Youth Art Showcase, which was on view at ARTE NOIR Gallery in April, centers the work of African and African American youth who act as carriers of meaning, seers of the future, and shapers of cultural memory. Featuring 11 youth artists and 21 artworks, the exhibition spans a range of mediums, including collage, acrylic, wax on paper, and mixed-media sculpture. What stands out most, however, is its emphasis on Black subjectivity, self-definition, and reconstruction—reflecting the world not just as it is, but as it could be.

Black cultural memory persists as a living inner cosmos in Kingston Kirkland’s Black Star. Within a star-like field, a collage of Black cultural, artistic, and political icons overlaps and converges, evoking a sense of abundance and fullness as a Black power fist rises through the center of the composition. This work is a portal, recalling the political and diasporic ambitions of Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and becoming a symbolic container for Black memory, pride, and collective aspiration.

In The Statue That Weeps, Adib Thomas recontextualizes the Statue of Liberty not as a beacon of hope and freedom, but as a grieving, dismembered figure marked by broken chains and the words “my people” inscribed in her eyes. Where Kirkland’s Black Star imagines Blackness as an inner cosmos of memory, pride, and collective aspiration, Thomas’ work recalls the pain that shadows that inheritance. Together, the two pieces chart a Black historical arc shaped by suffering, endurance, and transformation. But transformation into what? The curatorial decision to place Thomas’ Unification Nation on the other side of the wall, just out of view, suggests that transformation remains difficult to grasp while still in the midst of pain. Unification Nation is a fiery red figure who dominates the frame, his large white teeth clamped around a spliff and his thick locs barely contained by a thin black headband. His sharply angled jaw and shoulders make him seem confrontational and battle-worn, existing at the threshold between mere survival and self-possession.

In some West African traditions—especially Yorùbá thought—the head carries spiritual, moral, and social importance. In Yorùbá philosophy, orí means “head,” but not merely in an anatomical sense; it is also understood as a site of destiny, consciousness, and selfhood. That framework offers a useful lens for Kameirah Johnson’s Braided into Being and Photosynthesis, where the head becomes a charged site of care, identity, and spiritual presence. In Photosynthesis, a young boy sits in an overgrown field of wild grasses and brush, his arms wrapped around his knees, white angel wings on his back, and a golden nimbus behind his head. Braided into Being, meanwhile, centers two girls, one perched between the other’s knees as her hair is braided. In both works, the head is not incidental; it is the place where being is shaped, adorned, and made visible. Johnson’s works quietly echo what Kirkland names explicitly in Black Star: that liberation is rooted in Black remembrance, collective reverence, and the intentional shaping of the inner self.

In Norah Kirkland’s Soul Tower of Life, custom-painted sneakers become more than fashion objects or status markers. Stacked into a colorful sculptural tower, the shoes show how Black youth can take a mass-produced, heavily commodified object and transform it into a vehicle for personal style, cultural pride, and creative authorship. Rather than rejecting the sneaker’s place within consumer culture, the work reclaims the object itself, covering each shoe in bright colors, hand-drawn marks, and individualized detail. The result is both playful and declarative: a monument to self-expression built from objects already central to Black youth life. The work suggests that even within commodity culture, Black youth still find ways to remake the manufactured world in their own image.

Norah Kirkland’s Soul Tower of Life extends a thread already present in Adib Thomas’ Unification Nation. If Thomas imagines transformation as something battle-worn and unresolved, visible in the fiery red figure’s angular body and confrontational presence, Kirkland relocates that same process into the realm of object culture. Her custom-painted sneakers take a mass-produced commodity and subject it to color, mark-making, and personal invention, turning what was manufactured into something authored. In both works, transformation is not abstract. It is material, visible, and hard-won—a process through which Black youth reshape both themselves and the world around them.

The ceramic work, Mask of Fear by Jalen Wiles, personifies the shadow side of existence, giving shape not only to fear itself, but to the uncertainty that often accompanies pain and suffering. With its bulging forehead, uneven eyes, snarling mouth, and rough, hand-worked surface, the mask turns fear into a face. Yet, guided by Wiles’ own words “These demons are not real monsters,” the piece resists becoming a portrait of evil. Instead, it externalizes the dread of not knowing what grief, hardship, or struggle might transform a person into. In that sense, the mask is not simply about being afraid of what is outside the self, but of what may emerge from within under pressure. What makes the work powerful is that it gives form to that uncertainty, suggesting that fear often grows most intense when transformation is underway and its outcome remains unknown. Seen alongside Thomas’ Unification Nation, Wiles’ mask gives form to the psychic threshold that transformation requires: the fear of not yet knowing who pain will make you become.

Jade Wiles’ Between Lavender Walls offers another vision of what transformation through the shadow might look like. Set against a soft lavender ground, each portrait carries the viewer through a distinct emotional state—reflection, exhaustion, and joy—suggesting that becoming is not a singular breakthrough but a series of inner conditions. In Reflection, the figure’s distant gaze and celestial garment create a sense of introspection and emotional restraint. In Exhaustion, Wiles renders fatigue not as spectacle, but as quiet endurance. Framed by a lavender headband and a vast halo of hair, the figure’s heavy-lidded gaze and subdued expression suggest the emotional wear of carrying on when rest has not yet fully arrived. And finally, in Joy, a figure’s eyes are pressed closed while a loving cat perches on his shoulders and nuzzles his head, suggesting that tenderness, rest, and connection are also part of transformation. Together, the works imagine the self not as fixed, but as something passing through shadow toward a more grounded and intimate form of presence.

The works in Youth Art Showcase insist that Black youth are not merely inheritors of history, but active participants in remaking meaning. Across collage, painting, sculpture, and custom-painted objects, the artists traverse memory, suffering, fear, care, rest, and self-fashioning, revealing transformation not as a single act of triumph but as an ongoing process of becoming. What emerges is a vision of Black life rooted in remembrance yet unwilling to be defined by pain. In this exhibition, creative authorship, cultural memory, and spiritual presence become the means through which these young artists shape both selfhood and the future.

Youth Art Showcase includes the works of Adib Thomas, Braxton Henry, Elysia McVicar, Ilyas Ceniceros, Isha Hassan, Jade Wiles, Jalen Wiles, Kameirah Johnson, Kingston Kirkland, Norah Kirkland, and Tristyn Johnson.

