Other Border Wall Podcast

In our surprise final finalé episode, we bring you the audio recording from the Artist Talk for the Border is a Weapon Exhibition, moderated by Jose Diaz - the former Chief Curator at the Andy Warhol Museum.  It took place February 22, 2022 over zoom to an audience of about 50-60 people.  All artists were present except Daniela Cavazos Madrgial and Tereneh Idia who were not available that evening.  At that point the exhibition The Border is a Weapon, curated by Gil Rocha at 937 Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA had been open almost a month and had been seen by thousands including the opening night that was packed and overflowing with people.

This conversation flowed easily between the artists and Jose Diaz.  It serves now as an important historic document of a show that continues to grow and travel, most recently it was shown at the Laredo Center for the Arts, summer 2022, and will continue to the University of Syracuse later in 2023.

Enjoy! And thank you for being part of our Other Border Wall Podcast series.  It has been a pleasure serving you in such creative and positive ways!

For anyone interested in starting a podcast who has never done anything like this before, please seriously reach out to us.  We believe in the power of art and collaboration and doing things that seem nearly impossible!

Find more at otherborderwallproject.com

In late October 2022 Tereneh, Leah and Jenn sat down for one last time to record our final episode for the Other Border Wall Podcast, now in its Third Season. We reflect, laugh, and remember not only this Podcast but all the work we have made together since 2017 as "Creative Resistance to Borders". So much has happened over these past five years - and we are now moving onto other projects but will always hold space and respect for the amazing people we met and worked with together as a collective. We feel so grateful for the work of building community in these many ways, and for all the support we have received. It has been an incredible journey and we wanted to hold space for it with this episode.

As we sign off we want to encourage our listeners to stay in solidarity with the incredible work that inspired us and will continue to be a beacon for all of us:

Border Angels

https://instagram.com/borderangelsofficial

Brushfire Press

https://instagram.com/brushfirepress

No Border Wall

https://instagram.com/noborderwall_ltx

Thanks so much for being with us during these five years of learning and creative resistance to borders.

Join us in our next interview with the artists from the exhibition THE BORDER IS A WEAPON, curated by Gil Rocha.

Here, Jose Villalobos speaks with Tereneh Idia in an engaging and illuminating conversation about art, politics, tradition and resistance.

José Villalobos grew up on the US/Mexico border in El Paso, TX. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He was awarded the Artist Lab Fellowship Grant for his work De La Misma Piel at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. 

Villalobos is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant Award and Residency and the Tanne Foundation Award. His work has been exhibited in the nationally recognized exhibition Trans America/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; ArtPace, San Antonio, TX; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; NARS Foundation, New York, NY; the Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, TX; El Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and The Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, TX. He has two upcoming group exhibitions, one at the Phoenix Art Museum: Desert Rider, curated by Gilbert Vicario, and Xican-a.o.x. Body at The American Federation of Arts in New York curated by Marisa del Toro, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Gilbert Vicario.

José Villalobos’s work is included in the collection of Mexic-arte Museum, Austin, TX, the City of San Antonio Public Collection, TX, Albright College, Reading, PA, and Soho House International in Austin, TX.

Jose Villalobos is currently represented by Liliana Bloch Gallery.

http://www.josevillalobosart.com/

https://www.instagram.com/josevillalobosart/

https://epma.art/

Recommended article:

Join us for an amazing conversation with Gil Rocha, curator of The Border is a Weapon and long-time friend and collaborator of the Other Border Wall Collective.  Here he speaks candidly with our wonderful season three host, Tereneh Idia.

Gil Rocha is a south Texas artist, educator, and curator born in Laredo. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio (1999), and is certified as an all-level Texas Educator from Texas A&M International University (2002).

For the past 25 years, Rocha’s professional artistic career has led him to engage in a variety of programs taking on roles that span from facilitating workshops for community based projects, participating on panels, and working on public artworks and murals, in  collaboration with galleries and museums on the national and international level. His artwork expands across painting, collage, sculpture, installation, and writing. He focuses on issues about the U.S./Mexico border and takes on a survivalist approach known as “Rasquache.” Rocha’s role as an educator and avid advocate for the arts has positively impacted his students, peers and community.

