Satpreet Kahlon "BIPOC on Colonialism, Nationalism, and [the Harmful Illusion of] White Supremacy"

Tune in to our latest conversation with Satpreet Kahlon, a Punjabi-born, Seattle based artist, organizer, and curator, and the editor of New Archives, a nonprofit arts journal which focuses on art in the Pacific Northwest.

We talk about Satpreet's work at (now-defunct) The Alice Gallery, including her first experience at curating the show "From Which We Rise", and its familial connections. We discuss the vibrations of Place, and Satpreet's experiences living around the US. We touch on institutional tokenism, her work with yəhaw̓ Indigenous Collective, and the issues with the word "decolonization". We side-eye the New York Times, and discuss theories on how some work by BIPOC artists is largely ignored because it isn't easily digestible for hegemonic consumption.

“Towards the Earth”. (ca 2018-2019). Satpreet Kahlon. Image courtesy of the artist.

Satpreet talks about her own artistic practice, the ways she interrogates space, and how her work "...moves against the framework of metal penii", embodying anti-monumentalism. We also learn the influence of Archive, and the words of Saidiya Hartman, and how not all curators are created equal.

AJ Hawkins on "Art and Death"

Continuing with our series on “Art and Death”, please enjoy our conversation with artist AJ Hawkins about how changing relationships to faith can change our relationships to grief and grieving processes, how the death of a beloved pet inspired a search to make sense of her own mortality, the necrobiome as a "microbiological afterlife", her project "The Reclamation", How Death Positivity includes issues like bodily autonomy and environmentalism, how art can be used to connect and communicate, and to cope with things that feel "too big", and a crash course on ecological disposition.

AJ Hawkins uses fine art as a research medium to explore the challenges of living in a mortal body. Drawing on her background as a painter, sculptor and custom fabricator, AJ often creates hybrid art works that blur the lines between 2- and 3-dimensional, traditional and experimental.

Her Kickstarter-funded project, The Reclamation, challenges viewers to choose more environmentally-friendly afterlives by highlighting the value of human decomposition and the necrobiome. In years since, AJ's art has focused on experiences surrounding grief and illness. Her new series, The Poisoned Body, explores the physical and psychological toll of living with a prolonged and severe iatrogenic disease.

Susan Aldworth on "Art and Health"

Very happy to share this lovely conversation with visual artist, experimental printmaker, and filmmaker Susan Aldworth.

“Susan Aldworth is a visual artist who lives and works in London. She is an associate lecturer on the Art & Science MA at Central Saint Martin’s, London. Aldworth studied philosophy at Nottingham University and fine art at Sir John Cass, London. She is an experimental printmaker and filmmaker with a strong interest in investigating the workings of the human mind, especially consciousness, sleep and our sense of self. She has developed experimental print techniques to realise her ideas including the historic Transience etchings printed directly from human brain tissue.”

We talk about neuroscience, consciousness and the human brain, the ways in which Aldworth is inspired by art, philosophy, and science, and about her latest projects including "Out of the Blue", a kinectic sculpture installation project that looks at epilepsy through the stories of 100 people.