This article was originally published at ARTE NOIR.

© Copyright 2026 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

Black Clay, an exhibition featured at ARTE NOIR Gallery in February, reclaimed ceramic practice as an ontological intervention, restoring clay from a purely utilitarian object to a vessel of lifeforce, memory, and cosmological agency. Featuring pottery works from 25 Black ceramics artists, this exhibition situated contemporary ceramic practice within a deep lineage of African and African Diasporic worldviews that have understood clay as animated, relational, and historically charged.

The first impression of the exhibition was that of an archeological dig site—a place where cultural artifacts of previously hidden cosmologies had recently been unearthed. But unlike archeology as it had been practiced in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, this archeology centers the cultural originators as both authors and interpreters of meaning.

The exhibition space was airy but substantively full, inviting the viewer into a nonlinear experience where works could be viewed from multiple angles—alone and in relation to others. And it’s in this relationality that Black Clay did much of its heavy lifting. Most of the works in the exhibition were gathered in groups. There were the vessels—including the works Freedom Song by Deshun Peoples, Scorched Strands of a Past Life by Tay Baker, and Enslaved Trades People by Esther Ervin—that if viewed out of relational context might be miscategorized as purely functional, decorative, or narrating a bygone era; but together they create a more complex, layered, and nuanced meaning. Enslaved Trades People is a large, raw umber clay pot with a ring of disembodied dark hands linked together by a golden chain and hovering above the unmistakable iconography of plantation labor—a saw and hammer, an anvil and tongs, an iron, and finally a clay vessel. The disembodied hands make visible the instrumentalization of Black humanity to mere utility.

It makes sense that Enslaved Trades People sat atop the tallest pillar in the grouping, representing a temporal rupture that reordered both Black life and material culture under the logic of utility. But Freedom Song refused to forget what was before, its round, spherical form partially references ceremonial water jars commonly used in West Africa. In some cultures, such as the Yoruba, these water jars were not just inert objects but played a crucial role in maintaining spiritual equilibrium. For the Nupe, these clay vessels were both practical and relational representations of community care. Today, Freedom Song can serve as a reminder that our understanding of humanity and the materials humans create was not always rooted in utility.

In Scorched Strands of a Past Life by Tay Baker, this raku fired vessel integrated the artist’s old dreadlocks into the body of the pot, creating a black swirl of color against pale clay. The process, the artist said, allowed him to rid himself of a troubled past while never forgetting the lessons learned. But this work could also represent how Black life has continued to press forward, integrating and metabolizing trauma, memory, lineage, culture, and triumph.

In many African cultures, such as the Kongo, Dogon, and Fon, objects were not inert but contained vital force or energy that could be activated by humans through intentional care, handling, and placement. In the Black Clay exhibition, the grouping of female ceramic figures—including the works KeepHer of the 4 Directions by Rhonda Brown, and the three works Serenity, A Love Letter to Myself, and Mother Nature by Ieisha Sweatmon—could be a continuation of that cosmology. In KeepHer of the 4 Directions, four female aquatic figures emerge from the clay, their voluminous hair connecting them at the crown. Each faces away from the other—East, West, North, South. They are all “Dawtas of Yemaya,” according to the artist, “honoring how the Divine Feminine is sacred, divine, needed, respected, and essential.” Yemaya, also known as Yemọja in Yoruba, is similar to another water entity in diasporic cosmologies, Mami Wata—often associated with wealth, transformation, and protection. And in the context of this exhibition, the four aquatic figures in KeepHer of the 4 Directions could be seen as symbolic agents of protection, transformation, and repair. Protection from the consequences of identity and roles projected onto Black women as depicted in Sweatmon’s A Love Letter to Myself and the much-needed repair as expressed in Serenity. In A Love Letter to Myself, a Black woman rested her head in the cradle of her own arm, her eyes closed, the rest of her body absent. Sweatmon said this ceramic sculpture represents how Black women often pour their energy and care into others but leave themselves feeling incomplete. For the artist, the sculpture is a reminder to “pour into ourselves as we pour into others.” The ceramic figure in Serenity—a carefree Black woman, purple afro, summer dress, resting on a garden of flowers—could be seen as representing the repair, an unapologetic commitment to self-care. And the “Dawtas of Yemaya” look on.

Hung on a wall of the exhibition is Mirror, Mirror by Myia Crawford, an oval clay and marble structure with a center that’s light, airy, and foamy, like the crest of a crashing wave or an undisturbed bubble bath. Directly across from Mirror, Mirror were three ceramic animal heads shaped into mystical and surrealistic forms: The red-beaked bird with a serpent-like tongue (Shadow Work by Sienna Bundy); the two-headed, horned creature merged and emotive (Cousin Sandstorm by Sienna Bundy); and the mythical deer head, (Guide #2 by Sienna Bundy), its mouth agape, its teeth bared. This is another realm, and Mirror, Mirror is the portal. We have crossed the Kalûnga line, and the water has taken us there. The “Dawtas of Yemaya” watch the four corners of the Earth; their spirits connected to both the land of the living and the realm of the ancestors. They are watching the enslaved people labor, instrumentalized. They are present in the water of life that nurtures the descendants—mother’s milk, hinted at but not seen in Tits by Vina Nweke, three large earthy-toned breasts linked together by a beaded necklace. They are watching the descendants walk the bloody path of “resistance, freedom, and emotional healing” as explored in Angel Ohome’s Blood-Stained Paths—tiny, slightly concaved ceramic tiles, white, green, blue, and various shades of red, linked together by twisted wire. The descendants have awakened, and through the water they shape Black Clay.

The group exhibition Black Clay, which closed in February, featured works from the following artists: Sasa Akil, Imani Anderson, Kouassi Aragao-Romero, Michaela Ayers, Tay Baker-Johnson, Del Bey, Ronda Brown, Sierra Bundy, Japera Burres, Lea Cook, Myia Crawford, Esther Ervin, Sally Gibson, Joanna Henry, Shirley Jackson, Bianca McPherson, Vina Nweke, Angel Ohome, Deshun Peoples, Perri Rhoden, Tammie Rubin, Darius Scott, Veronica Smith, Ieisha Sweatmon, and Willow Vergara-Agyakwa.

