Shade

Welcome to my seven part end of year series! New episodes will be released each weekday between Dec 13-21. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual, I am joined by friends (artists, dancers, musicians and in today's episode an art specialist) to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, f...

Welcome to my seven part end of year series! New episodes will be released each weekday between Dec 13-21. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual, I am joined by friends (artists, dancers, musicians) to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and ancestral who guide them. Get...

WELCOME TO SERIES NINE! This is my end of year series! New episodes will be released each weekday, between Dec 13-21. Inspired by the Black radical tradition of the harmony between the lyrical and visual. I am joined by friends (artists, dancers, photographers, musicians) to explore the musical influences that inspire their work. We also look to the people, real and imagined, familial and anc...

Welcome to Wandering. A four part series of immersive podcast gallery walks, brought to you by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié. Today we meet the artist Harold Offeh at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London as he prepares to present work in their forthcoming exhibition, Soulscapes. Opening on Feb 14th 2024, Soulscapes is a major exhibition of landscape art. Featuring more than 30 co...

Welcome to Wandering. A four part series of immersive podcast gallery walks, brought to you by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié. Today we meet writer, editor and broadcaster, Kayo Chingonyi at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield, as he meditates on process and practice and what Patrick Caulfield's, The Hermit reveals to him. Artworks Discussed in this listen: T he Hermit, (1966) - Patrick Caulfield Fou...

Today we meet musician, producer, broadcaster and DJ  Nabihah Iqbal  at  Sir John Soane's Museum  in London as she explores the many trinkets and secrets, hidden in the open. Wandering is brought to you by  Shade Podcast  and  Axel Kacoutié. Discover more episodes in this series as we meet  Zakia Sewell,   Kayo Chingonyi  and  H...

Broadcaster, DJ and writer Zakia Sewell walks with us in the National Portrait Gallery in London.  Zakia reflects on how memory and legacy influence our way of seeing, and how our contemporary eyes judge the face of history. We ask, to what extent is a portrait a mirror?  We view a photographic portrait of Sarah Forbes Bonetta (1843-80) Room 23, Floor 2. Historian and essayist; Trustee o...

Today my guest is the Director Eddie Hutton-Mills. Eddie co-directed Kanaval: A Peoples History of Haiti in Six Chapters with Leah Gordon. Eddie Hutton-Mills is an award winning documentary filmmaker, who has made films for all the major UK & US broadcasters including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. He’s also made biographical feature films about Naomi Campbell and Diane Abbott. His passion is for...

Interludes: Black Balloons   is a new sound installation by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié now showing at Tate Gallery. Responding to  Liz Johnson Artur’s display  Time don’t run here , the piece references Artur’s Black Lives Matter protest images and works from her ongoing Black Balloon Archive documenting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas. Experience&n...

An exploration of race and politics via the dancefloor. Today my guest is the photographer and filmmaker Jermaine Francis. Jermaine and I discuss his recent film Lost in Music: A Post Industrial Dreamscape - an exploration of race and politics within a dancefloor context. This work was recently presented alongside a discussion with the writer Nathalie Olah and photographer Edward "Eddie" Otchere a...

Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close at The Barbican. Today my guest is Patrice Robinson who talks about Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close, at The Barbican , her debut curatorial season. With interest in communities, community access to film and the intimacies of the human experience, Patrice is a film programmer and writer working in the intersection of audiences and cinema. We discuss Patrice...

PerAnkh – The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, now showing at Raven Row London. Today my guest is the film curator and archivist, June Givanni. June's new exhibition, PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, is showing at Raven Row in London until 4 June 2023. The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA) holds a unique collection of artefacts and archival material, which...

Featuring Lou Mensah & Sunil Shah. Enjoy this bonus episode of my conversation with the curators of Tracing Absence, a Whitechapel Gallery exhibition opening at the Kistefos Museum in Norway on April 29th, 2023. The MA student curators of Tracing Absence re-imagine the show to respond to the local context.  Episode 18 of Whitechapel Gallery’s Hear, Now podcast series was published in Octo...

