Born in Tokyo and raised in Los Angeles, Ichiro Irie is a visual artist, curator, director of the artist-run-space JAUS in Los Angeles, and founding member of the curatorial collective QiPO. Irie received his B.A. from University of California, Santa Barbara and his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University. After completing his MFA, Irie went to Mexico City on a Fulbright fellowship, and between the years 2002 and 2007 he founded and edited the contemporary art publication RiM magazine.

As an artist, Irie has exhibited his work in galleries and museums internationally. Solo shows include DENK gallery, Los Angeles; Yautepec Gallery, Mexico City; and eitoeiko gallery, Tokyo; and Sam Francis gallery Santa Monica. Group exhibitions include The German Way of Life at Haus am Dom, Frankfurt am Main, Germany;,To Travel With Glasses at Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori, Japan; the Pacific Standard Time exhibition, Transpacific Borderlands at Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles; Revision Glocal Review at CECUT, Tijuana, Chockablock at UAM, Long Beach; and The Crystal Jungle at Museo del Chopo, Mexico City. As of February 2019, Irie, with fellow QiPO member Laura Reséndiz has been organizing QiPO Fair, an international art fair in Mexico City focused on artist-run initiatives. His work and curatorial activies have been published in LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, Artillery, and Los Angeles Times among others. Irie currently teaches at Oxnard College and Ryman Arts.

"Impermanence 2" 2017 , Permanent marker and white acrylic on canvas, 80 x 48 inches

"Modernman" 2017, Broken sunglass lenses on mannequin, Dimensions variable

Jennifer Martin (b. 1990) is a London-based fine artist working with moving image, photography, installation and text. Her work operates in part as interventions and articulations of social-racial dynamics and lived experiences.

A driving question of Martin's recent work involves the role of art and media in the social and psychological construction of race and citizenship and its intersection with agency, nostalgia, and identification. In working with performers for moving image she employs a methodology of improvisation, and negotiation of narrative in unpacking character, language and context.

Martin is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2018) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (2013). She was awarded the Stuart Croft Foundation Education Award 2018, is artist-in-residence at Kingsgate Workshops 2019/20, and part of the FLAMIN Fellowship 2019.

Teeth by Jennifer Martin, produced by b.Dewitt in collaboration with Primary, 2019, Photo by Reece Straw

Channel 6 by Jennifer Martin, Turf Projects, 2019, Photo by Tim Bowditch

“After Illusion”, Eiman Elgibreen ©farrenkopf

“After Illusion” Saudi Arabia Pavilion, Eiman Elgibreen, Curator, Zahrah Al Ghamdi, Artist

The pavilion curator Eiman Elgibreen, the assistant professor at the Princess Nourah University in Riyadh, says: “[Al Ghamdi] starts from a medium that recalls abandoned spaces from her childhood, and reshapes it to give it a new life by making it part of her present space, and thus her future memory… The other reason for choosing Al Ghamdi is her brilliant ability to turn traditional crafts into contemporary art without compromising on any aspect.”

Zahrah Al Ghamdi, artist. ©farrenkopf

“May You Live in Interesting Times”, the title of the 58th Venice Biennale brought for the first time in its 124 year history an exhibition representing 53% women solo artists. Of that historic change, the Saudi Arabia Pavilion returned to the Venice Biennale after an eight year hiatus with artist Zahrah Al Ghamdi and curator Eiman Elgibreen “After Illusion”. The country was last represented at the 2011 Biennale.

Zahrah Al Ghamdi represented her new work in the Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the Venice Biennale 2019. She is known for her site-specific installations that are assembled using natural materials such as sand, rocks and leather. For the exhibition “After Illusion”, Al Ghamdi demonstrates the intimate tactile encounter she undergoes in the process of making the work that exhibits her master craftsmanship. The land artist starts from local leather, a medium that recalls abandoned spaces from her childhood and reshapes it in 52,000 pieces. The exhibition aims to recognize, reconnect, and revisit a feeling where one tries to explore something new but rather familiar; a step into an imaginary world created by the artist to seek comfort in her journey towards self-realization.

"After Illusion” is curated by Eiman Elgibreen, to reflect on the history of Saudi Arabia and its identity. The team is guided by Project Advisor, Nada Shabout. The title “After Illusion” is inspired by a line from an ancient Arabic poem written by Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (b.520 – d.609), in which he described his struggle to recognize what was “home” after being away for twenty years. Only ‘illusion’ helped the eighty-year-old poet recognize it – a state of mind that we fight during our search for the ‘truth’ but somehow it paves a path to it. Old Arabic poetry is cherished by many Saudis as an important substitute source of ‘truth’, inspiration and a resort for those who seek assurance.

Eiman Elgibreen states: “Saudis have long been living in interesting times. Their complicated sociocultural history has forced them, and others, to be seen as interesting. There is a sense of lost cultural and historical agency due to the hegemony of global discourse. Their significance has been encapsulated within two narrow historical moments: the emergence of Islam and the discovery of oil, leaving them confused on how to perceive their history outside of those moments, particularly with the absence of visual evidence.”

