Allen-Golder Carpenter

Looking back at 2025, it’s been an insane year, from turning a gallery into a prison cell and living in it, to doing collages inside a makeshift coffin and playing DC drill videos at Schinkel, wish I could fit everything here This year I’ve held 15 exhibitions across 7 countries, gave talks at 2 universities, did 6 live performances, a few film screenings, printed 7 publications, completed 2 residencies, curated my first project, and appeared in around a dozen articles, made more money than I ever seen before, and been broker than I been in years To be young, black, living in a city not known for art, no art degree, and not rich, and making art about the things that I do, statistically I’m not supposed to be doing what I’m doing, but I have never let that stop me, and never will, I did my thing, and I did it on my own terms and can’t nobody tell me nothing, with everything going on in the world, I try to make work about what I believe in. Best year of my life so far, can’t describe how grateful I feel, to all my amazing friends, family and to my wonderful partner🤲🏽🌽 happy holidays

Super excited to share install images from my current solo exhibition ‘Sojourn’ at TICK TACK @ticktack.be in Antwerp, the project marks my largest solo project to day, which spans all 3 levels and 4 rooms of the gallery, and for one night the project was extended to the Schinkel Pavillon @schinkelpavillon with a screening of the film from the show with @032c / @032c.gallery (Text) Heavily inspired by Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, Sojourn explores cycles of life, death, and reincarnation as a framework for thinking through history and the burden of its preservation. Through a critique of monuments, memory, and cultural canon, Carpenter asks urgent questions: What gets to be remembered? Who decides? And what forms can remembrance take? Developed across multiple interconnected formats—a site-specific installation, paintings, a short story, and a film—Sojourn unfolds as a fractured narrative across all three levels of TICK TACK, with each element interpreting the others. This layered structure reflects the unstable nature of historical perspective, and our collective struggle to hold onto truth in the face of erasure. With this project, Carpenter continues to challenge how we assign value to memory, and who is permitted to leave a mark. Sojourn is developed in part during Carpenter’s residency at TICK TACK’s Antwerp studio.

Meant to post this before I started my performance, but I’m on my way home in an uber after just spending 72 hours confined to the gallery, it’s impossible to fully replicate the horrors of prison in a gallery, but that not the point of this, I do work like this to honor and show solidarity with all the incarcerated black people and just people in general, we pour out drinks for our loved ones, that’s called libation, I poured myself out for three days, but to honor the living forced to live as they were dead, all the people locked up we tryna show we ain’t forget at about you, we brought the prison to the street to show the evils of the world are always at our step Shout out Leroy Smith who did 20 years in a UK prison and came by to show love, shook my hand and hugged me and told me keep it up and gave me a copy of his book Shout out @harlesdenhighstreet @massi____ and @sophiebarrettpouleau

Opening Friday, may 1st, happy to have two works included in the exhibition “Exposure” at Baltimore Museum of Art’s ( @baltimoremuseumofart ) offsite space at Lexington Market organized by my good friend Daniel Adegbesan and @whenmenaresilent Showing documentation from the Cell 72 solitary confinement performance with Emmanuel Massillon at @harlesdenhighstreet and “I Choose Violence”, a work of mine about the struggles of mental health coded in to drill lyrics ****** Exposure, developed in partnership with the @baltimoremuseumofart at Lexington Market and lens-based social practice artist Daniel Adegbesan, poses this important question through a group installation centering collective presence, dialogue, and photographic creative expression as vehicles for destigmatizing conversations around men’s mental health and increasing awareness of accessible care resources in Baltimore City. Central to this exhibition is a commitment to the full breadth of who men are. @whenmenaresilent holds an expansive and inclusive understanding of manhood that embraces queer men, trans men, and men of every cultural lived experience. Masculinity is not a monolith; it is a vast and varied landscape of identity, and the wellness of all who inhabit it deserves to be honored. Photography is uniquely suited to carry this vision through its ability to isolate a singular moment in time, then ask an audience to meditate on the layered context within the world around a single image. For men whose experiences have been historically rendered invisible or reduced to stereotype, to be photographed with intention and care is itself a radical act of witness. A camera’s capacity to say “this moment matters” makes photography not merely an aesthetic choice for this exhibition, but a deeply purposeful one.

