In this episode of Broken Boxes we talk about the life and current projects of Cherokee/Muscogee artist and composer Elisa Harkins. From her experience of being an adopted child to surviving a near fatal bike accident, Elisa shares both foundational and vulnerable life experiences which gave her strength as an artist. Elisa also reflects on grad school, noting artists who inspired her through insight and mentorship. We speak on how she has used language as a tool in her practice and as a way to access belonging and participation in community. She walks us through Radio III, a collaborative performance project which recently toured Europe. In closing, Elisa reminds us that as we strive to do things in a good way as creatives, we should also not be afraid to take a chance on bold ideas that push our comfort levels. Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to use the Cherokee language in a pop song. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, The Heard Museum, and MoMA. In 2020, She created an online Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee (Creek)/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, IN, and streaming from OK#1 in Tulsa, OK. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a limited edition double LP, which can be found on Harkins’ Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.Song Featured: Deadly by Elisa Harkins

Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a U.S. citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. As an acknowledgment to his past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging to undocumented communities and the cancer community. In This episode of Broken Boxes Guadalupe Maravilla speaks with Cannupa Hanska Luger about the current creation story of Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus being reworked into a new healing sound work. The artist reflects how this bus’ artwork journey is becoming so much more including multiple communities involvements, several countries and even a volcano. We hear how migration routes are reflected throughout the visual language of Guadalupe’s practice, including the autobiographical nature of the artist's own migration story as a child. Guadalupe unpacks a bit on how he strives to create sustainable micro economies through his artmaking process and we hear about how his art practice also becomes a vessel of support for new asylum seekers arriving in NYC, while in tandem the artworks provide sound healing for those recovering from trauma, including centering healing for cancer survivors. Rounding out the conversation Guadalupe shares how maintaining wellbeing for mind, spirit and body through daily ritual aids in the strength needed to continue to carry the work and support forward, and emplores us to find time in our daily life to nurture inner health. Please visit the following link to donate to Guadalupe’s efforts in supporting new asylum seekers arriving in NYC. gofund.me/396e7d27Artist website: https://www.guadalupemaravilla.comArtist IG: https://www.instagram.com/guadalupe__maravilla/Song featured: La Democracia by the artist Very Be Careful

Broken Boxes is thrilled to present a very special conversation with the prolific artist Caledonia Curry, known globally as SWOON. In speaking with Broken Boxes producer Ginger Dunnill during the opening of Seven Contemplations at CONTAINER in Santa Fe, NM, Callie reflects on how art has been a healing practice for her throughout life. She talks about her pivot from art school to street art, in a time before the genre’s fame in the global art market and untangles the complexity of being a woman artist in male dominated spaces of that time, while giving credit to the continued brilliance of the next generation who are teaching us the expanse of the gender spectrum. We end our conversation with notes on the impact of accessing and valuing experiences of artists who came before, such as a mentor of hers, Judy Chicago. In closing, Callie offers a bit of fearless inspiration, imploring us as artists to always “follow the impulse” in order to unlock the next gift and adventure.About the artist:Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork.Through intimate portraits, immersive installations and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity by mobilizing her artwork to fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in toward a more just and equitable world. She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing the conceptual limits of the genre and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists. Her recent work has been focused on the relationship of trauma and addiction. Through community partnerships that center compassion and the transformative power of art, Curry draws on her personal history growing up in an opioid addicted family as a catalyst for connection and healing. Over the past 10 years, she has founded and developed collaborative multi-year projects in Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Komye, Haiti, that address crises ranging from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic. She is currently developing a full length narrative movie which will bring together drawing, immersive installation, stop motion animation and her collaborative work, with the traditions of storytelling through film.Website: https://swoonstudio.orgIG: https://www.instagram.com/swoonhq/SWOON’s Seven Contemplations retrospective exhibition is now on view at the new art space, CONTAINER in Santa Fe, NM. Special thanks to Tonya Turner Carroll and Michael Carroll for supporting us with space to conduct this interview in the gallery. Song featured on this episode: What They Call Us by Fever Ray