“After Illusion” is an exhibition that offers an attempt to meditate on the value of ‘uncertainty’ in opening new doors to self-awareness and transformation.”

Saudi Arabia Pavilion, “After Illusion”.    ©farrenkopf

Kali Spitzer is Kaska Dena from Daylu (Lower Post, British Columbia) on her father's side and Jewish from Transylvania, Romania on her mother's side. She is from the Yukon and grew up on the West Coast of British Columbia in Canada on unceded Coast Salish Territory. She is a trans disciplinary artist who mainly works with film - 35mm, 120 and wet plate collodion process using an 8x10 camera. Her work includes portraits, figure studies, and photographs of her people, ceremonies, and culture. Her work has been exhibited and recognized internationally. Spitzer recently received a Reveal Indigenous Art Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation in Canada and was featured in the National Geographic and Photo Life magazine in 2018.

At the age of 20, Kali moved back north to spend time with her Elders, and to learn how to hunt, fish, trap, tan moose and caribou hides and bead. Kali documents these practices with a sense of urgency, highlighting their vital cultural significance. She focuses upon cultural revitalization through her art whether in the medium of photography, ceramics, tanning hides or hunting. She views all of these practices as art and as part of an exploration of self.

I want to extend my gratitude to all of the people who have trusted me to photograph them in such intimate ways.

Mussi Cho

"Indigenous Femme Queer Photographer Kali Spitzer ignites the spirit of our current unbound human experience with all the complex histories we exist in, passed down through the trauma inflicted/received by our ancestors. Kali's photographs are intimate and unapologetic and make room for growth and forgiveness while creating a space where we may share the vulnerable and broken parts of our stories which are often overlooked, or not easy to digest for ourselves or society."

-Ginger Dunnill, Creator and Producer of Broken Boxes Podcast (which features interviews with indigenous and other engaged artists).

Audrey Siegl, 2019, Vancouver, British Columbia, canada,C-print from scanned Tintype

Holland Andrews, 2018, Banff, Alberta canada, C-print from scanned Tintype

Jonathan Kalb is Professor of Theater at Hunter College, CUNY and the Resident Dramaturg at Theater for a New Audience. The author of five books on theater, he has worked for more than three decades as a theater scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He curates and hosts the theater-review-panel series TheaterMatters at HERE Arts Center and has twice won the country’s most prestigious prize for a drama critic, The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theater book from the Theatre Library Association. He was the founding editor of HotReview.org (The Hunter On-Line Theater Review), which published hundreds of reviews, essays and interviews by new and established theater writers from 2003-2016. He currently writes about theater on his TheaterMatters blog.

His books include Beckett in Performance, The Theater of Heiner Müller and Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater, as well as two criticism collections, Free Admissions: Collected Theater Writings and Play by Play: Theater Essays & Reviews, 1993-2002. Kalb has been a theater critic for The Village Voice, New York Press, and The New York Times, and his writing has appeared in many other publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, Salon.com, Salmagundi, The Threepenny Review, Modern Drama and Theater Heute.

Jules Rosskam is an award-winning filmmaker, educator and interdisciplinary artist interested in liminal spaces: the space between male and female, between documentary and fiction, between moving image and still. His interdisciplinary practice works to induce a perceptual shift in our understanding of how and what bodies mean in the context of documentary film, toward an apprehension of multiplicities. He is the director of transparent (2005), against a trans narrative (2009), Thick Relations (2012), Something to Cry About (2018), Paternal Rites (2018) and Dance, Dance, Evolution (2019).

Recent screenings include the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Anthology Film Archives, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, and the Queens Museum of Art. Recent residencies include Yaddo, Marble House Project, PLAYA, ACRE, and ISSUE Project Room. Rosskam holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Film, Video, New Media, 2008). He is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Paternal Rites Trailer, NEW from Jules Rosskam on Vimeo.

Dance Dance Evolution Teaser from Jules Rosskam on Vimeo.

Amitis Motevalli is an artist who explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict and/or war.

This is her second interview, the first one can be found here.

Her experience as a trans-national migrant, is foundational in her work. Through many mediums including, sculpture, video, performance and collaborative public art, her work juxtaposes iconography with iconoclasm. Her work intends to ask questions about violence and historical documentation and canonization, while invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, exhibiting art internationally as well as organizing to create an active and critical cultural discourse through information exchange, either in art, pedagogy or organizing artist and educators.

Masoul Performance

Ruquyya's Reverberation Performance Zanjir Back

Peggie “Batia” Lowenberg is a painter, public artist, and community arts educator. Born in New York City, Batia relocated to South Florida in 2015 after living and working in Tel Aviv, Israel for over 18 years. Lowenberg studied at Cornell University, SUNY at Purchase College (B.A.) and the School of Visual Arts, among others. She has exhibited her artwork and designed public art installations here and abroad. She has been invited to serve as an art juror for several arts panels.

