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.

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.”

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

Our Episode with Carol Rashawnna Williams is almost here.

It has been A While since we recorded with Carol Rashawnna Williams for our Art and the Environment segment. Right before the Covid19 pandemic really hit the US, in fact (which is part of what has taken so long) but look for her episode to hit @criticalboundspodcast over the next few days. Image: "WATER". (2017). Carol Rashawnna Williams (Instagram @k_love_4art @klove4art). Painting, oil monoprint on canvas, 72 x 72". Photo by Chloe at Artist Trust.