Rocha’s artwork was recently featured in two online magazines, PASSAGE Visions (Issue 6) and Maake Magazine (Issue 11), and in two collective exhibitions, “Son de Allá, Son de Acá” in Albuquerque, NM and “Desde La Frontera” in San Antonio, TX. He curated the traveling exhibition “The Border is a Weapon”, a project of the Other Border Wall Collective, currently on view at the Laredo Center for the Arts. In 2021, Rocha presented his work at the Sixth Biennial Inter-American Studies Conference “Walls, Bridges, Borders” and the International Sculpture Conference “Identity, Race & Culture: Misconceptions along La Frontera.” His artwork has also been exhibited at the Texas Biennial in Austin (2017) and the Trans-Border Biennial in El Paso Museum of Art and El Museo de Arte in Ciudad Juarez (2018).

Rocha is currently preparing for an upcoming group exhibition in Austin, TX and was invited to curate the 2023 Contemporary Art Month Perennial in San Antonio, TX.

For Season Three, we are featuring the artists of THE BORDER IS A WEAPON exhibition curated by Gil Rocha and presented by Other Border Wall.  The exhibition features five artists from the US/MX border and was curated by Gil Rocha.  First opening in January 2022 at 937 Gallery in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust  the show then traveled to the Laredo Center for the Arts in July 2022. Each interview is conducted by Tereneh Idia. Tereneh is the founder of Idia'Dega, an award-winning journalist, and the co-founder of Other Border Wall Project.

Maritza Bautista is a Tex-Mex/pocha multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker from Laredo, Texas. She received a Master of Arts in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Studio Art from Texas A&M International University (2002). Maritza was awarded the SAIC Masters Fellowship in Art Education (2009), and her essay Unique Voices in Youth Media was published in the book Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons (2012). Her work has been screened at various festivals including the iFFY: Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti (2022), MIRAAA Media Fest (2021), San Antonio Film Festival (2019), and Cine Las Americas International Film Festival (2015). She has also presented her work at the Creating Justice Symposium (2022), PASSAGE Visions (2022), the Sixth Biennial IAS Conference Walls, Bridges, Borders (2021), and most recently the collective exhibitions The Border is a Weapon (2022) and Across (2021). Maritza started teaching in 2003 and has sustained meaningful, collaborative art practices that explore and create a dialectic milieu inhabited by issues unique to marginalized communities. She is the Executive Director for Daphne Art Foundation.  Her artistic practice explores scavenging, movement and transportation of goods as they relate to wealth along and across the U.S./Mexico border, the economic disparities that are visible and at times ironic, and survival mechanisms of working class people.

Links, topics mentioned

Gil Rocha, https://www.maakemagazine.com/gil-rocha

Latino Union of Chicago https://www.latinounion.org/

NAFTA https://www.thebalance.com/history-of-nafta-3306272

https://www.thebalance.com/disadvantages-of-nafta-3306273 https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/14/nafta-has-harmed-mexico-much-more-than-a-wall-will-ever-do/

Binational River Park https://cw39.com/news/nationworld/u-s-and-mexican-ambassadors-promote-binational-river-park-at-border-conference-in-d-c/

RISC Rio Grande International Study Center https://www.wavy.com/news/national/laredo-nonprofit-awarded-art-grant-for-anti-border-wall-initiatives/

No Border Wall https://noborderwallcoalition.com/

Tereneh Idia

For Season Three, we are featuring the artists of THE BORDER IS A WEAPON exhibition curated by Gil Rocha and presented by Other Border Wall.  The exhibition features five artists from the US/MX border and was curated by Gil Rocha.  First opening in January 2022 at 937 Gallery in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust  the show then traveled to the Laredo Center for the Arts in July 2022. Each interview is conducted by Tereneh Idia. Tereneh is the founder of Idia'Dega, an award-winning journalist, and the co-founder of Other Border Wall Project.

Angel Cabrales, MFA, is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the University of Texas at El Paso. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and Masters of Fine Arts from The University of North Texas. Angel views everything as an artistic resource and utilizes this in all his creations, from his extensive experience with a variety of mediums and styles, to the intangibles, such as his upbringing in the El Paso, Texas Borderlands, his work grows and expands with the requirements presented from each new idea.His father a retired engineer at White Sands Missile Range, instilled Angel with a great interest in science and engineering, while his mother, a politically active stay at home mother, taught him the importance of community and social work through her volunteer work. Angel's work is an amalgamation of his upbringing resulting in social/political commentary with an engineered flare. The artwork’s concept ultimately dictates the medium needed for its creation, so artistic evolution is intrinsic in his philosophy. 

