Seeing Color

Hi everyone. I hope you are well. I’ve been feeling quite busy these past few days. Everything seems to be moving too fast. Maybe I’m just getting old. The first week of school felt intense and I'm already preparing for the following weeks. Anyway, for today, I have Sapira Cheuk, an ink painter and installation artist interested in ways of knowing through the body and how these modes of knowledge reflect or internalize external experiences. Sapira got her BA at UC Riverside and an MFA at Cal State Bernardino. She is currently teaching at UNLV, where she has found a welcoming art community in the Las Vegas area. I was connected to Sapira through the Rogers Art Loft and was glad to have learned about her practice. We also talk about Sapira moving to Hawaii from Hong Kong at a young age, Sapira hiding her art career from her parents early on, working in a collaborative project, and our unexpected connection with Zhuhai and the Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Hopefully, we will meet in Las Vegas. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Sapira's Website
• Sapira's Instagram
• Dancing Together in a Pandemic

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Hi everyone. I hope you are well. I've been getting ready for the new semester and just saw this Netflix show called The Chair in preparation, which makes fun of academia. Obviously, there were many parts made for dramatic effect, and it was trying to tackle way too many subjects in way too little time, along with being produced by the same people from Game of Thrones gave me pause, but there were a few nice moments that felt also true that made me laugh, along with Sandra Oh's great performance. I'm not sure if that is a strong recommendation or not to see it. But anyway. This week I am returning back to the Las Vegas community through the Rogers Art Loft Residency and I am speaking with the amazing Vogue Robinson, a poet, author, mentor, and teaching artist. Originally from Perris, California, Vogue got her BA in English at San Diego State University before eventually landing in Las Vegas. Vogue was the poet laureate of Clark County, Nevada (2017-2019) and is the first Black woman to receive the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers' Hall of Fame. Vogue has an infectious laugh and was a joy to talk to. We discussed what a poet laureate does, the croaking of frogs, Pringles, Nikki Giovanni, and so much more. As I was listening to the recording, I realized my voice was quite lethargic, even more than usual that day, and I apologize for that. I hope you can bear with it. I think Vogue brings the energy levels up every time she speaks and can't wait to visit her in Las Vegas in the near future. As always, stay safe and healthy and enjoy the show.

Links Mentioned:

• Vogue's Website
• Vogue's Instagram
• Nikki Giovanni
• Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovani
• Amanda Gorman
• History of Poet laureate

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Hi everyone. I hope you are well wherever you are as we are mid-way through August. Summer seems to have come and gone. At least it has for me. I have been mostly preparing for my classes in the fall and for a show I'll be having in November. Otherwise, I have nothing new to report. But for this week, I have a great artist to present to you, so let's get to the introductions.

For today, I am interviewing Camilo Godoy, an artist and educator born in Bogotá, Colombia and based in New York City. His multidisciplinary projects are concerned with political histories and memories. Camilo's work engages with the intersection of history, race, gender, and sexuality and is informed by Queer, Latinx, Feminist, and Black perspectives. Camilo got his BFA at Parsons and is currently completing an MFA at Columbia University, which we discuss in greater detail the politics surrounding elite institutions and academia in the art world. We also get into how Camilo mines archival materials for his work, the role of an educator, the joy of art interviews, and his most recent solo show at OCD Chinatown. Camilo is also part of the group shows at the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York City and at Momentum 11 in Norway. I had a lot of fun talking with Camilo and I hope you appreciate what he has to say as well! In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and enjoy the show.

Links Mentioned:

• Camilo's Website
• Camilo's Instagram
• Amigxs Show at OCD Chinatown
• Leslie Lohman Museum's Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture
• Momentum 11 - House of Commons
• Brooklyn Museum's Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall
• José Limón's The Moor's Pavane
• Félix González-Torres
• Barbara Kruger
• Jenny Holzer
• Gran Fury
• Michel Foucault's Friendship As A Way of Life
• Sarah Schulman's The Gentrification of the Mind
• Jia Tolentino
• American Friends Service Committee
• New York Immigration Coalition
• Claudia Tate's Black Women Writers at Work

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Hey everyone. Hope you are doing well. I just finalized a 4-channel video during my time in Shanghai and had a chance to exhibit it to the local art community. I am currently preparing to leave back to Zhuhai in a bit. I also just finished my time at the Rogers Art Loft residency and held the closing talk last week, so thank you to all who swung by. It was a wonderful experience and I hope to visit everyone in Las Vegas soon. I will be posting the conversations I had with the local Las Vegas Community over the next few months, interspersed with previous interviews I conducted. So stay tuned.

