Interviews by Brainard Carey

Matt Garcia’s artistic practice investigates ecology, its relationship to knowledge systems and how media can connect communities to a reclaiming or re-imagining of lost epistemology. Matthew Garcia is an assistant professor of Art and Design at Dominican University of California located in the San Francisco Bay Area and the founder of the interdisciplinary collective Desert ArtLAB. In 2010, Garcia established Desert ArtLAb to explore how a connection to desert ecology and art can foster a sense of belonging, empowerment, and self-determination. 

Garcia's work has been presented nationally and internationally at: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, France), Museum of Contemporary Native Art - MoCNA (Santa Fe,NM), Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara ,The International Symposium on Electronic Art (2012,2015), Balance-Unbalance Festival (Noose, Australia) and HASTAC (Lima, Peru). Garcia is a 2016 Creative Capital awardee in Emerging Fields. 

Garcia's current project, The Desertification Cookbook, visually re-brands the concept of deserts not as a post-apocalyptic growth of wasteland, but as a culinary and ecological opportunity. The cookbook is a collection of bilingual community driven recipes, statements, strategies and actions for exploring, surviving, and belonging in the desert borderlands. 

The book mentioned in the interview is Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience by Enrique Salmón.

Desert ArtLAB: Ecologies of Resistance, installation view, 2017, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Image courtesy IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

MOBILE ECO-STUDIO, 2013

Dalida María Benfield, Ph.D. (Panamá/US) is an artist, filmmaker, writer, curator, and educator. She is the cofounder and Research and Program Director of the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research (CAD+SR), a non-profit international research center. Her work engages and produces decolonial feminisms, media, networks, and aesthetics, and she is a longtime organizer of autonomous cultural and educational platforms. Her most recent activities include organizing the CAD+SR artist/researcher residencies "Commonplaces and Entanglements (after Edouard Glissant)" in Spoleto, Italy; exhibiting in "Stateless Mind," Sörte Firkant and Lanterna Magica, Copenhagen; and co-editing a special issue of the feminist journal, Frontiers, on "'World-Traveling' and World-Making with Decolonial Feminisms and Women of Color."

She is also the co-founder of the Institute of (im)Possible Subjects, a transnational feminist collective of writers, researchers, and artists who curated a year-long series of public interventions, "Migratory Times," (2016-2017) with exhibitions, workshops, and events in the US, the Phillipines, S. Korea, Denmark, Colombia, and an ongoing online platform. Other recent pedagogical engagements include: Co-Chair and Graduate Faculty of the Visual Arts Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (2013 - present); Visiting Artist at the Institut de Beaux Arts de Besançon, France (2018); Visiting Artist at the Royal Art Academy, Copenhagen (2018); Visiting Scholar at Microsoft Research New England (2017); Visiting Professor at futuremaking.space at Aarhus University, Denmark (2016-2017); and Faculty Associate and Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (2011-2015).

Before pursuing her Ph.D., she was a Professor and Chair of the Department of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997-2004). Her M.F.A. is from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies with Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of California-Berkeley.

The book mentioned in the interview is by Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics.

losarchivosdelcuerpo[bodyfiles], Huret & Spector Gallery, Emerson College, Boston, MA, US, 2015. An archive of video, photography, drawings, and written and printed texts, and a multi-media interactive art installation, online archive, and tumblr (2013 - ongoing) animated by Dalida María Benfield. First commissioned by Arte Nuevo Interactiva, Mérida, Mexico (2013). With works by Joeser Alvarez (Brazil), Lindsay Benedict (USA), Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet (Cuba/Mexico/USA), Maria Magdalena Campos Pons (Cuba / USA), Isaac Carrillo (Mexico), Benvenuto Chavajay (Guatemala), Daniel Brittany Chavez (Mexico / USA), Jane Jin Kaisen (Korea/Denmark), Fabiano Kueva (Ecuador), Pedro Pablo Gomez Moreno (Colombia), María C. Lugones (Argentina / USA), Teresa María Díaz Nerio (Dominican Republic / The Netherlands), Robert Ochshorn (USA / Germany), Naomi Elena Ramirez (USA), tammy ko Robinson (S. Korea), Zvonka Simcic (Slovenia), Guston Sondin-Kung (Denmark), Filippo Spreafico (Germany / Italy), and others.

Jamie Martinez in front of “Neo Kingdom” which was a collaboration with artist Erin Ko and part of Speculative Cultures. A Virtual Reality Exhibition (2019), curated by Tina Sauerlaender, Peggy Schoenegge, and Erandy Vergara. Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons/The New School from February 7th to April 14th, 2019.

