On this episode I’m joined by Hoor Al Qasimi during the opening week of the Sharjah Biennial 16.

Al Qasimi is the President and Director Sharjah Art Foundation, an organization she founded in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts around the world. She has been the Director of Sharjah Biennial since 2002, an internationally recognized platform for contemporary artists, curators and cultural producers, and curated Thinking Historically in the Present, the Sharjah Biennial 15 in 2023, originally conceived by the late Nigerian curator, Okwui Enwezor. 

After establishing the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) in 2009, she developed programming that included exhibitions, artist residencies, and educational initiatives, aimed at fostering a cross-cultural dialogue and exchange within the UAE and globally. Recently, Al Qasimi was named the artistic director for both the 2026 Biennale of Sydney and the 2025 Aichi Triennale in Japan—the latter appointment marking her as the first non-Japanese curator to hold the position.

In this episode, the director reflects on the meaningful aspects of this year's edition of the Sharjah Biennial, the collaboration among the five curators, and the importance of showcasing art in small local communities. 

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On this episode, I’m joined by Julien Creuzet, the Afro-descendant French Caribbean artist who has his first institutional solo exhibition on view now through June 1, 2025 at The Bell at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. 

In the episode Creuzet shares his artistic journey and passion for making exhibitions where he can have a discussion through art. His work spans various mediums including sculpture, poetry, video, music, and more. Here, he’s reimagined his French Pavillion from the 60th Venice Biennale for The Bell, focusing on water as a site of both historical and contemporary traumas and emancipatory futures. Creuzet’s artistic practice has long referenced legacies of colonialism, and his challenge to the architecture and history of the French Pavilion extends to Brown University's campus and Providence’s centrality within the Black Atlantic. He delves into the autonomy in his creative process and how identity influences his work's adaptability across different cultural and political contexts. The exhibition reflects on the colonial history of Martinique, connections between different regions, and the fluidity of human identity. 

Brown is situated near the Providence River, one of the many Rhode Island ports through which the largest number of enslaved Africans entered the Thirteen Colonies prior to 1774. Triangulated with Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th century, the shipping industry of Rhode Island evolved to be deeply enmeshed with the U.S. cotton industry as the region became a center of textile production in the 19th century. Creuzet is fascinated by the watery connection between Venice, the Caribbean island of Martinique where his family has lived for generations, and Providence, conceptualizing the migration of the pavilion across a Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean dense with histories that have long informed his work. The presentation at Brown is of a different viscosity, an adaptation to Providence waterways and colonial thematics that are present on campus and loom large across the region. 

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 On this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Joy Simmons. 

Dr. Joy Simmons  is a radiologist, art collector, and philanthropist. In this episode, she discusses her multifaceted engagement with the arts. Beyond simply acquiring works, Dr. Simmons supports an entire arts ecosystem from artists to small non profits to galleries and museums through her work, her stewardship, and her commitment.

She emphasizes the importance of visibility and community support for Black artists, writers, and curators. Dr. Simmons shares how her collection has grown over the years, and the unique installations in her home, highlighting the personal and cultural significance behind each piece. In the episode, she also reflects on the evolving art scene, the importance of preserving Black culture through art, and the impact of the recent wildfires in L.A. and the sociopolitical changes on the art community. 

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 On this episode, I'm joined by Shinique Smith.  

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, and now Los Angeles based,  Shinique Smith is best known for her visual poetry,  monumental fabric sculptures, and paintings of calligraphy and collage that engage abstraction. Her work gained critical acclaim and widespread attention through her participation in important group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 30 Americans organized by the Rubell Family Collection and Unmonumental at the New Museum. 

Last fall, Smith unveiled a new monumental aluminum sculpture for Miami Arts in Public Spaces at the Port of Miami. She currently has work on view in several shows across the US, including By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection, curated by Naomi Beckwith, Poetics of Dimensions at the ICASF, curated by guest curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, and earlier this month, Smith opened up a two person show celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Nigerian Rele Gallery, Social Fabrics, Magic and Memory, features Smith's work in conversation with Lagos-based artist, Marcelina Acpojotor. 

Over the last twenty years, Smith has gleaned visual poetry from clothing and explored concepts of ritual using breath, bunding and calligraphy as tools toward abstraction. Her layered works range from palm-sized bundled microcosms to monolithic bales to massive chaotic paintings that contain vibrant and carefully collected mementos from her life. Smith’s practice operates at the convergence of consumption and spiritual sanctuary, balancing forces and revealing connections across space and time, race, gender and place to suggest the possibility of new worlds. 