Artists Up Close interviewed Seattle artist AMAI about her upcoming exhibition and immersive event, Internal Growth: The Celebration on Friday, March 20th 2026 at Grocery Studios. Listen to the 30-minute podcast at Artists Up Close.

“This work is humanitarian,” AMAI says. “It calls the viewers—the beings—to look at themselves and their part in our society: who they are and how we’re experiencing each other. And it does that by exploring self-growth and transformation.”

AMAI adds, “The artwork is a mirror. It is also a bridge for community to tap into their inner world through a series of curated experiences led by local creatives.”

Symbolism in an artist’s work is essential, yet many artists don’t approach it intentionally. Meaning often emerges from the subconscious—a transmission that can be felt long before it can be articulated. As someone who analyzes art and narrative architecture, I am trained to notice how symbolism operates through color, shape, and objects charged with historical, spiritual, and cultural weight. Symbolism speaks whether or not we plan for it.

I experienced this recently at ARTE NOIR, where Tasanee Durrett exhibited her work Tides of Liberation. She incorporated raffia strands directly onto the canvas—a material historically used by enslaved people for rope, baskets, ceremonial garments, and ritual masks. The moment I saw it, I felt history move through the surface of the painting. I did not interview the artist, so I cannot speak to her intention. But intention is only one component of meaning. Viewers participate in constructing narrative, and my own knowledge recognized the gravity of that material before my conscious mind supplied language.

When I later researched raffia’s history, it unlocked deeper layers of significance, drawing forward fragments of everything I have absorbed over years of reading about culture, memory, and survival. This is where narrative becomes powerful: not only in what the artist embeds, but in what becomes activated in the encounter between artwork and witness.

This activation is a form of inheritance. Whether we understand it biologically, culturally, or psychologically, we carry vast archives within us. They shape our instincts, our attractions, our refusals, our sense of recognition. We may call it intuition, but intuition is often knowledge moving faster than explanation.

I am not suggesting that artists must aggressively uncover every symbolic thread when discussing the narrative of their work. But I am suggesting that you give yourself permission to trust the material rising to the surface. Your inclinations are rarely random. They are tethered to histories, traditions, and narrative structures that exceed individual awareness.

Perhaps a work begins in pure feeling. Yet as it moves into the world, you can ask: Why this gesture? Why this texture? Why this form and not another? What lineage might be speaking through me?

The answers may not arrive immediately. They may remain partial. But the inquiry itself deepens the narrative you tell about the work and expands its communicative force.

Power lives in that exchange—between what we can name and what we carry without language, between the archive inside the body and the object placed before us.

Born into a world that systematically withholds the most basic foundational requirements for creative risk—time, forgiveness, financial stability—many artists learn early to conceal or obscure powerful feelings in their work. Their fears. Their joy. Their rage. Their vulnerability. Not because these impulses lack value, but because expressing them would strip artists bare in a culture where clarity is punished and obfuscation is safety. So instead, much of what passes for the contemporary art scene is constrained, banal, repetitive, and defensively safe. Artists are creating scared—afraid of punishment, of banishment, of obscurity and financial ruin. The truth is that some of our most risk-taking and courageous creatives have been silenced—not by individuals, but by entrenched structures of violence.

Homeless artists don’t go to Cornish, not even when their fees are waived. The question of Where will I lay my head tonight? supersedes all else. High rent, unreliable family support, and unstable romantic partners can make creative risk and opportunity seem as abstract and impossible as a fantastical dream.

Before she was a full-time multidisciplinary creative and contemporary art agent, Ramona Lee was a working-class youth navigating housing insecurity in a rapidly gentrifying Seattle. It was 2011. Lee was 18 years old and had just arrived from Montana. The Seattle Art Museum was hosting Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso and Catherine Mayer’s The Red Popsicle was installed in Belltown.

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“My dad told me that if I was to live with him and his girlfriend that I had to go to school,” Lee said during an interview with Artists Up Close. “So, what I did was, I went to Cornish College of the Arts. And I brought my paintings in my trunk.”

Lee had been making art since childhood—entering competitions, producing drawings that consistently impressed judges, and completing the International Baccalaureate program. By the time she arrived at Cornish with her portfolio, she had the technical foundation to be taken seriously.

“They were very impressed with my work,” Lee said. “They critiqued it, asked me questions about my background, and talked about where they could see me fitting in. They told me they would waive a whole bunch of fees.”

By that point, however, housing instability was already shaping Lee’s decisions. She was living with an ex-boyfriend and working forty hours a week at a local diner to cover rent. Survival—not schooling—dictated the immediate terms of her life.

“I just forgot all about Cornish,” Lee said.

Structures. Cold, often unyielding structures shape the conditions under which artists live and work. Some move through these systems with ease—not because they are more talented or disciplined, but because the structures were built to support people like them. Others encounter only friction, constraint, and punishment within systems designed long before they were born.

Artists such as Bill Traylor, born into slavery in 1853, lived the consequences of racial and caste-based structures that reduced Black life to extractable labor while foreclosing access to education, property, and cultural legitimacy. Decades after his death in 1949, Traylor is now widely recognized as one of the most important American artists many people have never heard of—a recognition made possible only after the artist no longer required care, resources, or protection.

And while the scale and brutality of these structures have shifted over time, their underlying logic—who is supported, who is extracted, and who is left without margin for error—remains intact.

In my reading of the work, Ramona Lee’s art carries an urgency and symbolic compression that often emerge under conditions of constraint. As with artists such as Bill Traylor, this immediacy is not simply an aesthetic preference but appears to be a formal response to structures that deny time, insulation, and room for error. There is also an autobiographical dimension to Lee’s paintings—an engagement with ordinary, everyday life that functions as a form of interior documentation. This kind of work is rare, yet critical, for artists navigating systems that quietly eliminate many others on a similar path.

“I felt like our poverty affected us more than anything,” Lee said of her childhood growing up in a trailer park in Montana. “It affected how my friends’ parents treated me, but I didn’t understand that till later.” She recalled being uninvited to parties because some people saw her as a moocher. “I was always eating their beef jerky out of their fridge,” she added, noting that even one of the parents recognized it was because she didn’t have enough food at home. Before moving to Seattle, Lee spent her last two years of High School in Montana living on her own in a hotel room.