Colombian / American artist Jamie Martinez immigrated to Florida at the age of twelve from South America. He attended The Miami International University of Art and Design then moved to New York to continue his fine art education at The Fashion Institute of Technology and The Students Art League in NYC.

Jamie’s work has been featured in multiple outlets like a half hour personal TV interview with NTN24 (Nuestra Tele Noticias, a major Spanish TV channel) for their show Lideres (translation leaders) which was shown in 21 countries with an audience of 41 million people. Other features include Hyperallergic, Good Day New York (TV interview),  Fox news (TV interview), The Observer, Whitewall Magazine, CNN, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Untitled Magazine, Bedford + Bowery, Whitehot Magazine, Decompoz Magazine (print) and many more. Martinez has shown in Berlin, Belgium, Russia, Spain, Canada, Miami, California and numerous galleries in New York City including Petzel Gallery, Galerie Richard, Whitebox NY, The Gabarron Foundation, Flowers Gallery, Elga Wimmer PCC, Foley Gallery, Rush Gallery, Galerie Protégé, Untitled Space and many more. He also participated in a group show curated by Vida Sabbaghi at the Queens Museum which was very well received by the museum and the press.

The book mentioned in the interview is Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano.

(L) Jamie Martinez, I Am One with the Jaguar, 2019, oil and embroidery on cotton, 36 x 36 inches. This is found in the Jaguar Stones books. It’s a battle between two brothers for the power of the Jaguar Kingdom. (R) Jamie Martinez, Brujo, 2019, oil and embroidery on cotton, 30 x 30 inches.

(L) Jamie Martinez, God Landa's Uac Mitun Ahau (God A), 2019, oil and embroidery on painted canvas, 24 x 18 inches. (R) Jamie Martinez, The Water Lord, original Mayan poem to be deciphered, 2019, oil and spray paint and silver leaf with embroidered thread, 18 x 24 inches.

Lavett Ballard is an Artist, Art historian, Curator, and Author. I hold a dual Bachelor’s in Studio Art and Art History with a minor in Museum Studies from Rutgers University, and a MFA in Studio Art from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Ballard’s art has been included in literary, film and theatre productions and museum, galleries, public, private institutions and exhibitions nationwide. Among other accolades she has been named by Black Art In America as one of the Top 10 Female Emerging Artists to Collect, and have been nominated for the inaugural Art for Social change Pew Foundation funded Residency among other distinguished honors. Her work has been included in prominent collections such as the Smithsonian, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, Weeksville Heritage Center, the Nixon Family and the Grant and Tamia Hill private Collections.

Ballard views her art as a re-imagined visual narrative of people of African descent. Her use of imagery reflects social issues affecting primarily Black women’s stories within a historical context. Her current body of work, uses collaged photos adorned with paint oil pastels and metallic foils .These photos are deconstructed, and layered on reclaimed large and small aged wood fences. The use of fences is a symbolic reference to how fences keep people in and out, just as racial and gender identities can do the same socially.

Hey Black Child 72" x46" , 2018

Mother May I panel, diptych

The author reading Reveille at Union University

George David Clark was born in Savannah and raised in Chattanooga and Little Rock. He now lives in Washington, PA with his wife, Elisabeth, and their four young children.

This is a second interview with George, the first one can be found here.

The author of Reveille (winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press), David’s recent poems can be found or are forthcoming in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Believer, Blackbird, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.

After earning an MFA at the University of Virginia and a PhD at Texas Tech University, David held the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Poetry at Colgate University and, later, the Lilly Postdoctoral Fellowship at Valparaiso University.  He’s received additional honors from Southern Poetry Review (the Guy Owen Prize), Narrative Magazine (the 30 Below Prize), and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (a Walter E. Dakin fellowship), among others.

The editor-in-chief of 32 Poems, he previously served in various capacities on the staffs of Meridian, Virginia Quarterly Review, Iron Horse Literary Magazine, and the Best New Poets anthology. Since 2015 David has taught creative writing and literature as an assistant professor at Washington & Jefferson College.

Naz Cuguoğlu is a curator and art writer, based in San Francisco Bay Area and Istanbul. She is the co-founder of “Collective Çukurcuma,” experimenting with collaborative thinking processes through its reading group meetings and international collaborative exhibitions. She currently works as Americas Collection Fellow at KADIST and held various positions at The Wattis Institute, SFMOMA Public Knowledge, Zilberman Gallery, Maumau Art Residency, and Mixer. Her writings have been featured in SFMOMA Open Space, Art Asia Pacific, Hyperallergic, Art South Africa, M-est.org, and elsewhere. She received her BA in Psychology and MA in Social Psychology focusing on cultural studies, and currently enrolled at the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts with a fellowship.

