Episode 533 / Rebecca Bonaci

 Rebecca Bonaci is an artist born and based in Malta who  graduated with a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art in 2014, after which she pursued a career in tattooing alongside her visual arts practice. Her work is often shaped by immediate experiences, focusing on intimate emotions and personal moments. Bonaci explores how these individual experiences resonate on a broader human level, inviting connection and empathy.

Her solo exhibition Ġuf (2023) explored contemporary motherhood through a deeply personal lens. In 2024, she was selected to participate in the Malta Biennale, followed by her solo exhibition Wens: Comfortable Silence at Valletta Contemporary in 2025. She was also a finalist for the Hopper Prize (USA) in Fall 2025. Her work has been featured in various group exhibitions in Malta and abroad.

Episode 532 / Koak

Koak is an artist born in  Lansing, MI who earned her BFA and MFA from California College of the Arts. In 2025, Koak was the subject of a solo exhibition at Charleston, Lewes, UK. She has participated in many institutional group shows, including at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Musées d’Angers, France; Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao; and Rudolph Tegners Museum and Statue Park, Dronningmølle, Denmark, among others. In 2020, Koak received a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation and completed residencies at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, NM, and at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, through the Liquitex Residency program. Koak’s work is part of the permanent collections of the de Young Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and Musées d’Angers. She lives and works in San Francisco and is represented by Perrotin, Union Pacific, and Jessica Silverman. 

Episode 531 / Jo Dennis

Jo Dennis (b. 1973, UK) is a British artist based in London. Her practice spans two decades,

working across painting, sculpture, photography, and installation. Dennis explores our

psychological and emotional connection to place and memory, specifically in relation to ruination,

surface, and decay, and how these themes link with notions of mortality.

Dennis received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2022) and her BA in

Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Theory from Goldsmiths College, London (2002).

Recent exhibitions: Never the Straightest Path (solo) Belenius, Stockholm, Sweden 2026: A Letter

to my Daughter (solo) Carvalho New York 2025: The Long Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, curated

by Phillipa Adams 2025: David Zwirner PLATFORM (group) curated by Elisabeth Johs 2025, A

Glass of Absinth (solo) at JO-HS, Mexico City 2025.

A Hopper Prize grant winner (2025) and a recipient of an Arts Council England Grant (2023-24),

Dennis is the co-founder of several artist lead projects in London; Pigeon Park (2021-22)

Peckham 24 Photo Festival (2016 - 2024) AMP Gallery (2015 - 2018) and Asylum Chapel (2010 -

current) She has collaborated with Sid Motion Gallery on five solo projects (2017-2023)

including the launch of her artists book ‘I touched this with my hand, I touched that with my eye’

(2020) Dennis is a trustee and sits on the Artists’ council for the Artists’ General Benevolent

Institution.

Her work was recently included in The Book Of Ladders, 100 Contemporary Art Works, edited by

Paul Carey Kent and Adeline de Monseignat (2023), and Site Specific by Tall Poppy Press (2023). 

Episode 530 / Raul De Lara

(Born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, México – 1991) Raul De Lara is a sculptor who explores the emotive and storytelling qualities of materials. He is interested in how social, cultural and spiritual qualities can be imbued into wood through the act of carving. He practices traditional hand carving and power carving techniques through the visual language of nature, humor, and magical realism. His research preserves, honors and propels forward traditional uses of wood while combining them with new developments in the global industry of woodworking. 

 Raul  immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12, and has been a DACA recipient since 2012. His work reflects on themes of belonging, queer identity, and his im migrant experience. He is currently living and working in Queens, NY. 

 Raul  received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019, and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. Recent solo exhibition sites include The Contemporary Austin, SCAD Museum of Art and Gaa Gallery. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally at the Tucson Museum of Art, Wharton Esherick Museum, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, The Armory Show, Hermès Paris, Alexander Berggruen Gallery, The Hole, Honor Fraser Gallery, and Reynolds Gallery, among others.

 Raul ’s selected awards include the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft, the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture, and Art in America Magazine’s Top 20 Global New Talent, as well as residencies at Wendell Castle Workshop, Silver Art Projects, LMCC Governor’s Island, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Ox-Bow School of Art, Penland School of Craft, and Chicago Artists Coalition, among others.