In the art world, structural exclusion is not an anomaly—it is a recurring condition. Bill Traylor, born enslaved, lived unhoused for a period and died in poverty in 1949. Only after his death—when he no longer required housing, income, or institutional care—was his work absorbed, circulated, and canonized.

What would an art world look like if it were designed to sustain structurally excluded artists while they are still alive, vulnerable, and actively producing work?

An art world that supports structurally excluded artists would have to be built on materially different assumptions than the ones we have now. At a minimum, it would require compensation standards that guarantee a living wage—including for internships—so that participation is not restricted to those subsidized by family and inherited wealth. It would treat art education as a foundational public good rather than an elective luxury, ensuring that creative development begins early and broadly, not selectively. And it would require stable housing protected by legal structures that recognize tenants as human beings rather than disposable revenue inputs in a speculative market. Without these conditions, the exclusion of working-class and precarious artists is not a failure of outreach or intention—it is the predictable outcome of a system designed to externalize risk onto those least able to absorb it.

© Copyright 2026 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

If there is one exhibition that I would consider a “must-see” before it closes on November 23rd it would be Across The Diaspora. Please check out my analysis of the artwork in this exhibition.

This article was first published in ARTE NOIR.

On view at ARTE NOIR Gallery until November 23, 2025, Across The Diaspora is a non-linear, narrative-driven exhibition that centers the voices of African descendants in the Diaspora. Part ancestral memory, part fantastical future, the works of thirteen artists serve as cultural portals—resisting assimilation, reimagining tradition, and daring to dream surreal futures.

The exhibition unfolds in a spiral, one section leading to the next, all radiating from a cluster of traditional African masks perched on pedestals. The arrangement resembles the Yowa cross — the Kongo cosmogram, a circle divided into four points marking birth, life, death, and ancestral rebirth. It becomes a fitting metaphor for the African Diaspora’s journey: a violent rupture caused by colonialism and chattel slavery, an unbroken connection to the ancestral realm, and the ultimate metamorphosis — transforming pain into light.

In Tasanee Durrett’s Tides of Liberation, raffia strands cascade from the canvas like a veil of memory—natural and untamed, familiar yet recontextualized. Raffia, a fibrous material harvested from the raffia palm, has been used for centuries across the African continent to create rope, baskets, ceremonial garments, building materials, and ritual masks. In Durrett’s hands, it becomes more than material—it becomes metaphor. Just as raffia has long been used in African ceremonies to conceal identity and invoke spiritual transformation, Tides of Liberation uses it to veil a deeper purpose: the celebration of Captain William T. Shorey, a Black whaler who secretly ferried enslaved Africans to freedom, even as he mastered the sea to sustain his own survival.

The use of materials that have spiritual significance in many African cosmologies continues in Gyambibi Akwasi’s Flower Girl, where wood and fire—elements long associated with ancestral memory, transformation, and ritual power—are harnessed not only to render form, but to inscribe Black life into a living, breathing surface that refuses erasure. Flower Girl is a technically masterful mixed-media painting that combines pyrography (wood burning) and paint to hand-build an image that is both vibrant and intricately textured, capturing surface details—like the sheen of skin and the softness of hair—that would be impossible to achieve in other mediums.

Bonnie Hopper’s Mavis in Wonderland explores a whimsical and compelling reimagining of the protagonist in Alice in Wonderland as a young Black girl—round afro, arms crossed, set against a vibrant blue background, wearing the Mad Hatter’s 10/6 hat. This oil collage on yupo paper features the rabbit/hare, symbolizing the trickster archetype in many African American and West African storytelling traditions (e.g. Wolof and Akan)—evidence that meaningful ontological artifacts made their way across the Atlantic and resisted erasure. But I would press further and say that Mavis represents the specific experiences of enslaved Africans who stepped through the door of no return into a confusing world of chaos, nonsensical rules, and cruel violence. She emerges confident and triumphant, wearing the Mad Hatter’s hat—no longer asleep, but completely aware of her own power.

Epiphany, by B. Curtis Grayson III, leans into the power of African abstract expressionism—a thick Black line swerves and spirals through the complex and layered painting, connecting a cornucopia of African patterns set against bird nest paper and adorned by what appears to be blocks of white beads. This sinuous Black line evokes the image of the helix, a term some artists and scholars use to describe the coiled structure of afro-textured hair, connecting it metaphorically to DNA, ancestry, and sacred geometry. The line becomes a powerful symbol of African lineage, threading disparate fragments of culture, memory, and identity into a unified whole.

In Rubin Quarcoopome’s every curl a miracle, every strand a wonder, a massive afro fills the upper frame—bigger than life, textured and luminous. Before it stands a lone figure, small in comparison, his head bowed in reverence, hands clasped behind his bare back. The artist challenges the viewer’s perceptions and cultural assumptions. The afro—so often maligned as unruly or unprofessional—is exalted instead. Quarcoopome inverts the hierarchy, presenting the afro as a site of reverence, awe, and sacred magnitude. Warm lighting gives the hair a topographical quality, as if its terrain could be mapped strand by strand. The surreal contrast in scale between the figure and the hair pushes the photograph beyond portraiture, transforming it into an icon of wonder.

In Mohamed Gabriel’s intimate photograph of a Sudanese Jertik ceremony, tradition is not merely depicted—it is embodied. The tightly cropped frame centers the bride’s hands, adorned with delicate henna, layered gold jewelry, red tassels, and the rich textures of ceremonial fabric. There are no faces or bridal spectators in the background—only gesture, adornment, and presence. This compositional choice shifts the viewer’s focus away from spectacle and toward embodied inheritance. The bride is not abstracted into an anonymous symbol; she is rendered specific through material culture—through rings passed down, henna inscribed by hand, tassels dyed in ancestral reds. The photograph captures a liminal moment: between girlhood and womanhood, past and future, self and collective memory. This is not the hypervisibility of the Western bridal gaze; it is the intimacy of a world that knows its own sacred rites. By centering the photograph on hands—soft, steady, adorned—Gabriel honors the gesture as archive, as portal, as promise.

