Fresh Art International

Puerto Rico is an island steeped in contradictions—the idyllic tourist mecca is where unpredictable forces of nature, a stagnant economy, and a corrupt government complicate everyday life for locals.   After Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica, St. Croix and Puerto Rico in 2016, journalists compared Puerto Rico to Greece, Detroit, and New York of the 1970s, prompting myriad articles about its econ...

Today is January 27, 2021. One week ago, we inaugurated new leaders in the United States. Many hope that President Joseph. Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will cultivate an era of unity, democracy, and truth in this country.  Multiple flashpoints complicated the year 2020. The relentless coronavirus pandemic, accelerating discrimination against people of color, heightened climate emergencie...

Today’s story unfolds at the intersection of art, sports, and activism.   In 1968, Black American athlete Tommie Smith set a new world record. He became a gold medalist when he raced to win the 200-meter event at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.   Yet Tommie Smith was only inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 2019. Why did it take half a century for the international sports organizati...

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami student Kristian Kranz heads to Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, for a conversation with Lynne Barrett, editor of the book Making Good Time, and two of the book’s contributors: author Les Standiford and poet-engineer Richard Blanco. Listen to hear a few ‘only-in-Miami’ stories about getting around South Florida. P...

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition,  University of Miami students Diana Borras and Kurt Gessler discover sacred land hiding in plain sight at the heart of Miami’s business district. Carib Tribal Queen Catherine Hummingbird Ramirez has come to meet them at the  sacred Native American site known as the Miami Circle. Ramirez has come to share her concerns about the ongoing impac...

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami student Luz Estrella Cruz makes her way to the Third Horizon Film Festival at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex in Miami. She’s there to meet filmmakers Diana Peralta (De Lo Mio, 2019) and Michael Lees (Uncivilized, 2020), whose work she’s been researching. Interviewing them and watching their films, Cruz discovers the p...

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami students Gretchell Cano and Luz Estrella Cruz explore the work of Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. They, along with the rest of the Miami Moves Me team, visit Duval-Carrié’s studio in the Little Haiti district. Listen to find out why the artist chose to call Miami home, and hear his views on how the Caribbean in...

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami students Ben Vinarski and Reese McMichael venture to an abandoned hotel in Miami Beach to go behind the scenes of an immersive theater production. Inside a room designed as the well-equipped kitchen of an upper-class home, actress Maggie B. Maxwell has just rolled out a pie crust while introducing her visitors to the cit...

In today’s prologue to our Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami senior Melissa Huberman tells the story of Art in the Time of Corona. She recorded with Fresh Art International founder Cathy Byrd, local artist Dana Musso, and team members from the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, to find out how some artists, curators, and educators are responding to the impact of the global coronavirus...

Meet fresh voices from Miami! With educators Giselle Heraux and Jahné King, we talk about art, storytelling, and the next generation of creative podcasters. Heraux and King will set the stage for each episode in our Fall 2020 Student Edition.   The Student Edition In 2019, we initiated the Student Edition with visits to art schools and universities in the United States and Canada. Recorded at the...

Today, we’re talking about symbolic statues and monuments. In this moment, many are demanding the removal of memorials believed to perpetuate a legacy of systemic racial and ethnic injustice. Recent acts of violence against Blacks in the United States have brought these memorials to the center of a nationwide debate.                                                                    On Memorial Da...

Today, we’re in Miami, to introduce you to Don and Mera Rubell, art collectors since 1964. We recorded with the Rubells in December 2019. Since then, the coronavirus pandemic has shaken our planet. We recognize the very real sense of before and after as we share these conversations about creativity. Today’s episode conveys the excitement that surrounded the opening of the Rubell Family’s new museu...

Today, we take you to Toronto. We’re here to meet a group of graduate students at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, also known as OCAD. For the Intro to Curatorial Practices course, their goal is to research, develop and activate an exhibition in the digital realm. Recorded in the first weeks of the semester, our conversation reveals how the students are defining their roles and de...

