Azikiwe Mohammed: Where To, From Here — Azikiwe Mohammed

Where To, From Here brings together 140 photographs drawn from an ongoing series begun in 2023, which now comprises approximately 280 images. Made primarily with Polaroid film, the photographs trace Mohammed’s travels across the United States, documenting people, places, and sites of gathering along the way.

The question posed by the title is both geographic and political. Mohammed asks what kinds of spaces can hold people as established structures collapse, exclude, or become increasingly unable to serve the communities they were meant to support. He also considers who those structures have never held and how the shape of “us” continues to expand.

“The camera allows me to concretize an experience without leaving the experience as it is happening. For this exhibition, I wanted to offer that experience to others that may be further from said original experience. That further can be physical but is often a distance imposed on us by others. Hopefully there is something to be seen of oneself here,” said Azikiwe Mohammed, BAXTER ST 2026 Mid-Career Artist Initiative Recipient. “I have learned some of my biggest learnings in hotel rooms, diners, and caves. Hopefully this offering of Polaroids, custom tablecloths and brochures can be a more-learning offering, with enough space for new learnings to be had for all interested.”

Centered on the internal pressures experienced by marginalized individuals, the project seeks to map environments where such weight might be lessened. Mohammed views the camera as a tool to “concretize” experience, favoring an accessible, home-like vernacular over static museum display. By incorporating custom tablecloths and rotating postcard holders, the work invites viewers to engage with the images as tactile objects—hopefully situating the work amongst the spaces of gathering, belonging, and community continuance the work was made in.

The photographs will be presented as original Polaroids alongside selected enlargements. The sizing and immediacy of the original images retain the scale of the original photographic encounters, creating a space where the camera can act as a record keeper of movement, uncertainty, and the ways people continue to build environments for one another.

Photography has remained at the core of Mohammed’s multidisciplinary practice. At BAXTER ST, the work enters into dialogue with more than a century of artists who have used the medium to question who is seen, who is remembered, and how public life is represented.

By exhibiting these images together for the first time, Mohammed returns his findings to the public spaces where they began. Where To, From Here does not provide a single answer to its central question. Instead, it asks viewers to consider how we might build, preserve, and reimagine spaces of support for one another.