Everything Is Connected

On this episode, I’m joined by Obida of O’DA Art Gallery as we discuss his philosophy as a gallerist and collector. 

Before opening his gallery in 2020, Obida was a full-time interior designer whose work with clients increasingly put him in between design and art. What first began as collecting privately and sharing art works with his interior design clients turned into a full-scale gallery operating out of Lagos, Nigeria and in participating in global art fairs. Bringing emerging and established artis to new audiences, Obida shares his insights on building relationships over time through trust. 

When it comes to the artists he works with, Obida looks for originality, conviction, and creativity. For 1-54, ODA presents “FROM STRUCTURE TO SENSATION” featuring Jonah Bulus, Deborah Segun, and Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, and he highlights 1-54’s role in positioning contemporary African art as simply great contemporary art.

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In this episode, I speak with Nancy Dantas, curator and art historian, and this year's curator of the modern section at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. 

Dantas shares how her archival research led her to view curating as an act of "active listening," framed by Miriam Makeba’s song "West Wind." She delves into how African modernism challenges Eurocentric categories—drawing inspiration from the 1966 Dakar exhibition "Tendencies and Confrontations"—and emphasizes the importance of understanding modernism through African intellectual and aesthetic frameworks like Sankofa philosophy.

This conversation is a reminder that many histories are available to us, just waiting to be discovered. 

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On this episode, I’m joined by Touria El Glaoui as we discuss 1-54, the Contemporary African Art Fair she founded in 2013. 

More than a decade later, Touria explains that she founded the fair in 2013 after seeing exceptional artists across Africa with little presence in Europe or the U.S., and after witnessing the structural hurdles her artist father faced getting institutional support abroad. 

She argues the field has moved beyond needing to justify visibility—citing broad audiences and collectors—but now must prioritize permanence: institutional acquisitions, scholarship, archiving, education, curatorial and writing infrastructure, and estate protection so artists enter the canon. 

This conversation reminds us that visibility doesn’t equal permanence. 

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On this episode, I’m joined by Zizipho Poswa as we discuss the themes, use of materials, and tenets that guide her work and practice as a visual artist and ceramist. 

Zizipho discusses her first New York solo exhibition at Southern Guild, titled The Seed, which is called Imbewu in Xhosa, her native language. The show traces the last decade of her career and showcases five distinct bodies of work that reflect on where she’s been as an artist, her continuity and growth, and what lies ahead. 

She shares her insights into the critical role women have played in her life, from her own family to the women in her community. Spanning several key components of women's lives, from traditional wedding ceremonies to hairstyles and the concept of mothers carrying children, Zizipho links her womanhood to her training in textiles, and later in clay. In her practice, she draws connections between ritual ceremonies and adornments to create monumental ceramic and bronze works. 

This conversation is a tender and thoughtful reflection on the relationships between mothers and daughters, women working and living in community, and the nurturing environments that help creativity develop. 

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On this episode I’m joined by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka as we discuss her latest work on view in the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale.  

Alexa is a Japanese-Canadian artist who brings together historical and sustainable craft technologies of her heritage, including hand-papermaking, natural dye, linocut, gyotaku (printing real fish), and washi (Japanese paper). 

Her work, taking the form of sewn paper sculpture, large-scale print installation, collaborative performances and wearable washi, addresses contemporary questions of climate change and mental health, informed by a decade of community-engaged projects in Nunavut (high arctic) and lived experience with bipolar. 

Our conversation is thoughtful, intimate, and expansive, centering on how art can create spaces for vulnerability, collective healing, and deeper ways of knowing. 

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On this episode I’m joined by Anina Major. We discuss the themes of identity, migration, and memory present in her work. Discussing her latest works and the context of her practice, we explore the ongoing negotiation between self and place. Drawing from her upbringing in the Bahamas and her life in the United States, Major reflects on craft as a language of memory, the influence of familial knowledge, and the ways displacement can transform both identity and artistic expression. 

Her latest exhibition, Tender Seedlings on view at Larkin Durey, is her first in London and explores how identity is formed through movement and transformation. Using the traditional weaving technique, plaiting, taught to her by her late grandmother, Major translates a fragile, portable craft into ceramic form, allowing inherited knowledge to migrate across materials, geographies and time. 

Anina Major (she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia, and identity.

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Darold Brown — known to the world as Ferg — grew up watching his father build a business, a brand, and a community from the basements of Harlem.

In this episode, musician, and all around artist, Ferg reflects on his upbringing in Harlem, the deep influence of his late father’s entrepreneurial spirit, and the world-building ambition that now drives everything he does. From learning to paint on T-shirts in his father’s silk-screen operation to navigating the leap from fashion dreams to rap stardom, Ferg traces the through-line of community, creativity, and culture that has always defined him.

But this isn’t just a conversation about music.

Instead, Ferg draws connections between Harlem’s competitive spirit and his own creative drive, between the pre-internet era of being outside and the community-centered art practice he is building today — one rooted in the belief that art is, above all, a tool for bringing people together.