Across The Diaspora isn’t simply a showcase of diasporic aesthetics—it is a declaration of presence. In addition to the artists featured earlier, the exhibition includes powerful works by Conya Gilmore, Vandorn Hinnant, Mel Isidor, Narus Jefferson (N. Carlos J.), Symonne Larison‑Jones, Desmond McFarlane, and Najee Tobin. While the works span a wide range of mediums and visual vocabularies, what binds them together is a refusal to be flattened into symbols of trauma or nostalgia. Instead, they inhabit a world of portals, surrealism, and non-linear memory. There is no single narrative here—only a constellation of lived experiences, spiritual lineages, and speculative imaginings. Many of the works demand physical presence to fully experience the textures, shadows, etched details, and layered surfaces that are impossible to capture in a photograph. This materiality matters. It reminds us that Black diasporic creativity is not merely visual but sensory, spiritual, and embodied. Even the most abstract or surreal compositions feel anchored in something older and deeper that resists easy consumption but requires layered interpretation. Across The Diaspora explores African identity as not a memory to be recovered but a force to be continually reimagined—boldly, beautifully, and on its own terms.

On view through November 23, 2025 at ARTE NOIR, Across The Diaspora features works by Tasanee Durrett, Mohamed Gabriel, Conya Gilmore, B. Curtis Grayson III, Akwasi Gyambibi, Vandorn Hinnant, Bonnie Hopper, Mel Isidor, Narus Jefferson (N. Carlos J.), Symonne Larison‑Jones, Desmond McFarlane, Najee Tobin, and Rubin Quarcoopome.

© Copyright 2025 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

In the world of art, an artist can explore beauty, love, and joy with relative ease. Such emotions are expected, celebrated—sometimes subtly required by institutions and audiences alike. And within the artistic psyche, these acceptable feelings come with little friction or resistance. But what of hate, anger, fear, and envy? Should an artist never explore these darker, more taboo human emotions? Are we willing to sit in our own discomfort when confronted with a visual representation of feelings that bring us more shame than relief? Visual artist Gamze Seckin gives us an opportunity to embrace that discomfort. Her figurative work is striking and expressive—mostly female figures alone staring into the distance with irritation, grief, rage, and other “negative” emotions etched into their visage.

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"Eco Art for Earth: How Artists Influence Environmental Change," was an inspiring interactive discussion about the intersection of creativity and environmental activism. At this unique event, we interviewed our guest artist Carrie Ziegler and uncovered how she has used art to raise public awareness of the modern behaviors threatening our planet’s future.

Take a listen!

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Many creatives mistakenly believe that art can’t impact policy decisions and societal perceptions as a whole. But the truth is that artists like Vik Muniz and our guest artist, Carrie Ziegler, prove that art can facilitate change. Vik Muniz helped change Brazil’s view of waste pickers and cultivated awareness about the importance of sustainable waste management after creating artistic portraits from recyclable garbage found in the largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro. And our guest artist, Carrie Ziegler, has used art and education to help community members better understand waste management and how it impacts our planet.

Learn How To Get Press As An Artist

Questions This Event Interview Explores

How can you ensure that art made for change remains community focused?

How do you measure the impact art made for change has on a community?

What is the importance of community collaboration when creating art made for change?

✨ Big News: I Just Published a Workbook for Artists

I’m excited to share something I’ve been working on quietly behind the scenes: my new workbook, How to Get Press as an Artist, is now live.

This isn’t just another “how-to” guide. It’s an interactive, fillable workbook designed to help artists like you stop being invisible and start getting covered. Inside, you’ll find:

• The Tanya & Mo framework — two artists, same talent, different outcomes. Why one thrives and the other struggles.

• Story Worksheets — 7 deep-dive prompts to uncover the themes, experiences, and motivations that make your work matter.

• Press Release Toolkit — with real examples and a fill-in-the-blank template you can use right away.

• Press Packet Checklist & Press List Guide — so you know exactly what to send and who to send it to.

I wrote this because too many talented artists are making powerful work but staying unseen. Press coverage isn’t just about hype — it’s about joining the larger cultural conversation and building trust with collectors, curators, and communities.

👉 You can get the workbook here: https://www.beverlyaarons.com/books

This is the first in a series of resources I’ll be releasing to support artists in building visibility, power, and sustainability in their careers. If you’ve ever wondered how to move from “unknown” to “seen,” this is where you start.

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Every painting is a constellation of life—molecular and planetary—each shape, carefully crafted by Seattle-based artist Gary Logan, presses against and evolves the other. Born in Trinidad and Tobago but raised in the U.S. since he was five, Logan understands how the world can alter a person—their form, their trajectory, the way others perceive them. It’s this awareness that breathes life into every one of his artworks.

“Nature is definitely my muse,” said Logan who collects microscopic imagery from documentaries and scientific articles. “When I'm out on hikes, I'm usually with my cell phone or with a camera taking photos that I then bring back into my studio. The result ends up being these really bizarre like biomorphic forms and masses that are populating my canvases.”

Through these ethereal and primordial forms—sculpted from foam, acrylic, natural materials, and ancient memory—Logan traverses the complex terrain of the human condition: identity, race, and sexuality.

“I also do a lot of experimenting with a wide range of different materials,” Logan said of his ability to create heavily textured surfaces, “from natural materials like paper pulp to more synthetic materials, like polyurethane foam. And I work with both of those, as well as with paint, to really push the idea of blurring the lines between two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional sculpture—basically, like relief sculptures.”

From geological to biological landscapes, Logan’s abstract paintings carry heavy but taboo unspoken narratives. His artwork Raw Cotton In Brown Skin (2020) is a rectangular patch of deep brown cowhide with white cotton bulbs embedded in it. Beige strings emerge and dangle from the piece. This work evokes painful histories—stories of enslavement, extraction, and capitalism. The leather, tanned and shiny, represents how the enslavement of African bodies was profitable, acceptable, and even considered natural and inevitable in much of the US and Caribbean. And it isn’t lost on me that the cow—much like the enslaved African—has long been stripped of its sovereign and wild state, marked, from birth to death, to serve the lifeforce of others. Raw Cotton In Brown Skin captures this reality perfectly and instantly.

