Permanent Daydream

What does it mean to make the invisible visible, to give form to the things we feel but cannot always articulate? The memories we carry, the rituals that sustain us, and the unspoken bonds that draw us to one another. For artist Kwamé Azure Gomez, painting is a means of exploring these questions. Working across abstraction, video, and assemblage, Gomez creates richly layered compositions that draw...

Virginia Chihota’s deeply introspective practice unfolds as a search for self, belonging, and spiritual transformation. Working across screen-printing, drawing, and painting, she creates layered, dreamlike compositions in which figures emerge, dissolve, and reappear through fields of color, texture, and gesture.  Guided by intuition and what she describes as “a sustained act of listening,” Virgini...

Artist Patrick Eugène’s practice explores ancestry, migration, and memory. Working across painting and sculpture, his work is rooted in an ongoing dialogue between past and present.    Patrick started painting at 27 after experiencing burnout while working as a banker. What began as a reprieve soon blossomed into a new career. His early experiments with figuration gave way to a decade of abstracti...

In her debut book, The Five Blessings of Ifá: Reclaiming Black Futures Through Afro-Indigenous Spirituality, writer, researcher, and aborisa Gabrielle Felder explores African spiritual traditions, particularly Ifá, as a framework for reimagining community, identity, and liberation. Gabrielle explores the five blessings of Ifá—Àikú (longevity), Àjé (wealth and prosperity), Oko/Aya (partnership), Ọm...

Painter Lindsay Adams approaches abstraction as both a formal language and philosophical framework. Her practice is akin to musical composition; each mark functions like a note, colors melding to create harmonies and melodies. Drawing from Black cultural and literary traditions, Lindsay’s luminous canvases explore memory, migration, ancestry, and the many emotional realities that shape the human e...

In this episode, Elodie sits down with Heather McCalden to discuss her inventive and deeply moving book The Observable Universe, a memoir, mystery, investigation, and work of cultural commentary.  Heather lost both of her parents to AIDS when she was a child. Years later, following the death of her grandmother Nivia, she started researching the history of HIV and discovered that the history of the...

What does it mean to create in the face of loss and uncertainty? In this episode, acclaimed author Edwidge Danticat and multidisciplinary artist Manuel Mathieu reflect on their creative journeys, tracing the origins of their respective practices and the formative moments that gave them permission to see themselves as artists. Danticat and Mathieu discuss how their shared Haitian ancestry shapes th...

Welcome to Permanent Daydream, a conversation series that explores the inner lives of artists, writers, and cultural visionaries. Hosted by writer and critic Elodie Saint-Louis, it’s a show for anyone wondering what we might discover when we let our minds wander freely. The first episode, featuring Edwidge Danticat and Manuel Mathieu, premieres April 21. Follow the show on Instagram: instagram.com...