Berette S. Macaulay "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [The Harmful Illusion of] White Supremacy"

How incredible to have come to our LAST (for a while anyway) episode of Critical Bounds. Please enjoy this exceptional conversation with Berette S. Macaulay.

We have such gratitude for Berette for engaging in this conversation. We discuss living a multiplicitous life, and the institutional lie that you must focus on One Thing, or be branded a failure. How to interrogate the process and usefulness of critical dialogue. What populations are still being overlooked in the art world? The influence of the Black Portlanders project. Working with artists who are creating work to, “...speak to some of the traumas, but not define ourselves by these traumas.” How institutional racism creates a challenge in even putting together a show that is about Black people. Tokenism in cultural institutions. The invisibility of power. Interrogating terms like “white privilege” and “white supremacy”, to unroot the mythologies of “Whiteness”. And so much more.

Berette S. Macaulay is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and writer from Jamaica and Sierra Leone. Her research and visual arts practice engage themes of belonging, identity-performance, illegibility, love, memory, and mythmaking. 

She is currently the inaugural curatorial fellow at On The Boards Performing Arts Theater in Seattle, has exhibited and published nationally and internationally, receiving recent Artist Grants from the Vermont Studio Center Residency, Shunpike Arts, and 4Culture. Art and writing publications include Feminist Media Histories, UNESCO Courier, Of Note and Museé magazines, and the World Policy Journal. Her curatorial work includes illusive self (2013) at Taller Boricua Gallery, NYC, and Exploring Passages in the Black Diaspora (2020) at Photographic Center NW. 

MFON in Seattle catalogue. Get the print catalog HERE.

Berette was the creator and organizer of the MFON in Seattle (2019/20) program in which she facilitated exhibition partnerships with MFON Women, Frye Art Museum, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, and Photographic Center Northwest, following the legacy work of Adama Delphine Fawundu and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn to feature Black women photographers from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. 

Berette’s awards include a 2019 Simpson Center Research Cluster Grant as founder of Black Cinema Collective (BCC) where she curates screenings, watch parties, and panel discussions alongside co-programmers Savita Krishnamoorthy and Mateo Ochoa, focusing on African and Afro-Diasporic films. BCC functions as a project of i•ma•gine | e•volve, an interdisciplinary arts incubator she has been tending to since 2010. 

Berette was named a 2019 Ottenberg-Winans Fellow for African Studies (UW), and is the recipient of the 2020 Champion of Seattle Arts (COSA) Award. Berette also serves as the Art Liaison Program Manager at Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington.

Eva Mayhabal Davis "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the Harmful Illusion of] White Supremacy"

Head over to Soundcloud for our conversation with arts advocate and curator Eva Mayhabal Davis (B. Toluca, Mexico). We talk about our mutual disdain for Picasso, Davis' art journey, her project El Salón, the prospect of gathering together again, our mutual anxiety at onscreen crowds (and the 80s and early 90s lack of cellphones), how she advocates for community through the arts, and what old hobbies became new again during the pandemic.

Davis was born in Mexico, raised in the United States, and studied art history at the University of Washington. She is a founding member of El Salón, a meetup for cultural producers. Her Mexica identity, immigrant and working class narrative informs her work in advocacy for equity and social justice through the arts.

Davis is a the Intake Paralegal at UnLocal, Inc, a non-profit organization that provides direct immigration legal representation, legal consultations, and community education to New York City’s undocumented immigrant communities. She is also director of Transmitter NYC, curator for NYC Crit Club, and her writing has been featured in many publications such as Foundwork, Arte Fuse, Art Spiel, the Hemispheric Institute’s Cuadernos, Nueva Luz: Photographic Journal, Guggenheim Museum Blog, and Cultureworks Magazine.

Satpreet Kahlon "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the Harmful Illusion of] White Supremacy"

Tune in to our latest conversation with Satpreet Kahlon, a Punjabi-born, Seattle based artist, organizer, and curator, and the editor of New Archives, a nonprofit arts journal which focuses on art in the Pacific Northwest.

We talk about Satpreet's work at (now-defunct) The Alice Gallery, including her first experience at curating the show "From Which We Rise", and its familial connections. We discuss the vibrations of Place, and Satpreet's experiences living around the US. We touch on institutional tokenism, her work with yəhaw̓ Indigenous Collective, and the issues with the word "decolonization". We side-eye the New York Times, and discuss theories on how some work by BIPOC artists is largely ignored because it isn't easily digestible for hegemonic consumption.

