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.

Pinar Yoldas on "Art and Climate Crisis"

Head over to Soundcloud to tune in to our latest episode for our "Art and Climate Crisis" segment with Pinar Yoldas! Pinar is an infradisciplinary designer/artist/researcher. Her work develops within biological sciences and digital technologies through architectural installations, kinetic sculpture, sound, video and drawing with a focus on post-humanism, eco-nihilism, anthropocene and feminist technoscience.

Her solo shows include The Warm, the Cool and the Cat at Roda Sten Konsthall (2016), Polyteknikum Museum Moscow (2015), An Ecosystem of Excess, Ernst Schering Project Space among many. Her group shows include ThingWorld, NAMOC National Art Museum of Beijing (2014); Transmediale Festival, Berlin (2014), ExoEvolution at ZKM (2015), 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts (2016).

Pinar’s residencies include the MacDowell Colony, UCross Foundation, VCCA, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Duke University, Quartier21 Künstlerstudio-Programm, Transmediale Villem Flusser research residency at UdK Berlin. She has been an invited speaker at SAIC, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Northwestern University, Angewandte Kunst, University of Arizona, Reed College, University of Buffalo, BacNet15, Penn State and UCLA among many others. Her work has been featured in Arte TV, Die Welt, The Creators Project, Art21 Blog, Der Spiegel, Vogue Turkey and Artlink BioArt issue to name a few.

She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University where she was affiliated with Duke Institute of Brain Sciences and Media Arts and Sciences. She holds a Bachelors of Architecture from Middle East Technical University, a Master of Arts from Bilgi University, a Master of Science from Istanbul Technical University and a Master of Fine Arts from University of California, Los Angeles where she worked at the Art|Sci Center and the UCLA Game lab. Her book An Ecosystem of Excess was published by ArgoBooks in 2014. Pinar is a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in the Fine Arts and a 2016 FEAT Future Emerging Arts and Technologies Award recipient.

She holds a bronze medal in organic chemistry in the national science olympics and had her first solo painting exhibition when she was five.