Broken Boxes Podcast

In this episode we hear from artist Natalie Ball who dives right in sharing critical artworld survival insight gleaned from a life changing studio visit by artist Willie T. Williams while she was attending Yale School of Art. Among a long list of support tactics Willie imparted, the artist emplored Natalie to find a means to sustain a studio practice beyond sales, and as an artist, to always be in...

In this episode we hear from Diné and Xicana sound artist Autumn Chacon who uses her activism, art practice and community involvement to communicate as a contemporary storyteller both locally and internationally. Autumn starts the conversation with reflection on the term Artist and how claiming this identity allows for a breaking of the rules institutional working environments do not allow. We tal...

In this episode of Broken Boxes we hear recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger in conversation with Cassils, a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils’s art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that...

This episode marks 9 years of the independently produced archival broadcasting project Broken Boxes. For this special anniversary episode, creator and producer Ginger Dunnill is interviewed by Artist and friend Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski. This is the first time Ginger has ever been interviewed on the project and the conversation provides a deeper look into the intentions of Broken Boxes, Ginger’s j...

Broken Boxes met up with musician and composer Laura Ortman during her Artist Residency at the Institute of American Indian Arts for this episode where we chatted about her long love affair with the violin, how music has supported her in navigating the ups and downs in life and the value of the violin in contributing to collaboration and transcending art mediums. Laura reflects on how she stays ce...

In this episode we hear from multidisciplinary artist India Sky whose art practice of music, moving image, installation, dance and performance investigates the invisible forces of ancestry, power and spirit that shape her experience, and engages radical imagination as a source for transformation, communion, homecoming, liberation, and survival. Her work as a stage and video/film director, producer...

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century. In this almost 3 hour long episode and the fourth conversation between Harjo and Luger on Brok...

In this episode of Broken Boxes we talk about the life and current projects of Cherokee/Muscogee artist and composer Elisa Harkins. From her experience of being an adopted child to surviving a near fatal bike accident, Elisa shares both foundational and vulnerable life experiences which gave her strength as an artist. Elisa also reflects on grad school, noting artists who inspired her through insi...

Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a U.S. citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father,...

Broken Boxes is thrilled to present a very special conversation with the prolific artist Caledonia Curry, known globally as SWOON. In speaking with Broken Boxes producer Ginger Dunnill during the opening of Seven Contemplations at CONTAINER in Santa Fe, NM, Callie reflects on how art has been a healing practice for her throughout life. She talks about her pivot from art school to street art, in a...

In this episode we hear interdisciplinary artist Christine Howard Sandoval in conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger. Christine breaks down the importance of research within her current practice and how her family have become an integral part of her work as she uncovers deeper relationship to her ancestors' pathways throughout California. She reflects on the complexity of connection, disconne...

In this episode we get into conversation with artist, educator & creative strategist Kate Deciccio who shares how her practice is a space to unpack the ways whiteness, colonization and the prison industrial complex have harmed our collective imagination. Kate also presents tangible ways we may heal and be nourished collectively by collaborative processes of building through community led aboli...

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century. In this conversation Sterlin Harjo and Cannupa Hanska Luger reflect on the process and outcome...

For this episode recurring host Cannupa Hanska Luger speaks with our dear friend and powerhouse artist and activist Tanya Aguiñiga about the cochineal beetle, clay as a healing practice for immigrant detainment camps, Indigenous solidarity and Tanya’s ongoing work with AMBOS: Art Made Between Opposite Sides. Tanya Aguiñiga is an artist, designer, and craftsperson, who works with traditional craft...

In this episode we speak with Mexican American Ceramic and Multidisciplinary artist Kristy Moreno who is a current long-term resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (The Bray). “My current body of work examines the systems and bonds between social, political, and personal narratives. These narratives intersect to embody forms of relativity, healing and resilience. By produci...

In this episode recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger gets into conversation with Joseph M. Pierce, a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University where he teaches and researches about Queer Studies, Indigenous Studies and Latin American Studies. Joseph is also a writer and an artist who often collaborates with other Queer, Trans and 2spirit Indigeno...

In this episode we hear from New York-based narrative artist, producer, and curator Evan Starling-Davis who excavates the everyday stories pushed beneath the margins of our society. Navigating his lens as a Black and queer digital-age griot, Evan’s work breaches the hard facts, personal truths, and surreal realities we bury ourselves in. His artistic practice is situated within art immersion, mind...

Mario Ybarra, Jr., is a visual and performance artist, an educator and an activist who combines street culture with fine art in order to produce what he calls “contemporary art that is filtered through a Mexican American experience in Los Angeles.” Mario has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, ICA Boston, LACMA, MOCA Detroit, the Tate and the Whitney Biennial, among others. He was a feature...

Chip Thomas, aka jetsonorama, is a photographer, public artist and physician who has been working in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation since 1987. There he coordinates the Painted Desert Project which he describes as a community building dialog which manifests as a constellation of murals painted by artists from the Navajo Nation as well as from around the World. Thomas’ own public artwork consi...

This is the final episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

This is the second episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

This is the first episode of a 3 part interview series featuring artist Kathy Elkwoman Whitman reflecting on her life and art in conversation with her son, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

In this conversation, artists Léuli Eshrāghi and Cannupa Hanska Luger untangle topics of Indigenous futures, science fiction, belonging, and the possibilities of language. Léuli Eshrāghi is a curator and artist of Sāmoan, Persian and Guangdong heritage with a few Marshallese, English and German ancestors, living and working in Mparntwe/Alice Springs for the past year. Cannupa Hanska Luger is a mul...

This bonus episode features a reworked live DJ set by DJ Miss Ginger at The Art Of Indigenous Resistance exhibition and concert at Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA, May 2017."This mix is dedicated to all people who are awake and consciously fighting extractive industry, patriarchy, colonialism and standing up to protect our Mother Earth in whatever way you are able. This Mixtape Rework is...

In this conversation artist April Holder and I talk about motherhood, naming the narrow lens of social media, the accessible art of printmaking, dismantling the myth of loneliness, allowing our community, including cis men, to practice vulnerability as an act of repair, and to never back down from being the complex multi-dimensional people we all are. April reminds us all that no matter how much w...