Ron Athey’s “Far-Right Flirtations”
I have never been to a Ron Athey performance. I never went to any of the clubs he frequented; I’ve never met him in…
See You on the Other Side: Matthew Wong’s Vistas of the Mind
In Matthew Wong’s oil painting See You On the Other Side (2019), a figure in blue stands at the edge of a frozen landscape…
Imagination Over Submission: Luis Camnitzer’s Liberatory Art Education
Over the summer of 2020, I was continually surprised by the versatility of cars. Amid mutual aid mobilizing and uprisings against police – each…
With No Type of Story: Touring the Untied Mind of Pippa Garner
In 1978, the artist Pippa Garner wrote a list of “Opinions and Comments.” Among them is one that reads, “People should name their brains,”…
Season 4 Episode 5: Rianna Jade Parker on “Letter from London”
Rianna Jade Parker reads “Letter from London: What is the Status of Black Artists in England Today?” published in ARTnews (June 2020), and engages…
Letter From Atlanta: St. Roch Blues
Living in Atlanta, I thought, would be different – if not exceptional – during a pandemic. Atlanta is, after all, home to the Center…
Stuck in the Same Muck: Journeying Through Asher Hartman’s Psychic Theater
God seduced Jesus on a Circuit City breakroom table. The seduction began as we, the audience, sat circled in child-sized chairs in a too-bright…
Season 4 Episode 4: Léuli Eshrāghi on “tagatavāsā”
In episode 4, Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi discusses “tagatavāsā,” a text centered on Eshrāghi’s grandmother’s art practice that interweaves Indigenous language with the vernacular of…
The Aesthetic Dimension of Erasure: Voluspa Jarpa on Twenty Years of Recovering Trauma
When my Skype interview with Voluspa Jarpa begins, her face is sandwiched between two huge lips like a Tour de France winner being pecked…
We Are Gathered Here to Grieve: Salvaging, Mourning, and ‘Cargo Cult Formalism’ in New York
As New York galleries reopened after the first wave of lockdowns, I noticed a trend across a handful of exhibitions that channeled the alienation…
Season 4 Episode 3: Tausif Noor on “Hand in Glove”
“Like writing, fisting is both a replicable skill and a rarefied art form.” This brachioproctic line begins writer Tausif Noor’s “Hand In Glove” (Artforum, 12 April…
Season 4 Episode 2: Nikki Columbus on “Guston Can Wait”
“Let’s stop talking about Philip Guston and start talking about structural racism.” This has been critic Nikki Columbus’s refrain through the past season, issuing…
“Finding My Voice When Others Would Have Kept it Down”: Introducing Indigenous Artist-Run Center, daphne
Four Indigenous artists are about to launch daphne, an Indigenous artist-run center in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. The co-founders are Hannah Claus, Nadia Myre, Skawennati, and Caroline Monnet….
The Shadow-Self Universe of Chris Ware
Graphic novelist Chris Ware’s most recent effort, Rusty Brown, is a life-giving maze. A massively depressing book – a 356-page monument to modern loneliness…
Stringing the Net: An Interview with Small Arts Patron Annie Koyama
In 2007, anticipating a recession that would destabilize so much, the celebrated publisher Annie Koyama began giving out small grants to artists – “quietly,”…
Season 4 Episode 1: What Artists and Curators Do for Money
Season 4 of Momus: The Podcast invites art critics and journalists to talk about an important piece of their writing – texts that carry…