In this episode we hear interdisciplinary artist Christine Howard Sandoval in conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger. Christine breaks down the importance of research within her current practice and how her family have become an integral part of her work as she uncovers deeper relationship to her ancestors' pathways throughout California. She reflects on the complexity of connection, disconnection and reconnection to land that we all face today and how she uses performance, video surveillance documentation and large scale earthen paintings to expand upon these notions of belonging. Christine implores us to examine the future of art and education and to trust our own speed and trajectory as we navigate the artworld, reminding us that culture is not static. More about the artist:Christine Howard Sandoval is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam First Nations and is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University (Vancouver, BC). She is an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation in Bakersfield, CA.Howard Sandoval's work has exhibited nationally and internationally including: The Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo (Brazil), The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Oregon Contemporary (Portland, OR), The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, CA), Designtransfer, Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin, Germany), El Museo Del Barrio (New York, NY), and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY).Howard Sandoval's work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the ICA San Diego (2021) and Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (2019), during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Howard Sandoval has been awarded numerous residencies including: UBC Okanagan, Indigenous Art Intensive program (Kelowna, BC), ICA San Diego (Encinitas, CA), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM), Triangle Arts Association (New York, NY). She is represented by parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles.Photo credit: Rachel Topham PhotographyFeatured song: Journey In Satchidananda by Alice Coltrain

In this episode we get into conversation with artist, educator & creative strategist Kate Deciccio who shares how her practice is a space to unpack the ways whiteness, colonization and the prison industrial complex have harmed our collective imagination. Kate also presents tangible ways we may heal and be nourished collectively by collaborative processes of building through community led abolition and also in personal accountability to whiteness through practices such as somatics. Kate DeCiccio is an Oakland based artist, educator & creative strategist. Her work centers portraiture for counter narrative, community storytelling & cultural strategy on behalf of abolition and collective liberation. DeCiccio is from Central Massachusetts where she grew up on occupied Nipmuc territory on her family’s 4th generation farm. She is the 3rd generation of her Polish and Italian ancestors and descends from 11 generations of English colonizers. Before working as an artist full time DeCiccio was a mental health and substance abuse counselor and taught art at San Quentin Prison, St Elizabeths Forensic Psychiatric hospital & Leadership High School. The intersections of creativity, mental illness, addiction and ancestral investigation have been driving themes in her art practice since she was a teenager. DeCiccio is committed to repairing the harm of her inherited legacy and working to heal our collective imagination by learning how to stand squarely in truth, accountability, renewed resilience and unknown possibility. She is currently working on a body of work called Anatomy of the Colonial Fetish & Cynical Pilgrim, stay tuned!DeCiccio is a Co-Director at Performing Statistics, a project that supports youth organizers to close youth prisons across the country. Her collaborations include work with The People's Paper Coop, The Painted Desert Project, 826 National, Critical Resistance, Survived and Punished, Planting Justice and Dear Frontline. She's been commissioned by Amplifier Foundation to create work on behalf of The Women's March, The Science March and March For Our Lives. Her work has been featured in news and media sources including The Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, The Daily Show, LA Times and Navajo Times. She’s exhibited at Galeria de La Raza, The Mission Cultural Center, The United States of Women, US Botanic Garden, Betti Ono Gallery, INTO ACTION, Interference Archive and Politicon. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress and The Center for the Study of Political Graphics.Song featured: September Song by Agnes ObelLearn more about the work of Kate DeCiccio:www.katedeciccio.comIG: @k8deciccioWhat's happening at Performing Statistics: www.performingstatistics.orgIG: @performingstatisticsAdditional resources:On Somatics: Book: My Body My Earth, Dr Ruby GibsonBook: My Grandmothers Hands, Resma Menakemhttps://generativesomatics.orgOn Abolition: https://www.interruptingcriminalization.comhttps://criticalresistance.org/abolish-policing/https://www.commonjustice.org

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century.In this conversation Sterlin Harjo and Cannupa Hanska Luger reflect on the process and outcome of Sterlin’s journey in creating the hit television series Reservation Dogs, now in its second season. They also talk about creating through a pandemic, lifting up independent filmmakers, swinging for the fences, the actors from Reservation Dogs and their character breakdowns, the latest custom hat by Cannupa, Indigenous film crews, with a little cameo by Sterlin’s son Ayo and so much more.Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin’s latest project Reservation Dogs, Season 2 now streaming on FX. This is the third conversation between Sterlin & Cannupa for the podcast - check our archive to listen to the first two conversations.Also check out Sterlin’s podcast ‘The Cuts’ where Sterin chats with the creative team from Reservation Dogs and many other creative peers, including Taika Waititi.Song featured: Letters On The Marquee by Vincent Neil Emerson

