltrane, and features shots of sites where, in Smith's words, "acts of radical generosity and community-building" transpired or continue. The opening scenes were filmed at the Sai Anantam Ashram, which Alice Coltrane established in Agoura Hills, California, in 1983, after a spiritual transformation prompted by her husband's sudden passing and her study with the Indian guru Swami Satchidananda Saraswati.
In conjunction with the exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal (2025).
A Film by Gabriel Noguez & Sean Rowry
Produced by Erin Cristovale, Nyah Ginwright
Executive Producers Zoë Ryan, Scott Tennent, Philip Leers
Subscribe to the Hammer Museum's channel:
youtube.com/channel/UCjcgouIXgFyxJgAPbVE6dlg?sub_confirmation=1
"When the purpose of your music is so large that it has to be enacted through place and with other people . . . " Cauleen Smith's practice spans installation, sculpture, and performance, which bridge her interests between jazz and literature, spirituality and community, and feminism and Afrofuturism. Smith's video Pilgrim (2017) opens with Alice Coltrane introducing her live 1978 performance of "One for the Father," a piece dedicated to John Coltrane, and features shots of sites where, in Smith's words, "acts of radical generosity and community-building" transpired or continue. The opening scenes were filmed at the Sai Anantam Ashram, which Alice Coltrane established in Agoura Hills, California, in 1983, after a spiritual transformation prompted by her husband's sudden passing and her study with the Indian guru Swami Satchidananda Saraswati.
In conjunction with the exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal (2025).
A Film by Gabriel Noguez & Sean Rowry
Produced by Erin Cristovale, Nyah Ginwright
Executive Producers Zoë Ryan, Scott Tennent, Philip Leers
Subscribe to the Hammer Museum's channel:
youtube.com/channel/UCjcgouIXgFyxJgAPbVE6dlg?sub_confirmation=1