Ms. Lowenberg was the 2016 recipient of the Dina Baker Fund, Cultural Council of Palm Beach County ($10,000 Grant). She was also a finalist for the Heritage Public Art Project for the City of Delray Beach in 2016. She was selected for both the 2017 and 2018 SIP Public Art Installations by the City of West Palm Beach. For their 2018 project, she incorporated paintings by clients and students of the Palm Beach Habilitation Center which was featured in the Boca/Delray Newspaper (July 2018). In 2019, Lowenberg has participated in the inaugural Off the Wall Live Murals through the Arts Council of Martin County. As a teaching artist, she has also completed a large variety of art projects with the young members of the Boys & Girls Club of Broward County.

She is currently working with Broward County’s Office of Public Communications, Broward Cultural Division, and the Broadview Park community to create two Li’l Libraries to be installed at Sunview Park in the near future.

Ms. Lowenberg’s solo art exhibitions include the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, Daggerwing Nature Center Art Gallery, Boca Raton, and Art Trax Gallery at F.A.T. Village in Fort Lauderdale. Lowenberg has been an Affiliate Artist-in-Residence and has participated in live art events at the Arts Warehouse in Delray Beach at their monthly ArtWalks. She was one of four artists selected to compete in their 1st Annual Art Throwdown.

She is planning to design more living art events that she calls “ClimbingTogether” with various local populations and has been meeting with local community organizations and grant-giving institutions in order to further this vision.

She is currently shortlisted for two large-scale paintings, 8’ x 12’, for Boynton Beach’s new Town Square City Hall/Library Project through their Art in Public Places Department.

Batia’s next solo exhibition/art installation is scheduled for January 2020 at the Daggerwing Art Gallery.

Her artwork is in public and private collections in the US, Israel, Europe, and Asia. Several of her projects and painting series can be seen on her website and Instagram. She is also available for private commissions.

"Breaking Dawn" from the "ClimbingTogether" Series. 8" x 10". Acrylic with Ink on Cradled Birchwood. 2019

"Demured" from the "ClimbingTogether" Series. 8" x 10". Acrylic with Ink on Cradled Birchwood. 2019

Simone Kearney was born in Dublin, Ireland, and grew up there until moving to the United States as a teenager. Moving countries foregrounded the spaces in-between, acts of navigation. The friction of what might not quite align promulgates kinds of foam.

I live in New York City, make work in my studio and in my bed, walk, teach, collaborate, act in my friend’s plays sometimes, make visual translations or write poems in response to their work. I’m currently reading Etel Adnan, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector, and thinking about the relationship between enigmas and volume. Can an enigma sag?

Song of Amergin, Installation at the Hambidge Center for the Arts, Rabun Gap, GA, Acrylic, dye, muslin, rope, wood, cinder blocks, 2019

Song of Amergin, Installation at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, Acrylic, dye, muslin, rope, wood, 2019

 

Shawn Theodore at Steven Kasher Gallery, NYC. Collages belong to the artist.

Shawn Theodore's (b. 1970) artistic practice merges real and hypothesized mythological black experiences set within contemporary, yet fading, black environments. While the intent of his work is to shift stereotypical frameworks and false representations of African Americans and African Diasporan individuals, his overarching goal is to center black individuals and their communities as trans-historical, transnational, and metaphysical entities mobilizing against erasure in all forms.

Set to the visual texture of black life, his work demonstrates physical and spiritual resistance to systematic oppression and provides a necessary metaphorical connection to African legacies and traditions in visual narrative form. The act of creating images and agency within predominantly black neighborhoods is meant to awaken the dormant identifiers attached to black places, culture, and attitude to illuminate how African Americans continuously express a cultural connection to the African Diaspora while fulfilling the need for African American myths as altered histories and shared memories.

In this regard this view of blackness resonates with a self-assured authority -- with or without the black figure present -- negating displacement, gentrification, and socio-economic disparity; the weight of assembled woes that dull the vibrancy of African American life, and demands a sustained attentiveness to the measurable agency brimming in the everyday African American neighborhood. These depictions weave together the ‘nigritudo in motu’; corporeal elements composed of the essential spirit, rich cultures, histories, and possible mythologies driving ‘black life’.

Shawn Theodore attended Tyler School of Art and received his BA in Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising from Temple University. He is currently enrolled at Savannah College of Art and Design for his MFA in Photography. He is currently based in Philadelphia and is a professor at the University of the Arts. Theodore travels often for photography assignments, research, lectures, exhibitions, and similar intellectual endeavors.

Not So Satisfactual, 2017, 40 x 60 or 60 x 90

A Portrait of Oluchi Oneya Unadorned No.1, 2018 40 x 60