Today, we take you to Motor City. Once a symbol of the dynamic U.S. economy, Detroit, Michigan, has gone through a major economic and demographic decline since the 1960s. The drastic drop in population created acres of emptiness—vacant lots, abandoned buildings and food deserts.  Detroit’s art scene is known for countering negative growth with a resilient DIY attitude. While locals respect and sus...

Today, we take you to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, also known as SAIC. We’re here to meet participants in Imagining Tomorrow. The yearly experiential learning opportunity brings together students from schools in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States and Pakistan. During each two-week seminar, they gather in a different host community to envision possible futures through design...

With filmmaker Alla Kovgan, we spark a conversation to find out why and how she realized CUNNINGHAM. The 2019 documentary traces American choreographer Merce Cunningham's artistic evolution over three decades. Kovgan directed the immersive film that took seven years to make. She and her collaborators channel the spirit and image of Merce Cunningham—from his early years as a struggling dancer in po...

Edra Soto is a Puerto Rico born, Chicago based, interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator whose architectural projects connect with communities. Soto's temporary modular SCREENHOUSE pavilions are evocative symbols of her cultural assimilation that we can enter and share. Each free-standing structure functions as both sculptural object and social gathering place. Couched in beauty, her ongoing...

The Toronto-made film RISE embodies the creative force of a local youth-led spoken word movement known as RISE Edutainment. A subway station serves as the set where the collective’s poets, rappers, and musicians voice their experiences as first and second generation immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. Emelie Chhangur, curator of The Art Gallery of York University, sparked the film project in...

Norwegian artist Jana Winderen records sounds above and below the surface of our blue planet to compose site-specific sonic environments. For four days during Miami Art Week 2019, she invites you to step inside the Collins Park Rotunda on Miami Beach, for The Art of Listening: Under Water. Miami’s waterways, the Barents Sea and the Tropical Oceans come together within the spherical space, to immer...

Today, we take you to meet three globally engaged, Miami-based contemporary art experts. Ombretta Agro Andruff, Tami Katz-Freiman and Kathryn Mikesell are here to help you navigate the city and enjoy the intense burst of international art that transfigures the cultural landscape every December. Miami Art Week brings together local and international art worlds. This is not only an opportunity for g...

In November 2019, Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock brings his mythological “Moundverse” to Miami. Locust Projects gives over the entire space to his site-specific installation. The artist will immerse us in a world inspired by comic books, toys, horror films and animations. For decades, Hancock has been telling the story of the Mounds (gentle hybrid plant-like creatures) protected by Tor...

We shadow CYJO, a Miami-based  Korean American visual artist, as she navigates the complex maze of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018. Her goal is to discover and document exceptional work in the photographic medium for the “Art Basel Miami Week Diary” that she contributes to the bilingual online publication L’Œil de la Photographie (The Eye of Photography). Inside the fair, Gian Paolo Paci, of Paci Co...

In 2018, Puerto Rico based actor, composer and filmmaker Juan Botta left job security behind to center on his creative life. That’s when he launched Freelance, an inventive Instagram film series that empathizes with the challenges of living and working in Puerto Rico today. Botta’s determination to make films where he lives—despite economic, political and environmental conditions—suggests creativi...

Today, we bring you sound art from Hong Kong, in our second guest-curated segment with Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong. CMHK is an incubator for cross-disciplinary practices in music, sound, and technology. In July 2018, composer and sound artist Samson Young introduced the first Hong Kong Mixtape, a set of nine sound art compositions. One year later, musician Him Cheung introduces Hong Kong Mixta...

Philadelphia-based art historian Deborah Barkun talks about the pleasure and critical thinking that she discovers each time she explores the Venice Art Biennale and collateral events. Through her eyes, we understand that the venerated exhibition never fails to create a constellation of art encounters—always stimulating the senses and challenging the mind, always offering a glimpse into our contemp...