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…
Wide Open Spaces: Pacifico Silano Emancipates His Gay Erotica
Pacifico Silano’s practice is based in appropriating and rephotographing the imagery in gay erotica magazines published between 1969 and the late 1980s. In less-adept…
An Insipid Blame Game: Tony Cokes and the Monotony of Art About Trump
Over the past four decades, Tony Cokes has perfected the art of the social justice slideshow. His video essays pair appropriated text with corporate…
The Untenability of the Unethical Museum
The last time I visited a museum was in early March, when I saw artist Tishan Hsu’s survey at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles….
The Anxious “I”: Walter Scott’s Autofictional Universe
Walter Scott faces a dilemma that has confronted many multi-disciplinary artists, especially those who work in both contemporary art and more mass-cultural fields: being…
Waiting to Return to the Places We Were Going: Mapping Robin Cameron’s “Memory Palace”
Robin Cameron’s exhibition Memory Palace at Franz Kaka sits on the second floor. The stairs to the second floor are just inside the glass…
Ambera Wellmann’s Big Swing
There’s been much talk of Ambera Wellmann’s show Logic of Ghosts at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, but not much talk of her paintings. For in filling…