This month, Sky Goodden speaks with Rahel Aima, a prolific critic, art writer, and Associate Editor at Momus. We focus on a text Aima published in Momus, “Depleting Felix Gonzales-Torres” (July 2020), that takes aim at “a mammoth exhibition” of the late Gonzalez-Torres’s 1990 work Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner). Aima writes “In a move taken right out of the influencer marketing playbook,” Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner, who co-represent his estate, shipped the piece around the world to collectors who would then display and “document them for the ‘gram.” While Gonzales-Torres’s work conjures a body through accumulation and depletion, “we can understand the exhibition as an extension of overwhelmingly white, moneyed arts professionals and their tendency to trivialize Black and Indigenous death by trying to relate it to the art world.” Aima engages us in a gripping conversation about writing, including the discomfort of penning a polemic that goes viral.

Rahel Aima regularly publishes with 4 Columns, Artforum, Art in America, Artnews,  ArtReview, The Atlantic, Bookforum, e-flux architecture, Frieze, Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia, Mousse, New Republic, and Vogue Arabia.  

All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Rahel Aima for her contribution to this season.

Thanks to the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival for its support.

Look for us on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.