In this episode Ferg shares:

• His upbringing as an only child in Harlem and the neighborhood’s deeply competitive, flamboyant culture
• His father’s legacy — from silk-screening T-shirts in basements to running Ferg Apparel on 145th Street — and the lessons he carries from working alongside him
• Attending Art and Design High School and the community of creatives it introduced him to
• The unexpected leap from aspiring fashion designer to rapper, and learning to trust the flow without having all the answers
• His current world-building vision — curating spaces, taste, and community the way the great creative directors and brand architects do
• Artists he’s studying right now, including Ernie Barnes, Kara Walker, Francis Bacon, and Basquiat
• And why, after years of global travel, he’s planting himself in New York this summer — because home is where it’s at

At its core, this conversation is about legacy — what we inherit, what we build, and how the communities that shape us never really leave us, no matter how far we go.

Connect with Folasade aka 'Sade' Ologundudu:  

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Manyaku Mashilo began as a drawer—using pencil to mimic texture, memory, and feeling—long before painting became her primary language.

In this episode, visual artist Manyaku Mashilo reflects on her evolution from fashion design into a multidisciplinary practice rooted in painting, mark-making, and storytelling. Her work moves through texture, memory, and color—building intimate, emotional worlds that center Black womanhood, spirituality, and ancestral lineage.

 But this isn’t just a conversation about artistic process.

Instead, Manyaku traces the deeper currents beneath her work: memory as a tool for survival, art as a spiritual practice, and the lifelong search for belonging—both within herself and in the communities she builds through her work.

In this episode Manyaku shares:

• Her beginnings in fashion design and how drawing became the foundation of her practice
• The importance of texture as memory, emotion, and cultural marker
• Her work as a tattoo artist and how mark-making extends onto the body
• The influence of her grandmothers—one a farmer, the other a spiritual healer—on her practice
• Art as a form of ancestral remembrance and spiritual grounding
• Navigating identity, suppression, and belonging growing up between rural and urban South Africa
• Building new forms of community through art, including queer Black creative networks

At its core, this conversation is about returning—returning to memory, to lineage, to the textures that hold us. Through Manyaku’s reflections, we see how art becomes more than image-making; it becomes a site of healing, a language for the unsaid, and a way to rebuild belonging in a world that often asks us to forget.

If you liked the episode, subscribe to our Substack for more highlights and insights about this episode and Mayaku’s practice. 

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Demetrius Wilson describes painting as a living exchange—where the canvas responds, shifts, and ultimately becomes something greater than he first imagined.

 In this episode, abstract painter Demetrius Wilson reflects on his second solo exhibition at Half Gallery and the evolution of a practice rooted in intuition, movement, and material dialogue. Working at the intersection of environment, memory, and abstraction, Wilson explores how color, scale, and gesture can evoke both personal and collective experience.

But this conversation goes beyond painting.

Here, Demetrius considers what it means to create in a rapidly changing world—tracing how a 1990s upbringing, spiritual inquiry, and a desire to expand visual language all shape his approach to art-making and meaning.

In this episode Demetrius shares:

• His recent exhibition Light in a Dark Mirror and why it represents his strongest body of work to date
• The idea of painting as a “symbiotic” process—where the work responds and evolves in real time
• Growing up on the East Coast in the 1990s and how that era shapes his perspective and process
• His approach to color—using heat, temperature, and contrast to evoke emotional intensity
• His relationship to spirituality and how religious ideas subtly surface in his recent work
• Key artistic influences including Ed Clark, Jack Whitten, Mark Bradford, Cecily Brown, Francis Bacon, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 
• How scale shifts perception, from expansive canvases to intimate works on paper

At its core, this conversation is about movement—between control and release, past and present, clarity and ambiguity. Through Demetrius Wilson’s reflections, painting emerges as both a physical act and a philosophical inquiry: a space where memory, environment, and emotion collide, and where abstraction becomes a language for navigating a world that is constantly in flux.

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Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr began creating art from discarded chewing gum wrappers when he was 10 years old. 

In this episode, award‑winning animator and visual‑effects artist Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr discusses his latest exhibition, his most ambitious project to date, the groundbreaking show - Futbol is Life: Animated Sportraits on view at the LACMA through mid July 2026. Iconic moments from both women’s and men’s soccer are staged as both spectacle and social record, pairing the “beautiful game” with the political and cultural forces it reflects. 

But this isn’t just a conversation about his show at LACMA. 

Instead, Lyndon draws parallels between sports and politics, art and life, creative expression and mentorship, and the ways in which history, while sometimes hidden from view, is always present - if one knows where to look. 

In this episode Lyndon shares: 

• His origins growing up in New Orleans 
• How he began using discarded chewing gum wrappers to make art 
• Studying at the HBCU, Xavier University of Louisiana then at Cal Arts 
• His mentor, John Scott who encouraged him to see his work differently 
• The buried histories and inequities in sports 
• And how history can be found if one knows where to look 

At its core, this conversation considers the relationships and histories that are waiting to be unearthed through visual storytelling and sports as a conduit for cultural conversations. 

If you liked the episode, subscribe to our Substack for more highlights and insights about this episode and Lyndon’s practice. 

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