Cuguoğlu has curated exhibitions at fused space (San Francisco, 2019), Playspace (San Francisco, 2019), D21 Kunstraum Leipzig (2018), Red Bull Art Around Istanbul (2018), Zilberman Gallery (Istanbul, 2018), Public Program of 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017), Framer Framed (Amsterdam, 2017), Cultural Transit Foundation (Yekaterinburg, 2017), Space Debris (Istanbul, 2017), COOP Gallery (Nashville, 2016), Mixer (Istanbul, 2016), and 5533 (Istanbul, 2015). She co-edited two books: After Alexandria, the Flood and Between Places, and presented at institutions such as Joan Mitchell Foundation, SALT, Norköpping Art Museum, Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans) and Curb Event Center (Nashville).

The Book mentioned in the interview is titles Staying With The Trouble by Donna J. Haraway.

Istanbul Queer Art Collective’s performance Psychic Bibliophiles, from Flow Out exhibition curated by Collective Çukurcuma at Bilsart (Istanbul, 2019)

Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group meeting as part of House of Wisdom exhibition, presented at the public program of the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2015)

Rafael Pérez Evans is a Spanish – Welsh artist and lecturer living between London and Spain. Prior to returning to study an MFA at Goldsmiths College in London, he spent various years living and working in Mexico and Brazil, where he setup Alto Residency in the jungle of Alto Paraiso (Brazil).

Pérez Evans installations can function as tools for exploring questions around knowledge systems, ethnographies and ideas around progress. Being the son of a farmer and growing up in the Spanish countryside he has, since an early stage been engaging with various aspects of a Southern condition that tries to resist modernity. Through an inventive use of readymades, live materials and audience participation, the artist plays with the language of magic to conjure, redigest and expel stories back into news circulation, where the anecdotal found in local news is seen as a form of historical appeasement. Historical chains of production and consumption are often exposed in his works, often occupying a territory where poetic materic disorientations can bifurcate and reflect back ideas around the rural, the leftovers of coloniality and the forces of alterity.

He received a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College. His work has been exhibited internationally with recent solo-exhibitions at Nogueras Blanchard (Barcelona), Queens Collective (Marrakesh) & Abierto Theredoom Gallery (Madrid), two person exhibitions at Despina (Rio de Janeiro) and Yusto Giner Gallery (Spain), group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (Taiwan), South London Gallery (UK), Leeds Art Gallery (UK), C3A (Spain), Museum of Modern Art Karlsruhe (Germany) & Matadero (Madrid). He is recipient of New Contemporaries 2019 (UK) and ‘A Secas Program’ from C.A.A.C Museum (Seville), as well as being nominated for the DKV prize 2018 (Barcelona) and the Miquel Casablancas Award (2017 & 2018). He has completed residencies in C3A (Córdoba), Hangar (Barcelona), Matadero (Madrid), Red Studios (São Paulo) & Sassafrass (USA). Rafael also has an interest in expanded pedagogies where formal and informal platforms for knowledge exchange are created and disseminated, he created Alto Residency in the jungle of Alto Paraiso (Brazil), was co-founder of Art Lab Romita 26 (Mexico City) and is part of the Gazua Project (Rio de Janeiro). He has been a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martins (UK), Nottingham Trent University (UK), University of Rochester (UK) and is currently an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion (UK).

Thief, Invigilate. C3A Museum. Spain. 2019 Car, cardboard, oranges. 6 x 3.5 x 1.70 m

Wheels, Pluriyuca. South London Gallery. 2019 Yams(Mandioques/Yucas), mirrors, cardboard, metal trolleys, plastic – cellophane. 146cm x 98cm

Kevin Blythe Sampson, 64, is a sculptor, painter, Muralist that is recognized for tackling difficult issues that concern him and his Newark, N.J., neighbors.

Kevin Blythe Sampson was born in Elizabeth NJ on November the 28th 1954. He is a product of growing up in a household that was totally committed to civil rights and community concerns, and this continues to be a recurring theme in his work. Kevin considers himself to be a “we shall over come Baby.”

Kevin’s father, Stephen Sampson (deceased) was a community leader in both Elizabeth New jersey and in other parts of the state; He is Kevin’s most important role model. Stephen Sampson remained a community leader for over 60 years until his death, in 2005. The City of Elizabeth honored Kevin’s Father by naming the new senior citizen complex the “Stephen Sampson Senior Center.”