This past weekend I debuted my first institutional project in the UK at @camdenartcentre curated by @cynthia.ii a two-day project surrounding my film Sojourn, a film about the burden and responsibility of preserving the stories of our communities, the cycle of life and death, and the power of persistence during the opening day after a conversation with Cynthia we had @richieculver perform a live score for the film, followed by a performance of saxophone and spoken word by myself set to the back drop of the film, as well as new installation that contextualizes the film, the installation titled “A Burial At The Black Sea, For A Civil Death”, large scale paintings mounted on black structures housing a projecting writhing, surrounded by a sea or urine test cups used for drug testing, operates as a monument to those that have suffered a “civil” death, those that live through incarceration, surveillance and persecution Super proud of this project and grateful to everyone who made it possible, much love to Cynthia, Matt, Didi, Andy, Angela and all the other hands that touched this project, and love to everyone that came through Photography by @nova.jp More documentation soon The project was made possible by generous support from [GESAMTKUNSTWERK] COLLECTION @gesamtkunstwerkcollection

My new installation “Traphouse 3 got a K with me and 3 young n*ggas that stay with me, 2026 Inkjet print and acrylic on cardboard In Dallas at @prp.agency @jessaminejessamine

Excited to be back on @nts_radio tomorrow with a special guest mix by @allengolder , featuring selections from their film Sojourn, alongside an extended soundtrack shaped by the narrative references that informed the work. Live on @nts_radio 5pm GMT 12pm EST Sojourn will be showing at Camden Art Centre on 25–26 April.

Sojourn (2025) UK Premiere Camden Art Centre 25th - 26th April Allen-Golder Carpenter presents Sojourn with live score by Richie Culver, followed by a solo live performance by the artist. The programme opens with an in-conversation between Carpenter and Cynthia Igbokwe. Working across film, sound, installation and performance, Carpenter’s interdisciplinary practice explores memory, erasure and the unstable conditions through which histories are constructed and transmitted. Sojourn unfolds these concerns through layered temporal and material registers. Organised by Cynthia Igbokwe, C-STUDIOS Made possible with support from [GESAMTKUNSTWERK] COLLECTION Supporting Sponsor ZORA Poster @jaydadeans_ Thank you @mattwilliams3101 @camdenartcentre

April 9th, 6-9pm at @electronicartsintermix in collaboration with @blade_study I will be presenting two works, a screening of a segment of my performance with @massi____ last year at @harlesdenhighstreet and a new iteration of my ongoing installation based exploration of the game GTA San Andreas RSVP available from their channels Peace

I pour my self out for my brother, my soul as libation @massi____ @sojourn__________ @bremondcapela Emmanuel Massillon ‘System Structures’ open now

I will be performing with Emmanuel Massillon @massi____ at the opening of his exhibition ‘System Structures’ at Bremond Cappela @bremondcapela in Paris Performances are at the following times Friday March 13th, 7:30pm and 8:30pm Saturday March 14th, 4pm Opening reception Friday March 13th 6-9pm

Back in 2023 I made this video for my man @richieculver Richie Culver’s noise project with Drowned By Locals @drownedbylocals The project was 27 minutes long which is about the same length my train ride to work, so i put my phone in my chest pocket, started a video and recorded the whole trip and that’s the core of the film, this video has been on my mind recently, it kinda embodies the idea that life just kinda goes on, waking up with war on the news, and you still drag yourself into work because you have to, to maintain what ever this system is. My Ukrainian friend in Zurich looked out the window and said most of these people have no idea how fragile this all really is. Much like Richie’s other music, it’s tinged with a palpable sense of unease, an unease that I find soothing in the sense that I feel seen by it, I say all the time myself That I wasn’t put here to make beautiful things, I was put here to make honest things, and sometimes beauty comes out of that. With everything going on it begs the question of art’s purpose, I think a good question for people to ask themselves is “is the work I’m doing honest?” I hope that mine is