In this episode we speak with Mexican American Ceramic and Multidisciplinary artist Kristy Moreno who is a current long-term resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (The Bray). “My current body of work examines the systems and bonds between social, political, and personal narratives. These narratives intersect to embody forms of relativity, healing and resilience. By producing these physically paused moments, I introduce a space for reflection which investigates the journey of my personal point of view, individual habits and character.” - Kristy MorenoKristy Moreno was born in the city of Inglewood, California and often found herself creating doodles of her favorite cartoons. Moving to Orange County inspired her to become involved in the art communities of Santa Ana, leading her to collaborate with group collectives including We Are Rodents and Konsept. She then attended Santa Ana College where she found an interest in ceramics that led her to transfer to California State University, Chico to pursue a BFA degree. Her work now spans across mediums to bring awareness and visibility to an abundant future where mutual aid is possible.Website: https://kristymorenoart.weebly.comIG: @kristy.moreno https://www.instagram.com/kristy.moreno/?hl=enSong Featured: Mar Iguana by É Arenas

In this episode recurring host and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger gets into conversation with Joseph M. Pierce, a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University where he teaches and researches about Queer Studies, Indigenous Studies and Latin American Studies. Joseph is also a writer and an artist who often collaborates with other Queer, Trans and 2spirit Indigenous Kin on curation and performance work. In this conversation Joseph and Cannupa speak about the points of connection within community through time, focusing on the realms of storytelling and speculative fiction that weave us together in continuum.  More about the Artist:Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, 19 th century literature and culture, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and hemispheric approaches to citizenship and belonging. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” His work has been published recently in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and has also been featured in Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Koori of Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.Ways to engage with Joseph's work:Joseph M. Pierce website: https://www.josephmpierce.com Dayunisi's Turn: https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/el-giro-de-dayunisi/ Knowledge of Wounds: www.knowledgeofwounds.comJoseph and SJ Norman in conversation about their collaborative practice: https://movementresearch.org/publications/critical-correspondence/sj-norman-in-conversation-with-joseph-m-pierceFeatured Song: Performing Life from Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ by Elisa Harkins

In this episode we hear from New York-based narrative artist, producer, and curator Evan Starling-Davis who excavates the everyday stories pushed beneath the margins of our society. Navigating his lens as a Black and queer digital-age griot, Evan’s work breaches the hard facts, personal truths, and surreal realities we bury ourselves in. His artistic practice is situated within art immersion, mindfulness pedagogy, and experiential technology, and is heavily guided by the Black Speculative Arts Movement (Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism specifically). Evan Starling-Davis is in conversation with artist Cannupa Hanska Luger who is a recurring host with Broken Boxes and who often accesses speculative fiction in his practice from the perspective of an Indigenous person of the Great Plains of North America. This episode was recorded at Colgate University in Hamilton New York as a part of a recent artist residency. Special thanks to Nick West, Curator of Picker Art Gallery for the introductions to Evan Starling-Davis and for organizing a studio on campus to record this conversation. Artist Bio:Evan Starling-Davis is a New York-based narrative artist, producer, and curator, excavating the everyday stories pushed beneath the margins of our society. Navigating his lens as a Black and queer digital-age griot, Evan’s work breaches the hard facts, personal truths, and surreal realities we bury ourselves in. A doctoral candidate of Literacy Education at Syracuse University with a focus in extended reality (XR) technology, Starling-Davis researches and facilitates arts-based literacy and social justice projects and interventions for Black communities in the US. His artistic practice is situated within art immersion, mindfulness pedagogy, and experiential technology, and is heavily guided by the Black Speculative Arts Movement (Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism specifically). To create new pathways for Black imagination and media literacy to flourish, Evan combines motivational design, multimedia arts, and immersive technology in striking new ways. Exploring immersive technologies as tools of healing (such as virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality) his most recent project, Hidden Fragments Breathing, models the radical potential immersive art exposure has to transform literacy in Black communities across the Rust Belt. As a curator with meticulous attention-to-detail, Starling-Davis has managed public humanities projects and community-based art experiences from conception to completion. His interdisciplinary projects have been featured in art galleries, museums, and theaters internationally. More recently, he has been selected as a 2020-2021 Humanities NY Public Humanities Fellow, a 2019-2020 Louise B. and Bernard G. Palitz Art Scholar, and a 2018-2019 Syracuse University McKean Scholar. Music Featured: Saffron by MF DOOM from Metal Fingers Presents: Special Herbs Vol. 1 & 2