Cabrales is an artist fellow for the Looking for America project out of Washington D.C. He is exhibiting in the American Embassy in Mexico City and has exhibited in the International TransBorder Biennial, Texas Biennial, AmoABiennial600, the Chamizal National Memorial, the Mexic-Arte Museum, MAC Dallas, the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Mesa, AZ, The Latino Cultural Center of Dallas, El Paso Museum of Art, Wave Pool Gallery in Cincinnati, OH, Grand Art Haus in Phoenix, AZ, Baton Rouge Gallery, and collaborated with the AMBOS Project (an intervention collaboration along the Border) from Los Angeles. He is also featured in the Icons and Symbols of the Borderland book by Diana Molina and La Frontera: Artists along the Mexican/American Border by Stefan Falke. Angel was recently interviewed by the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to be included in the Estrellas y Cuentas initiative on Latino Futurism. He is represented by the Ro2 Gallery in Dallas, TX and the Royse Contemporary in Scottsdale, AZ. Cabrales is also a member of the International Sculpture Center, the Texas Sculpture Group, and a board member in the JUNTOS art collective. Angel was also a juror for the 2020 Student Achievement Awards for Sculpture Magazine.Cabrales teaches all levels of Sculpture at UTEP, includingExperimental Systems in Sculpture focused on STEAM elements in art and the Neon Sculpture program. He is head of theEASSI (Engineering + Art + Science = Social Impact) team that works on community engaged projects involving the arts and sciences in the Borderlands of El Paso.

Website: http://www.angelcabrales.com/

Tereneh Idia

Janel Young is a Pittsburgh native, painter, muralist and community leader on a mission to inspire through creativity and play. Her work has been recognized locally and internationally, from New York City – where she resided for 6 years – to the coast of Sydney, Australia. Prior to pursuing art full-time, Janel attended Schenley High School as an International Baccalaureate student athlete, and went on to study Business Marketing and International Studies at Penn State University as a Bunton-Waller Fellow. She relocated to NYC in 2013 to work in public relations as a Digital Content Strategist for industries, including healthcare, tech and non-profits for 5 years. 

A year after taking the leap to practice art full-time in NYC, Janel’s passions came full circle in 2019 as her love for visual arts brought her back to Beltzhoover (her old neighborhood) to install the city’s first art basketball court, cleverly coined: The Home Court Advantage Project. The City of Pittsburgh awarded Janel a proclamation for her community-centered effort to wrap the city in color, making October 23, 2019 “JANEL YOUNG DAY” in the City of Pittsburgh. On the anniversary the following year, Janel established the JY Originals Scholarship for Creatives – a $1,000 award for a young adult pursuing the arts. 

Now serving as the Community Artist in Residence at UrbanKind Institute in Pittsburgh, Janel utilizes visual arts as a communication tool to connect people to equity and justice values and initiatives. She continues to use both Pittsburgh and New York networks for public art projects, youth workshops and speaking opportunities. Janel’s latest public works in Pittsburgh include the “Pathway to Joy” asphalt mural at Allegheny Overlook, her first curated project, “New Space Spheres” (both commissioned by Pittsburgh Downtown Partnerships), and “Heroes on the Horizon” at Bakery Square, which is the first three-dimensional mural under her belt. Pathway to Joy is now Young’s largest led mural and it kicked off the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival serving as the backdrop for the summer 2021 pop-up park experience. For New Space Spheres she led the creation of social distance artwork from four additional Pittsburgh artists for a total of 10 designs that express physical distancing and the new societal space we are in, with a colorful twist. Heroes on the Horizon was completed alongside a residency program with students from local schools, Lincoln and Urban Academy. 

In New York, Young was selected to exhibit in the “Black Lives to the Front” art showcase during the 2020 U.S. Open tennis tournament. Her canvas titled “Be Open To…” was displayed in the front row of the Arthur Ashe Stadium behind the likes of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka. Additionally, Janel was chosen to execute the “Gates of Atlantic” security gate mural in East New York, Brooklyn (on Atlantic Avenue). She was paired with a local small business, Gardenia Flower Shop, for a floral design that inspires passersby to keep blooming. Furthermore, Janel teamed up with youth-focused organizations to host in-person and virtual coloring events, where her self-illustrated Color Your Crown natural hair coloring book was donated to kids. She worked with sponsors and supporters from New York non-profit KaleidoQueens, Pittsburgh-based Learning Loft, YMCA, Neighborhood Allies and the Women & Girls Foundation.

 https://www.janel-young.com/home

https://www.janel-young.com/the-arts

Join us in our illuminating conversation with Kinselland!