I remember once as a young kid going to a tar pit which we call Pitch Lake,” Logan said of his early connection to nature in Trinidad. “I remember that had a really profound impact on me. In fact, it actually still bubbles up in a lot of my artwork today. That lake that was this gorgeous, vastness of blackness, and some parts of it were kind of a dull grayish color and other parts were jet black while other parts were iridescent. And I remember my four- or five-year-old self just being transfixed by that. Here was this lake, something that's supposed to be filled with water that was actually filled with what we call pitch or tar.”

In Trinidad, Logan was free to be the boy who was curious about nature, unconfined by any negative narratives of the world around him. He was supported by not just his family but his community. Eventually, he would immigrate to the U.S. and everything would change.

“I didn't have access to nature in the way that I freely did in Trinidad,” said Logan of the U.S. neighborhoods he grew up in. In Trinidad, he knew his neighbors and could roam freely from one house to the next. No one thought much of a young boy exploring a local beach, but in the U.S., things were different. “My parents were very, very cautious and concerned about me not drifting too far from home, not talking to strangers. And I know for them there was also this concern because of the neighborhood that we were in. It was a predominantly white neighborhood, and you never quite knew who was going to be welcoming of you. So, there was always a sense of caution that I didn't really experience so much in my formative years in Trinidad.”

As Logan grew up, he began to deeply understand what it meant to be different and judged for it. He was often the only kid of African descent in his class. His peers mocked his accent. He worked hard to eradicate it. He wanted to fit in, to sound like everyone else. He was shrinking himself, that was the cost of acceptance. But then life changed again. He moved to North Florida in his early teens where he found his tribe and a more progressive and diverse space. He could grow there. He met people like himself. He reconnected to his Caribbean heritage and his emerging sexuality. He was gifted a microscope which opened the door to the unseen natural world. And he would eventually go on to deepen his love of nature and widen his awareness of other Black gay male artists like Mark Bradford.

“I was just blown away by his work,” Logan said of visual artist Mark Bradford. “To see work by another Black gay man was incredibly powerful for me. It also made me feel really hopeful that there was going to be a space for me and what I had to say in my artistic vision. The other thing about Mark Bradford's work that I think really opened a lot of doors for me was his use of a lot of nontraditional materials. The way that he uses paper, for example, is very different from what I had learned about in art school. And the way that he combines mixed media to create these incredibly textured surfaces, and also the abstraction that is very much intrinsic to his work, was really powerful for me because I think, in a lot of ways, I got this sense that what the art world really wants to see from a lot of artists of African descent is basically this limited idea of portraiture. There's a sense that in order for a work to be considered Black art, you have to see the Black body. And there was something about Mark Bradford's work that just really went below the skin for me, but at the same time was able to talk specifically and uniquely about his experience as a man of African descent. And I think it was around that time that I really gave myself even more permission to sort of free myself from what felt like the confines of figurative art in order to make comments about the Black experience.”

A graduate of the prestigious Boston University, School for the Arts, Gary Logan has a deep grasp of form, material, and conceptual nuance, but it’s the pull of ancestral memory that gives his work its unmistakable emotional gravity and conceptual depth. He draws from a collective recollection that lives not just in the mind, but in the body—etched into flesh, coded into molecules, and passed down through time.

“Is it possible that the struggles of some of my great-grandmothers had an impact on my development, on a genetic level, on my own psyche, and so forth,” Gary Logan asked of the impact of epigenetics. “It has been a theme that I've been exploring pretty consistently in my work that fits very much along with like what I want to talk about: The influence of nature in my work and how genetics might be playing a role in our lives. I mean, I definitely do believe in that balance between nature and nurture, but I'm particularly fascinated by how these two concepts really merged, especially when you think about epigenetics and the way in which maybe there are specific diseases that might be plaguing a population. And I do understand that a lot of it has a great deal to do with our ability to adapt; but I'm really fascinated by what might be lingering within our genes, especially the experiences that were really traumatic. And yes, there's a psychological way in which trauma can be passed on from generation to generation, but I'm really fascinated by the concept of how trauma can be passed on psychologically, but also perhaps even genetically.”

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We know that all humans carry an epigenetic legacy that we usually associate with collective trauma and survival; but does that epigenetic inheritance also manifest in the art we create? Some artists and scientists say yes. Research into transgenerational epigenetic inheritance has shown that traumatic experiences—such as famine, war, and displacement—can leave molecular markers on DNA that influence how genes are expressed in future generations. In 2014, a landmark study from Emory University demonstrated that mice could inherit fear responses to specific smells—a finding that sparked broader discussions about how human responses to ancestral trauma might also be biologically encoded. Artists working within diasporic, Indigenous, and post-colonial frameworks have taken up these insights, suggesting that art itself can emerge from inherited memory—shaped not only by personal experience, but by the silent, cellular imprints of what came before. And while Gary Logan has explored these ideas in his work and his research, he doesn’t believe that epigenetic imprints should completely define who we are or what we explore in our art.

“I definitely want to create work that speaks to my experiences of what I'm witnessing in this day and age where there is still a lot of like racial strife and a lot of racial conflict,” Logan said. “But then there are times that I also just want to be a human being, and not just a Black man or not just a gay man that's creating art that's Black art or just gay art.”

As an arts journalist, I’ve interviewed many creatives through the years, and I’ve noticed that there is sometimes an additional burden placed on racialized artists to make visible (in their art) the pain they experience at being othered. And some racialized artists feel compelled to construct “looking glasses” so that others can catch a glimpse of their experiences. This can place them in the unenviable position of becoming essentialized, grotesque spectacles—visible but never truly seen. Again and again, artists tell me they want the freedom to explore the full depth and breadth of their humanity—not just their wounds.

“I'm also wanting my work to be speaking about universal themes, for example, our connection to and our impact on nature, and how we are radically transforming this planet to the point that scientists now have a name for this particular period: the Anthropocene,” said Logan, “a time marked by how human beings are radically transforming this planet like a force of nature. We have become a force of nature and there are times that I want my work to comment on those different ideas. So, being able to have the flexibility and the fluidity to speak about issues of identity as well as issues about my environmental concerns or our connection to this planet is something that I find myself having to give myself permission to do that.”