“Towards the Earth”. (ca 2018-2019). Satpreet Kahlon. Image courtesy of the artist.

Satpreet talks about her own artistic practice, the ways she interrogates space, and how her work "...moves against the framework of metal penii", embodying anti-monumentalism. We also learn the influence of Archive, and the words of Saidiya Hartman, and how not all curators are created equal.

Halim A. Flowers "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy"

Tune in to our fantastic conversation with visual artist and formerly incarcerated poet, entrepreneur Halim A. Flowers about growing up in DC, Reaganomics and the myth of the "Superpredator", the importance of education and access beyond Eurocentric knowledge, making space to connect with people as fellow humans, the influence of Jay Z and Basquiat on his work, and how art and culture can change minds and our world.

In 1997, Halim A. Flowers 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 11 books.

In 2019, Halim was released from prison after serving 22 years imprisoned. Upon release, Halim began to create visual art in addition to his poetry, writing, and entrepreneurship. He has worked with Kim Kardashian for her documentary “The Justice Project”, done a spoken word performance with Kanye West at his famous Sunday Service, received the Halcyon Arts Lab and Echoing Green fellowships, and spoken at panels at universities and conferences around the country about the impact of the arts and entrepreneurship to correct our criminal injustice system.

In 2020, he signed to be represented by Stella Jones and DTR Modern Galleries for his visual art practice.

Michelle Kumata "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy"

Head over to Soundcloud to hear our latest episode with artist Michelle Kumata. Michelle Kumata (she, her), is a 3.5 generation Japanese American artist and Seattle native with a BFA in Illustration from The School of Visual Arts in New York, NY. She worked as a graphic artist at The Seattle Times for over a decade and then served as Exhibit Director at Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience for 12 years. Michelle is influenced by heritage, identity and legacy. She is currently exploring the Japanese diaspora in the U.S. and Brazil through oral histories and visual storytelling. See more of Michelle’s work at michellekumata.com or follow her on Instagram @michellekumata.

In this episode from our series with BIPOC artists on Colonialism, Nationalism, and the harmful illusion of White Supremacy, we talk about Kumata’s time at Wing Luke Museum, her project on the Japanese Diaspora in the US and Brazil.

“Song For Generations”. (2019). Michelle Kumata, acrylic on canvas, 16' x 8'

We also get a deep dive into Kumata’s work "Song For Generations", and how it deals with the Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Kumata emphasizes the importance of listening to those from historically marginalized communities and really processing what is happening right now, then taking action as individuals to effect positive change. Plus, shoutouts to Wa Na Wari, and founders Elisheba Johnson and Inye Wokoma, as well as artists Roger Shimomura, Erin Shigaki, Louie Gong, and a book recommendation for everyone who is interested in learning more about Bellevue, Washington’s internment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII: Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community by David A. Neiwert.

Afi Ese on "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy"

Head over to Soundcloud to hear our conversation with African American contemporary realist, and figurative conceptual artist Afi Ese about using art to tell stories, group economics as a form of activism in marginalized groups, her former experience as a forensic psychologist and how we use research about inequity in place of action against inequity in our justice system (and many other places), a different way to look at reparations, the inherent problem with the term "BIPOC", Ese's thoughts on 2020 for art and artists, and how we can have more honest conversations across differences.

“Afi Ese is an African American contemporary realism and figurative conceptual artist living in Houston, Texas with roots in Togo and Mali. The artworks of Afi Ese represent and venerate the rich history of the West African diaspora with an emphasis on generational trauma and triumph in Black America. As a child of the diaspora, her paintings are conceptualized narratives of the African plight through the eyes of a self-aware Black American. She combines and re-imagines historical events and attributes specific to the Black American experience. In doing so, she gets to shine a spotlight on the beauty and resilience of her community by using the gifts and talents given by her ancestors. She recognizes the importance of positive black images in daily life and uses her work to help direct the Black narrative and experience in an honest and transparent fashion. Afi wants each piece to leave the viewer feeling culturally empowered, especially the youth. She tries to embed bold fresh images in the minds of viewers and hopes to replace some of the mis-education and misleading imagery that plagues her community.”

Alexis L. Silva on "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy"

At last, our conversation with artist writer, and curator Alexis L. Silva is available for your listening pleasure! We talk about finding your community in the art world, redefining success in a non-colonial context, the value of community museums (like the Wing Luke Museum, where he works), being 2nd generation, and a Person of Color in the art world, why we should be building coalitions now, more than ever, and much more.