Episode 529 / Gonçalo Preto

Gonçalo Preto (b. 1991, Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese artist living and working in New York. In 2024, he completed his Master of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, having previously studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, USA, and at Kassel Kunsthochschule, Germany. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Ballads of a Sundial (2026), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon; Phantom Limb (2024), Andrew Reed Gallery, Miami, USA; A Cadência de uma Chama (2024), Middle Finger Pedestrians (2019) and FRAG-MEN-TO (2017), Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon; and LIMBO (2019), Museu Carlos Machado, Ponta Delgada (São Miguel), Azores, Portugal, among others.

Recent group exhibitions include Out of Frame (2025), Jack Barrett Gallery, New York, USA; what lovers do (2024), The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA; Prophetic Dreams (2024), Goldau, Switzerland; BIG OBJECTS (2023), Marvin Gardens, New York, USA; and Silvers in the Void (2023), MAMOTH, London, UK, among others. 

Gonçalo is the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright FCC Grant (2022-2024), a Rhode Island School of Design Fellowship (2022-2024), and a Hopper Prize Finalist (2023).

Episode 528 / Marina Adams

Marina Adams is a painter based in New York, NY, Bridgehampton, New York, and Parma, Italy. She earned degrees from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and Columbia University, New York, NY. Her solo exhibitions include Cosmic Repair at Timothy Taylor, The Art of Living Slowly and Mother Tongue at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin,  Devals x Salon 94, Paris, France, To a World Full of Others, von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland; Flower Power at Copenhagen and Deep Breathing at S-Chanf, Switzerland, Stephen Friedman Galleryin London,  FOCUS: Marina Adams at The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Anemones and Soft Power at Salon 94 and many others.

She is in the public collection of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Longlati Foundation in Shanghai, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. She is a 2016 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and received the 2018 Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Adams has collaborated with poets Norma Cole, Charles Bernstein, Vincent Katz, Leslie Scalapino and Christian Prigent and has published prints with TwoPalms NY, ULAE, Niels Borch Jensen Copenhagen and VanDeb Editions.

Episode 528 / Beverly Fishman

Beverly Fishman is an artist born in 1955 in Philadelphia, who lives and works in Detroit. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977.

Her work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, Japan; Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; and Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.

She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Circulo de Bessa Artes, Madrid, Spain; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others.

Her work is in the collections of Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and elsewhere.

Beverly was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Episode 528 / Beverly Fishman

Beverly Fishman is an artist born in 1955 in Philadelphia, who lives and works in Detroit. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 1980 from Yale University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977.

Her work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, Japan; Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, MI; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Ronchini Gallery, London, United Kingdom; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; and Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.

She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Circulo de Bessa Artes, Madrid, Spain; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and White Columns, New York, NY, among others.

Her work is in the collections of Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; MacArthur Foundation Collection, Chicago, IL; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and elsewhere.

Beverly was inducted as a National Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2020. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Hassam, Speicher, Betts, & Symons Purchase Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts; and a Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Episode 527 / Erica Westenberger

Erica Westenberger is a New Orleans–based interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, sculpture, painting, and installation. Her work builds immersive scenes shaped by apprehension, longing, and care, exploring emotional landscapes through intertwined bodies, objects, and imagined environments. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and her MFA from Tulane University in 2023. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Delta Triennial, Field Projects in New York City, and Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, Tennessee. She has presented solo exhibitions at Carroll Gallery and Sibyl Gallery in New Orleans, and at Neue Welt in Nashville. Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine and the Nashville Scene, and she has participated in residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, Oxbow School of Art, and Stove Works. Her work is currently on display in Tinney Contemporary’s booth at Future Fair in New York City from May 13–16.

Episode 526 / Xavier Tavera

Xavier Tavera has had a passion for portraiture for most of his life as a way to engage with people and their stories. His work oscillates between documentary and the imagined with the sole purpose of telling a story. After moving from Mexico City to the United States, Xavier has devoted himself to tell the stories of the Latin American diaspora, often recontextualizing with the purpose of providing visibility and fair representation.

He has shown his work extensively in the Twin Cities, nationally and internationally including Germany, Scotland, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece and China. His work is part of the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota History Center, Ramsey County Historical Society, the Weisman Art Museum and the National Museum of Mexican Art. He is a recipient of the McKnight fellowship, Jerome Travel award, State Arts Board, and Bronica scholarship.