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Stern and powerful matriarchs are central to most Thai families — they’re not big on hugs but they will “yell at the people that need to be yelled at in your defense,” filmmaker Champ Ensminger said during a telephone interview. Ninlawan Pinyo, Ensminger’s grandmother and the central character in his short documentary Yai Nin, is a matriarch who defies all Western stereotypes of what it means to be an Asian woman — she’s feisty, confident, and the owner of the successful Naem Pinyo sausage factory in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But it wasn’t until after Ensminger moved back to Chiang Mai in 2013 that he began to witness the breadth of Pinyo’s personal power and her willingness to wield it to protect her family.

“The neighbors thought I was with a bunch of white backpacker folks trying to grow weed,” Ensminger said of the day his grandmother rescued him from Thai immigration police. The truth was that he was working with the nonprofit Documentary Arts Asia to build a theater and exhibition space. But nonetheless he found himself and the other volunteers covered in dirt from the construction site and sulking in front of the immigration office. Pinyo arrived at the office and demanded to see the manager.

After “twenty minutes of raised voices in Thai and some yelling,” Ensminger said that his grandmother exited the office and said to him, “I’ll see you later. Just let me know when you’re done with your thing,” then she left with her driver. Moments later an immigration officer stepped out of the office and “profusely” apologized to Champ.

“She was such an authority for her age,” Ensminger said. And the magnetism of that authority and the power of her personality were recognized by other filmmakers, who suggested that Ensminger document her story. At first he was hesitant, but he warmed to the idea after encouragement from the Asian filmmaking scene. But getting his grandmother on board with a documentary wouldn’t be so easy. Pinyon is a private person; Ensminger couldn’t just sit her down and ask that she share her story with the world — that would be a little too direct. The conversation happened over time with the help of Ensminger’s mother. He had to assure his grandmother that the film would be well done and that he would maintain the integrity of his family’s story.

Telling Pinyon’s story was just the beginning of Ensminger’s cinematic exploration; he also wanted to capture Chiang Mai as it existed during his grandmother’s youth in the 1940’s. Fortunately, there are parts of the city that are perfectly preserved as if in “a time capsule, just like my grandmother” whose daily routines haven’t changed in decades, Ensminger said. And Yai Nin’s music score, composed by Bangkok born Satta Rojanagatanyoo, transports the viewer back through time with music reminiscent of the Thai pop stars of that era.

Yai Nin uncovers just a tiny slice of one woman’s extraordinary life journey, but if Ensminger had an opportunity to dig deeper he would ask his grandmother “if she had any regrets [about] not being present for her family” living in the United States. He knows that it’s a sensitive subject — most of the family immigrated, Pinyo stayed behind and visited when she could — but he said it might be cathartic for her to discuss the issue. Ensminger isn’t so sure his grandmother would be willing to explore such a vulnerable place. “She’s a very guarded woman,” he said, “and I admire her for that, but [that means] there’s a line that we may not be able to cross.”

In Yai Nin, it’s clear that Pinyo has a familial connection to the factory workers. In one scene, a worker is brought to tears as she describes how Pinyo is like a mother to her. The documentary is filled with intimate moments like this where Pinyo is referred to as mother and the workers as family. But even in the midst of those close connections, Pinyo’s successor has not been named.

“The future of the factory and the business probably doesn’t lie in our family,” Ensminger said. The relatives in the U.S. have established their own lives, and they probably won’t return to Chiang Mai. “It’s very likely that my grandmother will sell it to one of the workers or someone who has been very close with the factory.”

Champ Ensminger is certain that his future is in the filmmaking industry, but after more than two years spent producing Yai Nin, he’s hyper aware of the time required.

“This project has definitely been a test of slow-cooking an idea and making sure that you haven’t dropped the ball …” Ensminger said. My fear is [that] if I’m really committed — like a lifer, as far as filmmaking goes — the best things that I want to make are going to take decades.”

The love of cinema runs in Ensminger’s family. When he was a kid, he and his cousins would “nerd out” on martial arts movies, and for years his grandmother has been a huge fan of action flicks like the Fast and Furious franchise. And while Ensminger has visions of expanding his craft into the narrative film space, for now he feels at home with documentaries.

He isn’t sure what topic he will explore in his next documentary, but Ensminger said he has a strong interest in the story of immigrant kids working in family restaurants. “I had a good number of relatives who owned restaurants in Spokane,” he said, “and my cousins and I all grew up playing with pots and pans in the kitchen, and the dishwasher would be our babysitter.” The film Roma by Alfonso Cuaron inspired him because it explores history from the vantage point of “someone you would think of as very small” or someone you wouldn’t notice, he said. That small and overlooked character would be the “restaurant kids watching their parents struggle through trying to own a business and [trying to be] taken seriously in a country where they don’t speak the language … I thought it would be a powerful story.”

Watch Yai Nin online now. Also, support Champ Ensminger’s next project, a science fiction film.

This article was originally published in South Seattle Emerald and has been updated and revised.

Publisher’s Note

I want to extend a warm thank you to everyone who reached out after I was attacked on the street by a stranger. There are so many unwell people in this world and so little help offered to them, but your kindness has been a balm to my spirit. I’m grateful that I was able to physically defend myself, but the experience has still left its mark. Thank you for your grace as I continue walking this path of healing.

Beverly Aarons 00:35

Thank you. Welcome everyone. My name is Beverly Aarons. I'm the founder of artists up close, we tell stories. We tell artists stories before they're famous. And it's the honor of me, for me to sit here Joe, Joe's like, bless you now, to have this event with Joe Cosme and to talk about this important topic, I want to thank the grocery studios, Janet and Demi for making this possible and accepting our request to come here and have this event, and thank all of you for coming. And so the way that this is going to work is that Joe is going to introduce herself first, then we'll have a conversation between Joe and I, and then we'll open it up so that we can have an interactive conversation where you can add your thoughts, you can ask questions, and make this more of a discussion than anything else. Okay, okay, let's get started. Okay, so as you already know, my name is Joe Cosmere. First of all, thank you all so much for coming here. Thank you Beverly and Janet and Demi for helping facilitate this.