Kevin Sampson grew up in house hold where many of the local marches were planned and many national leaders would meet with his father. They included Ruby Dee, William Kunsler, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, Robert Ferris Thompson, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and many more. This had a strong effect on both Kevin’s Art and his life

Kevin became a police officer-Detective for the city of Scotch Plains New Jersey where he served for over 20 years. He is the first African American Uniformed Composite sketch Artist in The country.  He received numerous commendations for his work as both a police composite artist and a detective including the 200 clubs medal of valor, (for saving a life).

He took an early retirement after the death of both his wife and an infant son, in separate illnesses.

Kevin and his two young children who had lived in Englishtown NJ for seven years now moved to the (ironbound section) of Newark New Jersey were he has lived for over 25 years.

Kevin was offered a teaching position at the Newark school of fine and industrial art where he taught (Airbrushing Tech’s and 3 dimensional Design) for over 16 years until the schools closing in 1995. Kevin also attended Lincoln University Pa, for two years, Parson School of Design (two years) and is a graduate of the Newark School of fine and industrial art. Kevin has continued teaching at various art schools and community programs, including currently running workshops at Express Newark, Rutgers Paul Robeson Gallery.

Kevin has been a gallery artist with Cavin-Morris gallery N.Y, N.Y since 1992

He is a mentor to many of Newark youths and has assistant a whole crop of young artist in obtaining admissions into the various art schools in the metro area. Kevin was successfully walked over ten young people into and through various Art schools in New York.

His work is in numerous collections including several museums. He is a past artist in residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine and maintains a close friendship with his Mentor (the Retired Dean of the Cathedral) the Very reverend James parks Morton.

Kevin has received the Maria Walsh Sharp foundations residency and the Joan Mitchell artist grant, as well as awards from various art councils throughout the state. He has also received a 2017 residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in Nola, and a residency at the John Michael Kohler Foundations Arts and Industry Program. And the inaugural residency at the Mystic Seaport Museum 2018.

Over the course of the past three few years Kevin and his “Crew” have completed over  five murals with the City of Newark’s, ”City Mural Program”. Including the Mural for this year Outsider Art Fair 2018, NY, NY.

Kevin was recently selected as “100 People in Newark, by the 100 People foundation.

Kevin recently did the voice over for an upcoming appearance on the PBS children’s Cartoon “Arthur”. He was turned into a cartoon and will play himself in the segment.

Jeremiah Ariaz

Jeremiah Ariaz artworks explore the West as both a physical space and a terrain for the imagination. For his most recently completed project, Louisiana Trail Riders he was the recipient of a 2018 ATLAS grant, the Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Southern Arts Finalist Prize from South Arts, as well as being named the Louisiana State Fellow. The photographs have been exhibited nationally and a monograph of the work was released last fall by UL Press (2018).

His forthcoming project TUCUMCARI is a decade-long work focused on the New Mexico town while providing a window to the country at the time of a changing workforce and increasing economic inequality. The photographs create a portrait of a distinctly American place caught between a vanishing past and an uncertain future. Ariaz is a Professor at Louisiana State University.

Homer Joseph Decuir Jr. (center) of Bad Weather Stables

Louisiana Trail Riders K-State, Museum installation

Louisiana Trail Riders, Jeremiah Ariaz, UL Press, 2018.

Rosa Lleó (Barcelona, ​​1980) is a curator and director, since April 2014, of the small-scale organization The Green Parrot in Barcelona, Spain. Since its opening, it has established itself as a reference space in the city with a collection of exhibitions, publications and activities with local and international artists such as Oriol Vilanova, Shana Moulton, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Basim Magdy, Lúa Coderch, Teresa Solar, among others. She is currently a resident curator at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies where she prepares an individual exhibition of the Brazilian artist Ana Vaz. He has also collaborated with institutions such as MACBA and during 2013 he was part of the Curatorlab research program (Konstfack University, Stockholm). He has also curated exhibitions and projects at ARCO Madrid (2018), Fundaçao Iberé Camargo, Porto Alegre (2018), Art-o-Rama Marseille (2016), Can Felipa - Museu de l'Empordà (2014) Sant Andreu Contemporani (2011). Formerly appointed as editor at Actar and as editorial assistant at Afterall magazine (London). He writes occasionally for newspaper supplements and other magazines, in addition to teaching at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.

Finissage of the project “An Oceanic Feeling”, with OPAVIVARÁ! and other participants. Running at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and at the Community Center of Barceloneta, in Barcelona.

Exhibition view of “Wild Things” with June Crespo, Patrick Hough and Ana Franceschini. The Green Parrot, Barcelona.