For today, I will be talking to Brent Holmes, a multi-disciplinary artist with a deep affinity to words- historical, epistemological and ontologically themed creative projects. Holmes also seeks to create a dialogue through several culinary projects, on the nature of communication, and morality and identity. Brent holds no degrees and says he most likely never will. Being the son of an entertainer, Brent is thoroughly traveled but has never completely identified any one place as his home until moving to Las Vegas. Brent and I chat about the coming apocalypse and for whom, the construction of the American West in relation to freedom, the body within a landscape, and symbolisms in objects. It was an enjoyable chat and I hopefully you will like it as well. As always, stay safe and healthy wherever you are and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Brent's Website
• Brent's Instagram
• Behold a Pale Horse Exhibition

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Hey everyone. Happy Tuesday. We are in the midst of summer and time is going by quite quickly. I've been spending some time in the quiet suburbs of Shanghai before heading back to Zhuhai. There's a small but strong artist community here and it has been great getting to know the people here. Otherwise, I have been working on a 4-channel video and prepping for a show in the fall. I have also been recording a ton of interviews with the Las Vegas community through the Rogers Art Loft residency, through which and I am excited to share with you my chat with the amazing Erica Hector Vital-Lazare. Erica is a professor of Creative Writing and Marginalized Voices in Dystopian Literature at the College of Southern Nevada. She is also a poet, writer of fiction, and the co-producer of the photo-narrative installation Obsidian & Neon: Building Black Life and Identity in Las Vegas. Furthermore, Erica is the editor of McSweeney's Of the Diaspora, a series revisiting classic Black works in literature. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Erica as we talked about sci-fi and black futurism, reclaiming and revisiting one's past identity, and so many amazing book recommendations. As always, stay safe and healthy, both physically and mentally wherever you are, and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Erica's Instagram
• Paule Marshall
• Severance by Ling Ma
• Parable of the Sower
• McSweeney's Of The Diaspora
• Brit Bennett
• Danielle Valore Evans
• Wesley Brown
• Marita Golden
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Richard Wright
• Black Quantum Futurism
• Nnedi Okorafor
• Ralph Ellison
• Ruby Duncan
• Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty
• Obsidian & Neon
• Womxn of Color Arts Festival
• Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art

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Hi everyone. I hope you are doing well wherever you are. As I mentioned previously, I am currently part of the Rogers Art Loft residency in Las Vegas and they have been putting me in touch with the local community and helping me meet people for the podcast. I have been speaking with quite a number of wonderful artists and cultural workers and these conversations will be released throughout the summer and upcoming fall season. For today, I am excited to share with you the first one of these talks as I speak with Shahab Zargari, an Iranian-American filmmaker, record label owner, and musician. Shahab takes me through his journey from working in advertising to making his own independent films and what drives him to tell the stories that he tells. We also talk about the pronunciation of names, Iranian films, Mad Men, and how he got a shoutout from Kevin Smith. Shahab also talks about his latest short film, Oh, the Guilt, which is a coming-of-age story set in the 1990s featuring a Persian-American as the main character. The plot tackles death, loss, and survivor’s guilt, elements of the human condition that transcend age, race, and creed. Check it out if you have the chance. Again, this episode was made possible through the Rogers Art Loft residency and I want to thank them for this opportunity. I hope you all enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Shahab's Website
• Think Speak Films
• Vladimir Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl
• Inside Iranian Cinema
• Children of Heaven
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

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Hi everyone. I hope you are doing well. I have been working quite a bit the past few weeks. I did a quick virtual artist talk with my good friend, Justin Favela, for the Rogers Art Loft virtual residency I am currently part of. I have also been recording quite a number of interviews with the Las Vegas community, so keep an eye out for these episodes in the upcoming months. Also, on June 30th and July 14th at 6pm PST, I will be doing live interviews with Jennifer Kleven and Dr. Erika Abad, with a quick Q&A afterwards. I will post the links on social media as the dates get closer. I hope to see a few of you there.

For today, I am interviewing my good friend and the amazing artist, Yvette Mayorga. Yvette is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois who interrogates the broad effects of militarization within and beyond the US/Mexico border and intervenes in the colonial legacies of art history. She fuses confectionary labor with found images to explore the meaning of belonging. Yvette got her BFA with a Minor in Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has shown in numerous places such as the National Museum of Mexican Art, LACMA, the DePaul Art Museum, and most recently the El Museo del Barrio. I met Yvette a few years ago in Miami and we formed a special friendship that continues on to today. Yvette and I talked about Gloria Anzaldúa, the Nike Cortez, showing at art fairs, and Key Lime Pies. Stay safe and healthy, and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Yvette's Website
• Yvette's Instagram
• Adam Toledo
• Gloria E. Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
• El Museo del Barrio's La Trienal
• Hernán Cortés
• Nike Cortez
• DePaul Art Museum - LatinXAmerican

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Hi everyone. I hope you are doing well wherever you are. I just started my virtual residency at Rogers Art Loft, where I will be interviewing local Las Vegas artists and cultural workers. There will be a few live events, so I'll post them as they come about. Stay tuned!