“Alexis L. Silva is a Seattle based Hispanic Latino artist, writer, and curator who works through the means of performance, installation, and photography. Inspired by the idea of emotion transforming into something tangible and the overall human narrative, he creates his work by constructing thoughtful and immersive experiences that provoke emotive and visual poeticism. 

Born from immigrant parents under the heat of the Las Vegas sun, Alexis began working with photography at the age of 10. Enamored by the idea of capturing time in a box, he continued to pursue his interest in photography and graduated from Las Vegas Academy of the Arts with a focus in Photography. He went on to receive his BFA from Cornish College of the Arts with a focus in Performance, Installation, and Photography. His current works are a collection of poems and found images that tell his family's immigration story. His love for storytelling and narrative fuels his practice where he explores ideas of queerness, race, and the overall human experience.”

Adero Knott for "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy

So pleased to drop the FIRST conversation for our segment with BIPOC creatives on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the harmful illusion of] White Supremacy. These issues are so pervasive—they seep into almost every area of our lives in one form or another, so much so, that many don’t even question the grievous harm that upholding these ideals causes. While most people who identify as “white” ignore their effects, it is beyond time for us to take on these burdens, and eradicate them.

This segment is not an attempt to obtain our guests’ labor for “solving” these issues—that’s on us white folx. These episodes are just conversations with amazing creatives, who have very different lives from one another, but all have to deal with societal marginalization(s) based on these three ideals on a daily basis. Although the three ideologies are titular, the conversational focus is on our guests’ lives and work.

Our first conversation is with Adero Knott, an emerging curator, inventor, and Founder of AK Prosthetics, an AdaptiveTech startup that makes customized prosthetics and adaptive wear accessible and inclusive. Her first foray into curating was with the show "Disability and Perspective", one of four exhibitions from the Commons Artist Project by Norman Teague and Fo Wilson, which debuted at MCA Chicago, about making art and life more accessible, how we might expand sensory experiences at museums and art galleries, her road to becoming an entrepreneur, being a dark-skinned, Black woman in the tech world, how to invest in her accessible prosthetics app, and her highly varied experiences with racism around the world.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin on "Art, AI, and Technology"

It’s the Last episode of our segment on Art, AI, and Technology, with Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan artist and technologist Amelia Winger-Bearskin. We talk about Amelia's podcasts Wampum.codes, a podcast which features Indigenous people working with tech in a multitude of ways, and Dreamstacks, the developer podcast by Contentful + Algolia which Amelia hosts. We also discuss her former life as an early-internet hacker and simultaneous opera singer, her Mozilla Fellowship on "trustworthy AI" and using Indigenous value-systems in tech, and much more.

“Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist/technologist who helps communities leverage emerging technologies to effect positive change in the world. She is a Senior Technical Training Specialist at Contentful in the SF Bay Area. In 2019 she was an invited presenter to His Holiness Dalai Lama’s World Headquarters in Dharamsala for the Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion. She founded IDEA New Rochelle, which partnered with the NR Mayor’s office to develop citizen-focused VR/AR tools and was awarded the 2018 Bloomberg Mayors Challenge $1 million dollar grant to prototype their AR Citizen toolkit. She is a Google VR JUMP Start creator, co-directing with Wendy Red Star a 360 video story about Native American Monsters which was selected for a McArthur Grant through the Sundance Institute Native New Frontiers Story Lab 2018. It is on display at Newark Museum beginning February 2019.

Amelia was a professor of time-based media art and performance art at Vanderbilt University for five years before returning to her roots in NYC creative technology, graduating from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 2015. In 2016 she went on to found and direct the DBRS Innovation Lab, an applied research lab that specialized in developing creative uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Amelia is the founder of the Stupid Hackathon, which now holds events around the world. She is a fellow of the Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab , a Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow, in 2018 she was awarded Engadget Alternative Realities Prize for her VR experience Your Hands Are Feet. She was a member of the 2017-2018 cohort at NEW INC, the incubator of the New Museum in NYC. In 2016 she was an Oculus Launch Pad Fellow and an Artist in Residence at Pioneer Works 2016, Her art is part of the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum and the McCord Museum. Amelia is Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan.

Amelia is the founder and host of wampum.codes podcast and the host of Contentful + Algolia's Developer Podcast DreamStacks.”

