Cerebral Women Art Talks Podcast

Ep.274 Siri Devi Khandavilli is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice fluidly bridges tradition and innovation, drawing deeply from Indian artistic legacies while engaging in a broader contemporary dialogue. Working across sculpture, painting, and printmaking, she dissolves boundaries between disciplines to explore themes of cultural migration, feminism, ecology, mythology, and the nature of r...

Ep.273 Born in 1982 in Dallas (Texas, USA), Rosson Crow lives and works in Los Angeles (California, USA). Rosson Crow graduated from Yale University, New Haven, (MFA obtained in 2006), and from the School of Visual Arts, New York (BFA obtained in 2004). The artist was in residency at the prestigious Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2006. She is part of the emerging artist generation of the...

Ep.272 David Smalling (b. 1987, Kingston, Jamaica) lives and works in New York. He studied Mathematics at Yale University, where he also trained at the Yale School of Art, and holds a Ph. D. from Harvard University. Smalling’s painting practice examines the invisible architectures through which cultural hierarchies, inherited rituals, and social taboos shape identity. Working through the visual la...

Ep.271 Ruba Katrib is Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at MoMA PS1 in New York, where she steers the museum’s program and is a member of the leadership team. At PS1 she has curated exhibitions such as The Gatherers (2025), Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancers Codex (2025), Sohrab Hura: Mother (2024), Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE (with Yasmil Raymond, 2023), Jumana Manna: Break, Take...

Ep.270 Working primarily within the medium of painting AYOTUNDE OJO is a Nigerian artist whose practice explores the emotional intensity of human relationships and experiences. Born in 1995, Ayotunde Ojo is a Nigerian artist whose practice explores the emotional intensity of human relationships and experiences. Working primarily within the medium of painting, his work draws inspiration from the in...

Ep.269 Chidy Wayne (Spain, 1981) is a Spanish-Guinean artist working primarily in painting and sculpture. His practice addresses fundamental questions such as identity and inner conflict through a gestural, material-based figuration that incorporates oils, acrylics, textured surfaces, and sculptures in wood, iron or plaster. Influenced by both the artistic avant-garde and ancestral cultural elemen...

Ep.268 Laurena Finéus is a Haitian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, performance and social practice. In her practice, Finéus has been concerned with representations of black geographies, maroon thought, and migratory histories through an array of painterly imagined landscapes. The teachings of Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot in ‘Silencing the past’ informs he...

Modou Dieng Yacine . Born in Saint-Louis (Senegal), Modou Dieng Yacine studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Dakar (Senegal) and later earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California. He currently lives and works in Chicago, and is also active as a curator/co-founder of the curatorial company Blackpuffin. Dieng Yacine works across painting, photography, collage, and mixed...

Ep.266 Born in Lagos State, Nigeria, contemporary artist Tonia Nneji comes from a long line of traditional carvers and masquerade carriers. Following the family tradition of artistry, she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Visual Arts from the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 2016. Known for her use of bold colours and intricate patterns, Nneji’s work explores the relationship between trauma and the fem...

Ep. 265| Through her dynamic, celebratory quilted portraits of people of African decent , Bisa Butler (b. 1973, Orange, NJ) investigates the purposes and potential of portraiture within the Black historical narrative. Butler's influences range widely from personal family scrapbooks to American folk traditions and AfriCOBRA philosophies. Although her finished works are made entirely of textiles, Bu...

Ep.264 features Aida Muluneh. Born in Addis Ababa in 1974, she graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a degree in Communications, majoring in Film. Her photography has been widely published and is included in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, the Hood Museum, the RISD...

Mickalene Thomas is a globally celebrated multidisciplinary artist renowned for her dazzling, rhinestone-studded portraits that boldly reimagine the representation of Black women in contemporary art. Working across painting, photography, collage, video, and installation, Thomas creates vibrant, layered compositions that explore complex themes of race, gender, identity, sexuality, and beauty. Her v...