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On this episode I’m joined by Taylor Renee Aldridge. 

Taylor Renee Aldridge is a writer and curator based in Detroit, Michigan. In 2014, with writer Jessica Lynne, she co-founded ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. In Fall 2024, she assumed the role of Executive Director at the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation. 

In the episode we discuss her return to her native Detroit, the importance of ancestral practice, why there’s a lack of art criticism today, and what she’s excited about for the future. 

Taylor has edited and contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs, including Enunciated Life (CAAM, 2021) and Mario Moore | Enshrined: Presence + Preservation (Charles H. Wright Museum, 2021).  Her writing has appeared in Artforum, The Art Newspaper, Art21, ARTNews, CanadianArt, Contemporary&, Detroit Metro Times and SFMOMA’s Open Space. She has organized exhibitions with the California African American Museum (CAAM), Detroit Institute of Arts, and Cranbrook Art Museum, including the critically acclaimed Simone Leigh (2024, CAAM & LACMA). Taylor is the recipient of the 2016 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short Form Writing and the 2019 Rabkin Foundation Award for Art Journalism. She holds an MLA from Harvard University with a concentration in Museum Studies and a BA from Howard University with a concentration in Art History.

 Image Credit:  Bella Lopez
Contributing Audio Credit: Alan Mckinney  

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On this episode I’m joined by Ekow Eshun. Ekow Eshun is a writer, editor and curator, known for his work in arts, culture, and identity. In the episode we discuss his latest exhibition, The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, on view through February 9 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The show brings together over 60 contemporary works that unfold around three core themes: Double Consciousness, Past and Presence and Aliveness. As the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, he played a significant role in shaping the institution's programming. 

Image Credit:  Zeinab Batchelor 
Contributing Audio Credit: Alan Mckinney 

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We're back with another season of Everything is Connected in 2025! 

Before we get started with a new season I just want to take a moment and say thank you to all of the listeners from all over the world. We had more listener-ship in 2024 across the globe than ever before. So thank you all. It's really such a joy and such a pleasure to be in company with you on this journey.

Being in conversation with artists and curators, visual creatives, and cultural leaders. People who are actively thinking about our world, investigating our society, and doing that through the visual landscape, through curatorial projects, and through thinking about creative solutions to some of the world's problems.

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On this episode, I'm joined by Otobong Nkanga as we discuss her latest commission, Cadence, on view at the MoMA now through summer 2025. I first discovered her work when I wrote about her earlier this year for the summer issue of Sculpture Magazine.

Otobong Nkanga, a multidisciplinary visual artist born in Nigeria and based in Antwerp, Belgium, explores themes of memory, identity, and the complex relationships between people and their environment. Nkanga’s art is deeply rooted in storytelling, using materials like minerals, textiles, and organic substances to narrate humanity's interaction with land and resources.

 Nkanga's work has garnered international acclaim, including numerous exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as Tate Modern, Castello di Rivoli, and the Venice Biennale. In 2019, she received the Sharjah Biennial Prize and the prestigious Ultima Prize for Visual Arts in Belgium. Her ongoing project Carved to Flow, which merges art, community, and sustainability, exemplifies her commitment to creating dialogues around ethical consumption and interconnectedness. Nkanga's innovative work continues to influence contemporary art, prompting critical reflections on the ties between ecology, culture, and the global economy.

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On this episode I'm joined by Jammie Holmes as we discuss his work and practice; the journey that led him into art and the focus of his practice today. 

His exhibition, Morning Thoughts, at Marianne Boesky Gallery is on view when we sit down to talk about his origin story and some of the ideas he’s investigating in his latest body of work.
 
 Incorporating portraiture, symbolism, and written text into his work, Holmes intersperses reflections on social, cultural, and political concerns with deeply felt meditations on notions of family, home, and Blackness. He is a storyteller whose determination to imbue his work with his own subjective, lived experience is itself a subtle, effective political gesture.
 
 His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including: Afro-Atlantic Histories, which traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Dallas Museum of Art, TX. 

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On this episode I'm joined by Kandy G Lopez as we discuss her practice on the eve of the closing of her two person show with Aminah Robinson at ACA gallery in Chelsea. In the exhibition viewers were presented with her mixed media, fiber, and stained glass works. 

Lopez  is an Afro-Caribbean visual artist, eager to be challenged materialistically and metaphorically when representing marginalized individuals that inspire and move her. Her works are created out of the necessity to learn something new about her people and culture. Lopez is interested in developing a nostalgic dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. 

This episode was recorded before the results of the 2024 US Presidential Election. 

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