Meghan Elizabeth Trainor on "Art, AI, and Technology"

Head over to Soundcloud to listen to our fantastic conversation with Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and performer Meghan Elizabeth Trainor (not THAT one) about Computational Witchcraft, creating mythologies in order to truly own our places in spaces like tech that are historically unwelcoming to and erasing of womxn and other folxs who have been marginalized (because we have always been there, regardless of the dominant mythologies), using her project Witchcraft Memes to try to spark an interest in STEM for teens and tweens, using nurturance in community as a form of activism, her installation Elektron Oracle form the show Good Witch/Bad Witch at Museum of Museums in Seattle, curated by Bri Luna AKA The Hoodwitch, and much more.

“Meghan Elizabeth Trainor is a Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and performer.  

Trainor’s work has been shown, performed and presented at spaces that include Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona; The Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, Philadelphia; Ask The Robot at The Frying Pan, New York; and 911 Media Art Center, Seattle.  

She completed her Masters at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts/New York University. She has been artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Digital Performance Institute and the Janie & James Washington Foundation.

Her 2014 Pugetopolis Manifesto is included in the Feminist Data Manifest-No Playlist, Compiled by T.L. Cowan with Marika Cifor and Jessica Lapp.

She wrote The Familiar Algorhythm in 2016 which was included in the curated box-set SIGIL, a project of Sharon Arnold’s Bridge Productions.

The Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University commissioned her to create a performative response to the 2016 exhibition Robots Building Robots resulting in an audio piece called Robot Philter.

Her project #meghantrainorwitchmemes was featured in the most recent issue of continent. magazine; APOCRYPHAL TECHNOLOGIES.  

Trainor's work was included in the Danish design, technology & feminism ‘zine Wilful Technologies: Rage & Resilience edited by Madeline Balaam Lone Koefoed Hansen.  

She is currently working on Elektron Oracle, an installation for the Good Witch/Bad Witch show at The Museum of Museums gallery in Seattle. This piece grew out of her talk Witch Science on the Moon that was part of the Salish Sea Anti-Space Symposium in 2019.”

Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman on "Art, AI, and Technology"

The first episode of our segment on “Art, AI, and Technology” is finally up for your consideration. Head over to Soundcloud (or your listening conveyance of choice) for our conversation with director Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman about his web series and now feature film Early Stage, the protests happening in both LA (where he is based) and Seattle (where I am) this summer, police brutality, the houseless crisis, the perils of social media, AI as a symbiotic lifeform, and the rather banal-yet-dangerous role it currently plays in our lives, Star Trek, Covid, how smartphones have changed our brains, and his conversations with Paradise, CA residents that resulted in his upcoming film, "Tips on Surviving the End of the World".

His intimate, provocative documentary work has won a regional EMMY and an Edes Award for Emerging Artists. His documentaries have been featured in the Zeppelin Museum, the Athens Biennale, San Francisco's DeYoung Museum, the BBC, PBS, Atlas Obscura, the Washington Post, NBC Left Field, and a handful of other platforms. This work has brought him to Ghana, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Tahiti, a heavy metal cruise in the Caribbean, and a snake-handling Pentecostal Church in Kentucky.

His scripted webseries "Early Stage", which was the seed of his current feature film, was originally released online as short vignettes on DIS.art, and in the physical world at Madrid's Matadero Museum in 2019 and at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Coppenhagen in 2020, and was recently part of a group exhibition called "The Sea Is Glowing" at Drugo More Gallery in Rijeka, Croatia.

He has directed music videos for Squarepusher (Warp Records), DNTEL (Dublab), Anna Ash, Gosh Pith, Horatio Clam, Lord Scrummage, and Briar Rabbit.

Bethany Tabor on "Art and Death"

Head over to Soundcloud to enjoy this fantastic episode with curator, writer, and cultural arts programmer Bethany Tabor! When we downloaded the files, every bit of one side of the conversation sounded like it was underwater, and so—we re-recorded it to the best of our ability. We are so glad that Bethany’s audio was unharmed, because it’s a great conversation.

We talk about her work with Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, creating events that give space for people to talk and learn about death and dying. We discuss performance art, John Underwood, the founder of the Death Cafe Movement, her writing about artist Teresa Margolles, Dia de Los Muertos and how its appropriation perfectly encapsulates the inextricably imperialistic relationship between US and Mexico, and how Covid has not actually changed our proximity to death.

AJ Hawkins on "Art and Death"

Continuing with our series on “Art and Death”, please enjoy our conversation with artist AJ Hawkins about how changing relationships to faith can change our relationships to grief and grieving processes, how the death of a beloved pet inspired a search to make sense of her own mortality, the necrobiome as a "microbiological afterlife", her project "The Reclamation", How Death Positivity includes issues like bodily autonomy and environmentalism, how art can be used to connect and communicate, and to cope with things that feel "too big", and a crash course on ecological disposition.