Ep.262 Kathia St. Hilaire. Born in West Palm Beach, USA, Lives and works in New York. Informed by her experience growing up in Caribbean and African American neighborhoods in South Florida, the artist seeks to memorialize the communities that she has been a part of through innovative printmaking techniques. Her work draws inspiration from Haitian Vodun flags, which are used to tell the country’s h...

Tiffanie Delune. Born in Paris, France in 1988 and living now in Montpellier in the South of France, she has exhibited internationally in Europe, North America, West Africa and Asia. Her solo exhibitions include “The Geography of Feelings”, Gallery 1957, London, United Kingdom (2024), “There's Gold on the Palms of My Hands”, Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2023), “See Me Flowing”, Band of Vices, Los A...

Ep.260 Stephanie Sparling Williams is the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Before coming to the Brooklyn Museum, she was the Associate Curator at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and a Visiting Lecturer in Art History and Africana Studies at Mount Holyoke College. Prior to her appointments at Mount Holyoke, she was the Assistant Curator at the Addison Gallery o...

Ep.259 April Bey by Phyllis Hollis

Ep.258 Born in Moscow in 1986, Yulia Bas pursued fine art studies from an early age. After earning her architecture diploma, she made the move to Western Europe. Today, she resides in Barcelona, Spain. In 2008 she and her partner established a successful yacht design studio. Shortly after they relocated to Italy first, then to Spain. Several years ago, after more than a decade in design she rekind...

Ep.257 Robert Garland is currently the Dance Theatre of Harlem Artistic Director. Mr. Garland was a member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem Company achieving the rank of principal dancer. After creating a work for the DTH School Ensemble, Arthur Mitchell invited Robert Garland to create a work for The Dance Theatre of Harlem Company and appointed him the organization’s first Resident Choreographer....

Ep.256 Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe is a Ghanaian-born, Portland-based painter whose work moves quietly but with immense presence. Born in Accra in 1988, he trained at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Ghana before relocating to Portland, Oregon in 2017 where he continued to develop his distinctive visual language. His luminous oil portraits have been exhibited internationally, from Los Angeles...

​Kandy G Lopez (b. 1987, New Jersey) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring cultural identity, representation, and power through fiber art, portraiture, painting, and mixed media. Born to Dominican parents, she draws from her experience navigating multiple cultural landscapes. Kandy G Lopez holds a BFA in Painting and a BS in Marketing/Management from the University of South Florida and earned he...

Ep.254 Trevyn McGowan is the co-founder of Southern Guild gallery in Cape Town and Los Angeles, representing contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora. Over the past two decades, she has dedicated her career to provoking and propelling art and design across the continent by empowering makers both creatively and commercially, elevating the production and presentation of work, and fostering...

Ep.253 features Jules BE KUTI, a young emerging artist born in 1993. His art reflects his experience as a Black person living in France, as well as his reflections on the challenges faced by Black individuals in society. Growing up in France, Jules was inspired by the richness of Black culture. He uses his art as a vehicle for intimate reflection, allowing him to explore the dynamics of memory and...

Ep.252 Howardena Pindell was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lives and works in New York. She has exhibited extensively, including selected solo exhibitions at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, UK, touring to Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK, Spike Island, Bristol, UK, and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2022–23); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2022); The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texa...

Ep. 251 Cheryl Pope is an interdisciplinary visual artist who questions and responds to issues of identity as it relates to the individual and the community, specifically regarding race, gender, class, history, power, and place. Her practice emerges from the act and politics of listening, and recently introduces a novel material to explore the artist’s memories. Referencing the familiar repertoire...

Ep.250 Valerie A. Francis is the Founding Director of Knowhere Art Gallery, an independent gallery based on Martha’s Vineyard dedicated to showcasing emerging and mid-career artists from diverse backgrounds. The gallery champions inclusive narratives and celebrates the cultural intersections that shape contemporary art today. With a career that bridges global technology innovation and entrepreneur...