As collaborators Anqwenique and DS work in the areas of performance art, visual art, and music performance. The work is intimate and shares pieces of their personal lives as a married artist couple while also challenging them to create in new ways and explore intimate everyday activities as artistic expression.

DS Kinsel expresses his creativity through the mediums of painting, installation, curating, action-painting, non-traditional performance and #HASHTAGS. Kinsel’s work puts focus on themes of space keeping, urban tradition, hip-hop, informalism and Cultural Re-Appropriation.  As a visual artist working primarily through the mediums of painting, installation, hip-hop, and web based media platforms, he uses these mediums as weapons and tools towards cultural space keeping and creative place making.  He explores self perspective and personal awareness through place and how association with locations can shape perceptions. 

D.S. has a deep community based practice and is the co-founder of BOOM Concepts, founded in 2014. BOOM Concepts is a creative hub dedicated to the advancement of black and brown artists representing marginalized communities. BOOM serves as a space for field building, knowledge sharing, mentorship, and storytelling. BOOM Concepts consistently challenges artists and communities to find new and innovative ways to share their own narratives.

Anqwenique is an extremely versatile vocalist and educator specializing in opera, classical music, jazz and soul. Anqwenique has performed lead operatic roles, recitals, immersive theater experiences, jazz combos and more. As the founder and director of Groove Aesthetic, a Pittsburgh based multidisciplinary artist collective experimenting with contemporary performance and collaborative processes. Groove Aesthetic and partnerships with organizations like Chamber Music Pittsburgh have given a platform for artists across identity and discipline to collaborate and create wonderful experiences for audiences. In recent years, she has taken a wellness approach to singing and performing, hosting workshops that share with everyday folks how to use their voices for self-care practice. Anqwenique has also been very active in the arts and education community as teaching artist, consultant, program manager and advisor. Currently she serves asDirector of Programs for Arts ed Collaborative. She has also served as the Studio Manager of BOOM Concepts working to provide affordable studio space and resources to artists and creative entrepreneurs.

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art established a new Artist-in-Residency Program, made possible by generous support from The Pittsburgh Foundation, in collaboration with BOOM Concepts in September 2020. The program, which will feature 4 to 6 artists annually, emphasizes the Museum’s commitment to engaging and supporting Black and marginalized artists, to promoting equity in the arts, and to sharing compelling and meaningful cultural experiences with the regional community. Inaugural artists selected include Anqwenique, D.S. Kinsel, Gavin Benjamin and Madame Christiane Dolores.

https://www.boomuniverse.co/

https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/boom-concepts-artists-communities/ 

https://pittsburghfoundation.org/ds-kinsel 

https://thewestmoreland.org/blog/in-conversation-with-thomas-agnew-and-d-s-kinsel-of-boom-concepts/ 

W.A.G.E. 

https://wageforwork.com/home#top

We had the great honor of speaking with Madame Christiane Dolores.  Do not miss this! 