AJ Hawkins uses fine art as a research medium to explore the challenges of living in a mortal body. Drawing on her background as a painter, sculptor and custom fabricator, AJ often creates hybrid art works that blur the lines between 2- and 3-dimensional, traditional and experimental.

Her Kickstarter-funded project, The Reclamation, challenges viewers to choose more environmentally-friendly afterlives by highlighting the value of human decomposition and the necrobiome. In years since, AJ's art has focused on experiences surrounding grief and illness. Her new series, The Poisoned Body, explores the physical and psychological toll of living with a prolonged and severe iatrogenic disease.

J Simmz on "Art and Death"

Sending out our second episode in the “Art and Death” segment to you all on Halloween (as is only fitting). This conversation with J Simmz delves into our personal and larger societal relationships with death, Simmz work as an intuitive and conceptual curator, how she has found ways to move naturally with cycles of life and death in work and beyond, and how we might apply that philosophy to our current state—the possible deaths of our own harmful institutions—and what our might our roles at this moment in time be.

“J. Simmz is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in Ridgewood, Queens. She is director and curator of Doppelgänger Projects, an independent curatorial venture promoting distinctly alternative perspectives while focusing on practices of aesthetics, feminism, technology, and the esoteric within the emerging contemporary art landscape. Previously, she was Assistant Curator for g a macura inc., during which she managed GE's corporate collection. Jennifer holds her M.S. in Arts Administration from Boston University and obtained her B.A. from New York University in Art History.”

Carrie Redway on "Art and Death"

Autumn is traditionally a season for harvest, and then a season to witness the cycle of death. Our own Halloween in the United States (also known as All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day), began as Lemuria , an ancient Roman feast day to banish malevolent spirits. The Incan month which corresponds with our November, Ayamarca, roughly translates to “festival of the dead”. Samhain, is a festival at the end of harvest season, believed to be largely Celtic in origin, in which ancient burial mounds were opened as portals to the world of Death, and most of us have heard of Dia de Los Muertos, a Mexican celebration of one’s ancestors who have died (mostly due to the cultural appropriation of my fellow white women who think painting their faces like a sugar skull is “cute”)—the aforementioned list names just a few of the multitude of ways that humans have celebrated and observed the “dying” of the year and its relation to our own mortality.

In art, death has always been a popular subject, from the abundance of Memento Mori, Danse Macabre, and Death and the Maiden motifs, as well as hundreds of scenes of battle and war, such as Guernica (1937 oil painting on canvas by Pablo Picasso), to famous historical deaths like The Death of Marat (1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David). This segment of Critical Bounds features conversations with artists, writers, and curators, whose work delves into death, sometimes in unexpected ways.

For the first episode of our “Art and Death” segment, we welcome Carrie Redway. “Carrie Redway is a writer, mixed media artist and death doula in Seattle, WA. Her work is inspired by myth, folklore, ritual. Carrie aspires to create community spaces and tools for death education and exploration through writing and art. She facilitates epoch: a writing circle exploring death in nature and cycles. She is the author of the chapbook "Vulpecula", a conversation in poetry with the constellation Vulpecula about death and grief in various forms. She is currently working on a zine series on death topics. Her work has been published in various online and print journals such as Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Rust + Moth, Spilled Milk, and Really System, among others.”

We discuss Carrie’s chapbook "Vulpecula" (which she reads from), find out just What IS a Death Doula?, and Carrie's path to becoming one. We talk about her connection with her grandmother through her childhood zines about death, Tips for people caring for dying loved ones in person and via distance, A Sacred Passing organization and training communities to do the work that our ancestors used to do, the invisibility of death in our (predominantly Western) culture, and movement as a tool for both grieving and creative processes.

Dr. Bettina Judd on "Art and Health"

Dr. Bettina Judd

It’s time to listen to our latest episode, a conversation with visual artist, writer, poet, performer, and professor of studies of gender, race, and sexuality, Dr. Bettina Judd (MA PhD).

"Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her current book manuscript argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.

She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. Her poems and essays have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was released in November of 2014. As a performer she has been invited to perform for audiences within the United States and internationally.

