Courtesy the Artists

Courtesy the Artists is a collaboration by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade founded in New York City in 2012 that includes an open network of writers, performers, and visual artists. The project follows years of performances and exhibitions Gaines and Segade have made with collaborator Jade Gordon as the Los Angeles-based group My Barbarian. Gaines and Segade initiated Courtesy the Artists as a means of continuing collaboration after the two moved to New York. They produced their first collaborative project, The Meeting, which put the audience and performers themselves in dialogue with music of Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, in the fall of 2012. They have also worked with the folk genre, considering it as a form within its culturally situated context, authorless and historically conditioned, which culminated in their second work, Trad. Since the start of their work together, they have continued to work within the genres of installation, video, and performance; in their participation in the exhibition The Rehearsal at The Kitchen in 2014 they engaged with film and global political action to consider recent, global narratives of collective action for autonomy.