But for today, I have a really special episode with Dr. Jeffreen M. Hayes, a trained art historian and curator who advocates for racial inclusion, equity, and access. Jeffreen has extensive curatorial experience and some of her projects include SILOS, Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman, AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, and Embracing the Lens: BlackFlorida project. Jeffreen is also the Executive Director of Threewalls, a space that intentionally develops artistic platforms with artists to help manifest the organization’s vision of art connecting segregated communities, people and experiences together.

In this episode, Jeffreen was extremely generous with her time and labor as she talks about her journey through different arts organizations, from challenging racists institutions to welcoming the unfolding of the unknown. We also talk about how representation by itself is not enough, allowing for vulnerable moments, the importance of black-centered organizations, and defunding museums. Jeffreen hits so many key points more eloquently than I could ever do and I am excited to share our conversation with you. In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Jeffreen's TED Talk* for the love of blk
• Threewalls
• Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning
• The Organization of Black American Culture
• Wall of Respect
• AfriCOBRA
• Jeff Donaldson
• Wadsworth Jarrell
• Jae Jarrell
• Barbara Jones-Hogu
• Gerald Williams
• AFRICOBRA: Nation Time at the Venice Biennale 2019
• The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Arts and Music
• Defund Art Museums
• Inside the Walls Podcast

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Hey everyone. I hope you are well. I got my first vaccine shot. Hoping to get my second in a few weeks. I also have been traveling through parts of southern China and trying to grasp the art scene more. My students just had their senior year exhibition which I am proud to see their work hanging. It brings back memories of my undergrad. I have have one more week of school and then a month of meetings before I head to Shanghai. Time is moving fast. Anyway.

For today, I have Dan Wang, an artist, writer, and organizer. Chinese-Midwestern by birth and currently living in Southern California, Dan’s art work has been shown in several solo exhibitions and scores of group shows, and has inhabited venues ranging from museums and art centers to street demonstrations and toilet stalls. His texts have been published in books, journals, webzines, exhibition catalogues, as commissioned art projects, and in a range of artists’ publications. As a cultural organizer, Dan has also worked in several collaborative configurations, having contributed to projects and productions authored under the names Compass, Madison Mutual Drift, and Red76. He was one of eight founding keyholders of the Chicago experimental cultural space Mess Hall. I caught up with Dan recently and was excited to learn more about his family background and growing up as a Chinese-American in the midwest. We chatted about Jajangmyeon, learning Chinese, spreading ideologies, and so much more. I hope to catch up with Dan in the future after this discussion for round 2. In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Dan's Website
• Dan's Instagram
• Yang Xianrang
• Wu Hung
• The Fifth Estate
• The Revolution of Everyday Life
• Nadja by André Breton
• Killing of Vincent Chin
• Now-Time Asian Amemrican
• Grace Lee Boggs
• Naeem Mohaiemen

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Hi everyone. Hope you are doing well. Things are okay so far on my end. School is ending soon and the temperature is getting hot and humid very quickly. My Chinese is steadily getting better and I have a few shows planned for the coming months, so I have to get back to my video editing as the deadline approaches. I also am doing a remote residency via Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas in the coming summer, as well as a residency in Shanghai. I'll keep you updated about any upcoming events as they happen.

For today, I have a really wonderful chat with Addoley Dzegede, a Ghanian-American interdisciplinary artist who grew up in South Florida and is now based in Pittsburgh. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US, Europe, and Africa, and she has been at residencies such as at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, Osei Duro in Accra, Ghana, Thread: a project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Senegal, and many more. Addoley employs different materials, textile traditions, and notions of “authenticity” to investigates notions of belonging, migration and location, and hybrid identities.  Her work is a contemplation of the forces of history, experience, and location, as well as how they work together to tell a story, essentially, of longing as a state of being. I was able to ask Addoley more about these topics, along with the different histories of the textiles she uses, the idea of getting ready for grad school, and figuring out how to work at residencies. As a side note, I was introduced to Addoley and her partner, Lyndon, through her brother, Zechariah, who I know through my undergrad. I still am amazed at how small and interconnected the world can be, not just in the arts, but on our tiny little Earth. It is my hope we all can realize this sooner than later before it is too late. Anyway, take care, stay safe, and I hope you enjoy this.

Links Mentioned:

• Addoley’s website
• Addoley’s Instagram
• Homegoing Novel by Yaa Gyasi
• Batik
• Kente Cloth
• Trade Beads
• Ask Addoley and Anna's Podcast
• My interview with Lyndon

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