Cerebral Women Art Talks Podcast

Episode 74 features Ashley James, Ph. D., Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She is the curator of Off the Record (2021) and co-curator of The Hugo Boss Prize: Deana Lawson, Centropy (2021). Prior to joining the Guggenheim, James served as Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the curator for the museum’s presentation of S...

Episode 73 features painter Rebecca Brodskis (b. 1988 in France) lives and works in Paris. She spent most of her childhood travelling and living between France and Morocco. Brodskis studied painting at the Ateliers des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris and at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London,graduating in 2010. In 2015, she also completed a Master’s degree in Sociology,focusin...

Episode 72 features scholar and curator Isolde Brielmaier, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography, Imaging and Emerging Media at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she focuses on contemporary art, global visual culture, as well as media and immersive technology as platforms within which to re-think storytelling and the politics of representation. She is also the...

Episode 71 features painter Che Lovelace. Based in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Che’s art originates primarily from his experience of living and working in Trinidad and Tobago. His paintings which are rendered in a vivid assortment of acrylic and dry pigment on combined board panels, are strongly rooted in depicting the dense, highly charged layers of the Trinidadian landscape which he sees as physica...

Ep.70 features Maria Guzman Capron. Born in Milan, Italy to Colombian and Peruvian parents, she lives and works in Oakland, CA. She received an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2015 and her BFA from the University of Houston in 2004. Recent exhibitions include Snail Shell — pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, CA; Female Trouble 2 — CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA; Body Spray — Buffa...

Ep.69 features Alvin Armstrong, a painter whose work explores the social and political landscape of Black American culture. His paintings are often filled with real and fictional subjects, culled from archival material, his community and lived experiences. He’s lived in Hawaii, Japan, and California all of which have informed his art practice. Armstrong received an MS in Eastern Medicine and is a...

Episode 68 features artist and archivist Alanna Fields (b. 1990, Upper Marlboro, MD) is a lens-based mixed media artist and archivist whose work investigates and challenges representations of Black queer identity and history through the lens of photography. Fields' work has been featured in exhibitions including Felix Art Fair, LA, UNTITLED Art Fair, Miami, MoCADA, and Pratt Institute. Fields is a...

Episode 67 features Mosie Romney (b. 1994, New York) They live and work in Ridgewood, Queens, New York. A Jamaican-American artist, they received their education from SUNY Purchase, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts in 2016. They have been an artist in residence at the Home School,Hudson in 2018 and at Pocoapoco, Oaxaca City in 2021 (upcoming). Exhibitions include Mosie Romney, Nicodi...

Ep.66 features Khari Turner, an emerging painter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a current MFA graduate student at Columbia University. He is in multiple collections including his alma mater Austin Peay State University, where he received his BFA. He has been featured in Artnews, Whitehot magazine, Hyperallergic, to name a few. He grew up with many works of art from black artists that his grandpare...

Episode 65 features Doron Langberg. Born in 1985 in Yokneam Moshava, Israel, he currently lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA from Yale University School of Art, holds a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania, a Certificate from PAFA, and attended the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk. Langberg has attended the EFA Studio Program, Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo...

Episode 64 features Chaz Guest. From his initial start in 1986, in a very creative NYC, he forged his Artistic life. He specializes in painting with a concentration on portraiture and cultural narratives. After moving to Paris in 1986 he worked as a freelance fashion illustrator for Joyce Magazine. It was while working at Joyce that he met Christian Lacroix who encouraged him to apply his illustra...

Episode 63 features Jade Alexis Thacker. She is originally from Boston Massachusetts, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014. Her work explores anxiety, discomfort, self image, identity and perception through figuration. Often her paintings are self reflective and an attempt to better understand her own dispo...

Ep.62 features William Villalongo. He received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union School of Art, NYC and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Recent exhibitions include Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Selections from the Rose Collection, 1933-2018 at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Living in America, curated by Assembly Room, at the International P...

Episode 61 features Franklin Sirmans. He has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since fall 2015. Since coming to PAMM, he has overseen the acquisition of more than a thousand works of art by donation or purchase. At PAMM, Sirmans has pursued his vision of PAMM as “the people’s museum,” representing a Miami lens, by strengthening existing affiliate groups such as the PAMM Fund f...

Episode 60 features Candida Alvarez. She is the 2021 recipient of the FCA Helen Frankenthaler award for painting and visual arts. Her works include drawings, paintings, prints, and collages that are created with materials as diverse as acrylic paint, colored pencils, enamel, and embroidery thread on cloth, on various supports ranging from canvas to PVC, cotton napkins to vellum. Alvarez’s solo exh...

Episode 59 features Hiba Schahbaz. Born in Karachi, Pakistan she is a Brooklyn-based figurative painter who works primarily with paper, black-tea, and water-based pigments. Her subjects, largely drawn from her lifelong practice of self-portraiture, inhabit a dreamlike, all-female world. Schahbaz initially trained in Indo-Persian miniature painting at Lahore’s National College of Arts, and later ea...

Episode 58, the fourth during Women’s History Month, features Lava Thomas, an American artist and arts advocate who tackles issues of race, gender and representation through a multidisciplinary practice that spans drawing, painting, and site-specific installations. Drawing from her family's southern roots, intersectional feminism, and current and historical sociopolitical events, Thomas's practice...

Episode 57 features Cheryl Finley. She is Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History at Spelman College. A visionary leader committed to engaging strategic partners to transform the art and culture industry, she leads an innovative undergraduate program at the world’s largest HBCU consortium in preparing...

Episode 56 features painter/sculptor Ana Benaroya. She is an artist born in New York City, raised in New Jersey. Ana graduated with her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2019. From a queer perspective, Benaroya's work explores notions of power and desire by exaggerating and distorting the human body, playing with its form and its relationship to other bodies. She draws...

Episode 55 features Courtney J. Martin. In 2019, she became the sixth director of the Yale Center for British Art. Previously, she was the deputy director and chief curator at the Dia Art Foundation; an assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at Brown University; an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vanderbilt University; a chancellor’s postdocto...

Episode 54 features contemporary artist Ron Hicks. His works have been described as a blend of multiple disciplines ranging from impressionistic and representational to non-objective and abstract and everything in between. This idea, coupled with his intrinsically inspired brushwork, contributes to his ultimate goal – painting his truth. Ron was born in Columbus, OH, but spent most of his childhoo...

Episode 53 features photographer Tawny Chatmon. The primary theme that drives her art practice today is celebrating the beauty of black childhood. She is currently devoted to creating portraits that are inspired by art works spanning various art periods in Western Art with the intent of bringing to the forefront faces that were often under-celebrated in this style of work. The camera remains Tawny...

Episode 52 features Reginald Van Lee. He is the Chief Transformation Officer at the Carlyle Group, helping ensure that the firm is maximizing its market competitiveness and operating most effectively and efficiently as an institution.   From his 32 years at Booz Allen Hamilton,where, before he retired as Executive Vice President, he led numerous businesses, including the US Telecommunications Prac...

Episode 51 features Guyanese-American artist Theresa Chromati (b. 1992). She has garnered critical and institutional attention for figurative paintings that are shaped by fragmented forms of desire and constant motion. Bursts of complex color, sensual protrusions, and texture deploy abstraction to explore various contemporary realities of black woman. These bodies are at once imaginative, borderin...

Episode 50 features abstract painter, writer, activist, Halim A. Flowers. In the year of 1997, he was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to two life sentences in the District of Columbia. His experiences were filmed in the Emmy award-winning documentary “Thug Life In DC”. In 2005, he started his own publishing company SATO Communications, through which he published eleven books. In 2019, Hali...