We discuss her award-winning book patient, as well as why racism is a public health issue, the presumed danger of Black embodiment, how to have community in isolation, and the inherent problem of a surgeon founding the modern field of gynecology--and how many are going back to traditional, community, and Indigenous forms of medicine as a result.

patient. poems by Dr. Bettina Judd. Image

Dr. Eric Avery on "Art and Health"

Go check out the second episode in our segment on “Art and Health (/Healthcare)”, with visual artist, activist, and physician Dr. Eric Avery. Dr. Avery "...is an artist/printmaker who became a physician during the Vietnam War in the 1970's. In 1974, he received his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas and then in 1978 completed his psychiatry training at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. For forty years he has worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine, leaving the practice of medicine several times to concentrate on his art career. His social content prints explore issues such as Human Rights Abuses, and Social Responses to Disease (specifically HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), Death, Sexuality and the Body....

​For twenty years, Avery worked as the HIV psychiatrist at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas....from 1992-2012...he made prints, paper and art actions that reflected his clinical work with HIV/AIDS. In the 1990's, in clinical art actions that high lighted developments in HIV care, he moved HIV medical practice into the protected aesthetic art space of museums and galleries, trying to prove that art can save lives.".

I first came across Dr. Avery’s work at Smith College Museum of Art’s exhibition Bearing Witness, showcasing prints made by Avery which document the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

As It Is, from Damn It Suite. (1987). Eric Avery. Woodcut printed in color on handmade Mulberry paper. Permanent collection Smith College Museum of Art.

During this conversation, we discuss Avery’s humanitarian work across the world, his human rights activism, how he brought an AIDS clinic into museums, the opioid crisis, printmaking, living in a building owned by Warhol, and so much more.

Susan Aldworth on "Art and Health"

Very happy to share this lovely conversation with visual artist, experimental printmaker, and filmmaker Susan Aldworth.

“Susan Aldworth is a visual artist who lives and works in London. She is an associate lecturer on the Art & Science MA at Central Saint Martin’s, London. Aldworth studied philosophy at Nottingham University and fine art at Sir John Cass, London. She is an experimental printmaker and filmmaker with a strong interest in investigating the workings of the human mind, especially consciousness, sleep and our sense of self. She has developed experimental print techniques to realise her ideas including the historic Transience etchings printed directly from human brain tissue.”

We talk about neuroscience, consciousness and the human brain, the ways in which Aldworth is inspired by art, philosophy, and science, and about her latest projects including "Out of the Blue", a kinectic sculpture installation project that looks at epilepsy through the stories of 100 people.

Adela Goldsmith on "Art, Gender, and Sexuality"

Head over to Soundcloud (or any of our other hosting services via the buttons above) to hear our latest episode with Adela Goldsmith about queer elders, our love/hate relationship with museums (some we really love), the value of experiential knowledge, the importance and innate queerness of archives, the future of museums (is there one?), the roles of care networks, mutual aid, and queer methodologies during this historic moment, what the Critical Bounds drinking game would look like, and "What is a Career?".

Adela Goldsmith is an independent art scholar and curator, who graduated from Smith College with a BA in Art History and a concentration in Museum Studies, wherein they completed a project which examines the relationship between the development of museums’ permanent collections and archival documentation.

They have held curatorial internships at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as an archives internship in artist Cass Bird’s studio, and was a Junior Assistant at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Currently, Goldsmith has joined forces with the think-tank/research lab known as the Institute of Museums Against All Fucked Up Social Systems (IMAAFUSS), which explores adaptive solutions for experiencing art collectively and critiquing arts institutions in the midst of a catastrophic pandemic and a watershed reckoning with racism and inequity in the cultural sector and beyond. They have also gotten involved with the soon-to-debut mutual aid and resource-sharing network, Aid for Art Now (A4AN), which aims to support and sustain current and prospective arts workers and create a more inclusive and accessible museum field.

Their curatorial practice focuses on the intersections of queerness, archival
impulse, and institutional memory.

T.s. Flock on "Art, Gender, and Sexuality"

T.s. Flock self-portrait (courtesy T.s. Flock)

Check out our latest episode with T.s. Flock for our “Art, Gender, and Sexuality” segment. where we discuss the titular subjects, as well as etymology, the importance of aesthetic literacy, embodiment, and a plethora of other things.

“T.s. Flock is a Seattle-based writer and critic, and co-founder of Vanguard Seattle, an arts and culture publication, and was formerly an Arts Editor for Seattle Weekly. Other publications for which T.s. has written include Fabrik, Arts Africa, and Visual Art Source. T.s. holds degrees in English Composition, German Language and Biology from Georgia State. T.s. is launching a new video series aimed at expanding aesthetic literacy in connection through the history of arts, etymology and technology.”