Everything Is Connected

On this episode I’m joined by Aindrea Emelife. Aindrea Emelife is a Nigerian-British curator and art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on questions around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation. Aindrea is currently Curator, Modern and Contemporary at MOWAA (Museum of West African Art,). She is also the cur...

Light Work presents: Everything is Connected: African Artists in the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale! ⁠sponsored by The Africa Institute, Global Studies University launching next week!  The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, is an interdisciplinary academic research institute dedicated to the study, research and documentation of Africa, its people, and its cultures; its complex past,...

On this episode I'm joined by Kenturah Davis as we discuss her latest exhibition and her first solo in the UK with Stephen Friedman gallery. Kenturah Davis is a visual artist based between Los Angeles, California  and Accra, Ghana. Her work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, she explores the fundamental role that language has in sh...

On this episode I'm joined by LaToya M. Hobbs. LaToya M. Hobbs is an artist, wife, and mother of two from Little Rock, AR, who is currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and M.F.A. in Printmaking from Purdue University. Her work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural ide...

On this episode I'm joined by Jade Thacker. Jade Thacker received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York; Public Gallery, London; WOAW gallery, Beijing, and many more.  Thacker has participated in residencies at Fountainhead Residency, Miami and The Cabin, Los Angeles. She currently lives and...

On this episode I'm joined by Sedrick Chisom as we discuss his latest exhibition at C L E A R I N G gallery, And 108 Prayers of Evil.  Sedrick Chisom (b. 1989, Philadelphia) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a full scholarship to study at Cooper Union, where he completed his BFA in 2016 and was awarded the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation Award for Exceptional Ability. In 2018...

On this episode I'm joined by, Adrienne Elise Tarver.  Adrienne Elise Tarver is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY with a practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, textiles, and video. Her work addresses the complexity and invisibility of Black female identity including the history within domestic spaces, the fantasy of the tropical seductress, and the...

On this episode I'm joined by Mario Joyce. Mario Joyce is a self-taught African American artist based in Los Angeles. His process began early and was heavily influenced by prejudices experienced growing up Black and Queer in rural Ohio. He uses genealogical research, soil from the Ohio he grew up on, carefully sourced vintage collage materials and oil paint to explore how American History is...

On this episode I'm joined by Maria Elena Ortiz. Maria comes to the Modern from the Pérez Art Museum in Miami (PAMM), where she curated discerning exhibitions such as Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection and The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Caribbean Art . At PAMM and with support of the Mellon Foundation, Ortiz founded and spearheaded the...

On this episode, I'm joined by Mario Moore. Mario Moore is a Detroit native, who received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI in 2009 and an MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2013. I met Mario late last fall in Detroit when I attended the DIA Gala and spent a weekend in the city, checking out the art scene and meeting some of the city's ke...

Late last year, as I was ending my season, the news of Radcliffe Bailey's passing was announced and sent shockwaves throughout the art world among his friends, family, peers.  At the time, I was planning on recording an episode with Karen Comer Lowe, a long time arts professional and curator based in Atlanta. As Karen began to share with me her introduction into the art world, she mentioned t...

On this episode I'm joined by Essence Harden. Essence Harden is the Visual Arts curator at CAAM,  the California African American Museum.  She' s one of two curators of the Made in L.A. biennial taking place next year in 2025.  This year, Essence was named the curator of Focus at Frieze LA.  For this year's focus, Essence explores the intimate, environmental, and urban dimensions of...

On this episode I'm joined by Dominic chambers.  Dominic and I have known each other for a couple of years now and I’ve watched his practice grow so much in that time. It's been a minute since we sat down and talked about his work and practice, so it was great to catch up with him and learn all about the work in his latest show at Lehmann Maupin gallery, and some of the things that have...

On this episode I'm joined by Reginald Sylvester. Reginald has his first solo show open right now at Roberts projects in Los Angeles when we sit down to talk about his work and art practice.  Reginald Sylvester II works predominantly in abstraction, making large-scale paintings and sculptures which often include found objects. His show, at Roberts Projects, T-1000, features new and interconne...

On this episode I'm joined by Bethany Collins. Her first solo show is on view at  Alexander Gray Associates  when we sit down to talk about her latest works and the ideas and concepts that ground her practice. Bethany Collins is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language—its biases, contradictions, and ability t...

On this episode I'm joined by Sanford Biggers. Sanford Biggers was born in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in New York City, where he has for decades. Over the course of his career, Biggers has won numerous awards and exhibited in countless museums and exhibitions. His work is currently held in some of the world's most important artistic institutions from the Museum of Modern A...

On this episode I'm joined by Calida Rawles. Calida Rawles merges hyper-realistic paintings with poetic abstraction. Rawles opened her first major solo show in New York City where we hosted an artist talk this past weekend. In A Certain Oblivion, the title of her latest show, Rawles presents 10 paintings that reflect on the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what Calida calls ‘a dark time’ in soc...

On this episode I'm joined by Deborah Roberts. She’s on the eve of her first show in New York City in over five years at Stephen Friedman gallery opening, "What about us?" at their newest space in Tribeca. It's an important moment for her as an artist and for the New York art scene. Deborah is showcasing some of her biggest works to date and playing with composition and scale i...

On this episode I'm joined by Alteronce Gumby. Alteronce Gumby is an artist and local of New York City. His artistic practice includes painting, ceramics, installation and performance. Gumby’s work has been exhibited at galleries such as Hauser & Wirth, Gladstone Gallery and Camden Arts Centre. Gumby graduated from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in Painting and Printmaking in 2016.  U...

On this episode I'm joined by Lisa Kim. Kim is the director of the Ford Foundation Gallery, an exhibition space within the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice. A former Gagosian Gallery staffer, Kim’s previous post before joining the Ford Foundation Gallery was as director of cultural affairs at Two Trees Management Company, a real estate development firm in Brooklyn, where she oversaw...

On this episode I'm joined by Raelis Vasquez. A native of the Dominican Republic, Vasquez moved to the United States in 2002 when he was seven. He graduated with his BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from Columbia University in 2021. It was around this time that I was first introduced to his work and I was immediately drawn to his figures.  Vasquez draws on historical, politic...

On this episode I'm joined by Tariku Shiferaw.  Tariku Shiferaw is known for his practice of mark-making that explores the metaphysical ideas of painting and societal structures. This formal language of geometric abstraction is executed through densely layering material to create “marks,” gestures that interrogate space-making and reference the hierarchy of systems.  -------------------------...

On this episode I'm joined by Basil Kincaid. I first met Basil in Miami with Mindy Solomon, a Miami-based gallerist who has built a working relationship with Basil over the years exhibiting his work in multiple shows. Our introduction sparked a deeper conversation about Basil’s work and practice, and in 2021 I wrote the exhibition text for his first monograph with Galleria Poggiali in Milan. ...

On this episode I'm joined by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones the London born, Nigerian painter whose lived and worked in New York for the past severalyears. Tunji is back from a long stint in Lagos when we sit down to talk about his experiences, life in Lagos, the importance of traveling, the commercial art world, and the importance of professional development for emerging artists. We bumped into each o...

On this episode I'm joined by Christine Kuan, President & Executive Director of Creative Capital. Before joining Creative Capital, Christine Kuan was CEO/Director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art-New York. With twenty years of experience in both nonprofit and commercial sectors of the art world, Kuan has expertise in art education, museums, and digital strategy across cultural institutions a...