Writer, researcher and independent curator: Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art. Dr Jareh Das  is an independent curator, researcher and writer who lives and works between West Africa and the UK. Das’ academic and curatorial practice is informed by an interest in global modern and contemporary art with a specific focus on performance. In 2022, Das curated  B...

Curator and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art and curator of Black Venus at Somerset House. *Please note that the sound quality in this episode is compromised due to an unstable internet connection between London and Lagos, where this conversation was recorded. However, Aindrea's insights are not to be missed! Aindrea Emelife is a Nigerian-British curator and art historian...

Bolanle Tajudeen founded Black Blossoms in 2015 to showcase the work of contemporary artists of colour.  In 2020, Bolanle launched the Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture, an initiative highlighting the art histories and creative practices of artists from historically marginalised backgrounds. As an alternative art school, Black Blossoms offers short educational courses including Art and...

Associate Director Gagosian Gallery. Péjú Oshin is the Associate Director of Gagosian Gallery and curator of Rites of Passage the exhibition featuring work by nineteen contemporary artists who share a history of migration. Rites of Passage  explores the idea of “liminal space,” a coinage of anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957). It is structured in correspondence with liminality’s...

Portals features the voice of Cassi Namoda who shares her reflections based on her practice and work titled ' Worship at Bar Mundo' (2022). View ' Worship at Bar Mundo' here whilst listening to Axel's sonic response throughout this episode. Cassi Namoda is a painter whose work interweaves the personal with the historical. Born in Maputo and having lived in several different countries throughout he...

Mandala features the sounds of the artist Nnena Kalu creating an untitled work and the voice of ActionSpace Associate Artist, Charlotte Hollinshead. Nnena Kalu has created a vast body of sculptural and 2D artworks and developed a live, performative element to her practice. She is driven by an instinctive urge to build repeated marks and forms, creating intensely layered, visually impactful ar...

Where the sun sleeps features the voice of photographer Ming Smith who shares her reflections based on her practice and work Circle of Life (Hakone, Japan 1985 ) . Ming Smith was the first female member to join Kamoinge, a collective of black photographers in New York in the 1960s, working to document black life. Smith would go on to be the first black woman photographer to be included in the coll...

Dream Recurred features the voice of Amy Sherald who shares her reflections based on her practice and new work For love, and for country (2022) . 'For love, and for country' features in 'The World We Make' , Sherald's first solo show in Europe. In this new body of work, Sherald humanises the Black experience by depicting her subjects in both historically recognisable and everyday settings, at once...

Forgetting Eden features the voice of Rahima Gambo who shares her reflections based on her practice and project Education is Forbidden and Tatsuniya. Rahima’s deeply layered mixed media engagement is about the aftermath of conflict, the nature of memory and the echoes and consequences of colonial education in north eastern Nigeria. Discover more of Rahima's work on her Instagram and her website ....

Larry Achiampong is a British Ghanian, Jarman Award nominated artist. In 2020 he was awarded the Stanley Picker fellowship and in 2019 he received the Paul Hamlyn Artist award in recognition for his practice. Larry’s most recent solo exhibition Wayfinder showed this summer at the Turner Contemporary Gallery. He serves on the Board of Trustees at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and T...

Drexciya features the voice of Phoebe Boswell who shares her reflections based on her practice and project The Black Horizon Do We Muse on the Sky or Remember the Sea? Discover more of Phoebe’s work on her Instagram and her website This episode also features a performance by Jazz Tenor Saxophonist JD Allen who collaborated with Phoebe Boswell on The Black Horizon project. His work is also availabl...

Interludes is a collaboration between Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié featuring six contemporary artists: Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Phoebe Boswell, Rahima Gambo, Nnena Kalu and Cassi Namoda. Framed by the question "What does healing sound like?", these podcasts offer a visceral connection with the artists' work. In each episode we weave the artists' reflections through Axel's original soundscapes,...