The Living Temple
The Living Temple is a major retrospective centered around Swedish visual artist, designer, and multimedia creator Moki Cherry (1943–2009)
September 25, 2025 - April 12, 2026
Categories
  • Exhibition
  • Performance
  • Talks
Venue

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
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Program Info

Free
All Ages

Sponsored by

Major support for “The Living Temple” has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Coby Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Economic & Community Development, the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

Pennsylvania Department of Economic & Community Development

 

Opening

Thursday, September 25, 6-8pm
featuring a performance from percussionist Hamid Drake

“Home is stage, stage is home.” —Moki Cherry

Step inside The Living Temple—a vibrant retrospective celebrating the boundary‑breaking Swedish artist Moki Cherry (1943–2009), whose life was her canvas. From colorful textiles, costumes, and posters to ceramics, video, and sound, Moki’s work dissolves the line between home and stage, art and everyday life.

Moki Cherry began her decades-long career as a practicing artist in the mid-1960s, living and working between Sweden and New York until her death in 2009. Moki’s collaborations with her partner, legendary composer Don Cherry, turned ordinary spaces into joyful happenings—art that moved, sang, and celebrated life as a creative act. Beginning in the 1960s, and continuing for nearly two decades, their alliance entwined music, theater, performance, and art in experimental ways, forging hybrid audiovisual spectacles brimming with life and social consciousness. They coined the terms “Movement Incorporated” and “Organic Music,” evoking both new experiences and their roots in the natural world. Together, they challenged hierarchies embedded within contemporary music and art and created a total experience that defied genre.

Shaped by an itinerant life, Moki’s work integrated global artistic traditions without being confined to a singular cultural lineage. Explore Moki’s radical vision through tapestries, paintings and drawings, concert posters, clothing and costumes, sculpture, music, video, and archival materials. Discover how the artist’s collaborative and disruptive model of working fluidly across materials and sensibilities transformed unremarkable spaces into extraordinary settings.