Multi-platform cross-disciplinary artist, Christiane Dolores, a.k.a. Madame Dolores, employs sound, vision, text, and performance as storytelling tools to create radical, sometimes controversial, cultural engagements. At the heart of r work is a humanistic empathy that questions our inability to coexist and reimagines new mythologies of inclusion and belonging. Her practice is rooted in responding to compelling questions about cultural definitions, the root of hatred, cognitive dissonance, binary systems, and the ongoing social conflicts of Us vs Them. She thinks of what she does as social-cultural anthropology, employing the ethnographic technique by culling audio, text and images to create a record of our struggle to be human. Her textual, visual, musical work responds to burgeoning questions about human behavior and inhuman cruelty. How are these confounding, at times, disturbing actions seen through the lens of justice, compassion and understanding and how will that propel us to evolve? Madame Dolores has earned many accolades and opportunities for her work. In 2017, she received the Pittsburgh Business Times Women First award, and in 2014, was commissioned by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to create a song and lead Pittsburgh’s inaugural Complaints Choir during the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival. She has also been recognized as the winner of an 2010 August Wilson Center Fellowship; an awardee of a 2011 and 2020 grant from Advancing the Black Arts in support of solo musical releases; a 2007 honoree at the New Hazlett Theatre “Celebrating Women in the Arts; a 2003 winner of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowship for World/Jazz/Blues musical composition; and a 2002 Pittsburgh Magazine “40 under 40” award winner. She received funding from Sprout for two MiniM Music Festivals for the Blues and Jazz genres and for “Listen to This, featuring poetess, Ursula Rucker; a commission from Pittsburgh Foundation to write her first play, Saffronia; funding from Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative to produce Saffronia: the Mulatto Slave, which came in 2nd place at the Trinidad Theater Festival, in 2016. Madame Dolores is the founding member of the #notwhite collective, a group of 13 femme artists who use their art to make their stories visible as they excavate histories, expose realities, and exorcise oppression. She has also been very dedicated to the arts community as the artist relations manager at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, where she worked for 15 years leading several landmark programs and increasing engagement and support of typically underserved artists, especially people of color and women, and is now currently working at the Pittsburgh International Airport’s Art as their technical assistant of arts and culture.

www.madamechristianedolores.com

Music site is: www.madamedolores.rocks 

Sondra Woodruff https://news.columbia.edu/content/musician-sondra-woodruff-takes-her-talent-columbia-local-community 

Soma Mestizo https://www.madamechristianedolores.com/soma-mestizo 

Boom Concepts https://www.boomuniverse.co/ 

Westmoreland Museum of American Art https://thewestmoreland.org/programs/artist-in-residency-program/ 

Billboard Project - Lead Artist Sheila Cuellar-Shaffer. https://makeourdifferencesourstrengths.com/about/ 

Zhiwan Cheung Seeing Colour Pod https://seeingcolorpod.com/ 

AS220 https://as220.org/ 

Continuing our theme with Season 2 that focuses on the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, we spoke with the artist Gavin Benjamin about his recent artist residency at the museum and his own practice.  Tune in to a great conversation between Gavin, Leah, and Tereneh!

Gavin Benjamin is a multifaceted artist who combines original analog photography and appropriated images with collage, paint, and varnish to create rich and luxurious works that call back to baroque traditions while incorporating  elements of current culture to provoke, critique, and explore.

Born in Guyana, South America and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Benjamin received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. During this time, he worked as an interned for the legendary portrait photographer, Arnold Newman. Benjamin also worked as black and white and color printer at LTI and Baboo color labs. From there, he went on to work at Edge Reps and Exposure NY, agencies representing commercial and advertising photographers, prop stylists, and hair and makeup artists. After Exposure NY, he worked as a freelance production coordinator/photo editor with stints at Kenneth Cole productions, Esquire Magazine, Hachette Filipacchi Media, and Good Housekeeping magazine.

“I am very inspired by the work of artists  during the 15th to 17th centuries, especially the Dutch and Italian masters. There is something very romantic, dark, mysterious, and brooding about these works. I find this period fascinating because of the deep, luxurious colors and intense light and dark shadows. I am drawn to the juxtaposition of objects and compositions that come together to tell a story”

Benjamin investigates the intersection of culture, media, politics, fashion, and design, addressing questions that (continue to) confront a men of color in America today.

“My work reflects everything that I’m thinking – it includes everything that I love and everything that I’m challenged by. It’s honest and curious and bright and thoughtful. And sometimes a little dark. It’s all of the things that made me want to be a professional artist in the first place.”

His work has appeared at the Slick Paris, Sotheby’s NY, Architectural Digest Home Design Show, Art Hampton, Affordable Art Fair, Scope Miami, Palm Beach Modern, Context Miami, Context NY, Art Silicon Valley, and the LA Art Fair.

Links:

Website:

https://www.gavinbenjamin.com

Mentions in episode:

Penguin Court:  https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/preserves/penguin-court-thomas-road-farm

Polaroids:

https://mymodernmet.com/history-of-polaroid/

Haltson Netflix Series:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80245103

Upcoming Exhibitions:

Mattress Factory: https://mattress.org/upcoming-artists/

Contemporary Craft: https://contemporarycraft.org/exhibition/food-justice/