Jo Cosme 01:53

So yes, I am a multidisciplinary artist from borique, also known as Puerto Rico. I moved here, like around 2018 which is a year after Hurricane Maria, exactly more or less in search. Yes, normally people move out of unstable countries the search for a better life, more job, and then being here, I was, like, shocked with the lack of understanding and knowledge in regards to how US imperialism looks like in the case of boricu Puerto Rico. So I got re inspired. I had quit making art because I had no time or money for it, and then here I got the opportunity, and was lucky enough to get a bunch of grants and access to things that made me be able to go back to making art and decided to work on this topic to help educate. It was also like a way of me to navigate my own survivor guilt and displacement, displacement issues. I was like, What can I do outside of Puerto Rico? I could be helping them out while being so far away. How can I continue fighting? How can I continue resisting? How I can continue you know that activism work, so doing this type of art is what helped me navigate all of that. So that's why you oh and sorry. So what you see here is just like a like a very small version of a way bigger body of work.

Beverly Aarons 03:16

And if you could just take us through each piece here, we have

Jo Cosme 03:24

Welcome to paradise. Here the VR experience. Tell us, tell us about this piece first with the correct with this one. So the multimedia series is called Welcome to Paradise, viva, Puerto Rico libre, because I am playing with the duplicity of like what a from an outsider perspective, is expected to see as Puerto Rico like a paradise versus what we experience on the ground, where there is a lot of like, need and claiming of liberation and Viva Puerto Rico libre just translates to Long live a free and sovereign Puerto Rico. So it's like those two things in one, in the title for the whole series, starting here. So this is like two works in one, the VE gigante. The ve gigante would be a folkloric mask that we inherited from our West African indigenous Taino and Spanish times, well, it has like been reclaimed for by the oriquoi, in turn, into a different symbol now, so now in current times, it just represents, like a symbol of cultural resistance against double colonization, which started with the Spanish and now with the North America, or us so. And then I turned it into inflatable. Because, to me, like, we know this symbol very well, and how it like, encompasses, like, a lot of resistance against these things. But then with the you know, when cultural appropriation happens, a lot of things lose their meaning. So it's kind of like a cynical take on, like Disney World version of. A very important symbol for us. So that's why it's inflatable. And then the VR would be la playa son del pueblo, or the beaches belong to the people. It comes from a protest chance that we still are doing in all the many beaches in Puerto Rico who are trying to be privatized for touristic or settler reasons. So I went to Puerto Rico, and I had a 360 camera stuck on the ground. Got a 360 view of the beach, and a beach that is currently actually like, not very well known for people who are not from Puerto Rico. So it's, yeah, it's one of those few beaches that we can go, and we are still a majority a lot of other beaches, we are a minority now, and we feel foreign in our homeland. So I kind of wanted to, like, take a nod also to just what Manifest Destiny looks like in like old paintings. Is a 360 version of that. But then I juxtaposed it with a protest chant, kind of saying like, this is not for you to be taking from us. So it's like, again, those two things like the what consumerist voyeuristic perspective of the beach paired with the reality of what is going on on the island. So that is this, and you have three particulars in the back here, yes. And first off, how many is in the complete body of work? Currently there's six. There will be more. Okay, so we've got three of them back here. If you could just tell us what people are looking at when they see this. Yes. So the lenticular series is titled battle for Paradise.

Jo Cosme 06:41

So I again, step playing with the two realities in one, funny enough, when I have lived in Puerto Rico my entire life, and I didn't know that there were a gated neighborhoods within gated neighborhoods that are majority North American. So I I, how do you say illegally snuck in, broke in. I don't know. Anyway, I have from France. We figured it out, got in there, and I just went in with my camera, took all these photos, ran out, and then paired it with what I am used to seeing every day. There's a lot of these photos, actually, that are taken after the hurricane in 2019 2020, 2022, and the houses still look the same. The streets look the same. There's many houses without roofs still. So I was just bearing, like, why? Like, what is paradise like? Kind of questioning like, how can people call a place paradise? From the local population is, like, more than half in poverty, and this is the thing that we live every day. We don't have access to the pretty pristine beaches like we do to some, but others we have lost because of privatization, which is illegal too. So it's kind of like, Why? Why do you call this paradise and we cannot. Why can you come visit and get the best out of my own land? But I cannot. Like, what? How do you call that paradise? So who can afford paradise? Who can afford humanity, you know? So that's what the lenticular series is encompassing.

Beverly Aarons 08:06

In our previous conversation, you talked about how, after the hurricane, and that just the hurricane, all the challenges that Puerto Rico faces,there's a phenomenon that's called Disaster Capitalism. Can you talk a little bit about what disaster capitalism is and how it has impacted you as someone who's indigenous or Puerto Rico

Beverly Aarons 08:40

Boricua

Jo Cosme 08:41

Boricua anyway, so thank you. Sorry. Do a shout out. So, okay, disaster capitalism. So Disaster Capitalism is something that was coined by a philosopher of political social sciences called Naomi Klein. She's from Canada.

Jo Cosme 09:08

I have two books to shout out, which is Shock Doctrine is a little bit bigger. But then if you want to only read about disaster capitalism, in regards to Puerto Rico, she wrote another book called by which is where I got my name inspired for that anticourse battle for Paradise, disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico is the name of the book. It's both in English and Spanish, really small, easy to read anyway, so that's where a lot of this came from as well. Reading those books inspired me. So Disaster Capitalism is a term now referring to when a land loses monetary value, and people come and settle and take up land. This happened very recently in Hawaii with the fires, and he's a it happens in many other places as well. In the in the case of Puerto Rico, it happened clearly after the hurricane. It happened happening a little bit before then, but after the hurricane, it kind of just like exactly. Surveyed. It like people just like started coming in a corrupt government also is offering incentives for North American interests, so they don't have to even pay taxes and stuff like that. So whereas we pay the higher taxes if we were a state, they don't pay anything. So it just creates an uneven ground for us to be able to even coexist. There's a lot of power dynamics in play when it comes to that. And then, because of that, also when they come in, they think they own the place. So they come to us and be like, well, I own you. And this type of, really, this type of dynamic happens very often, like they literally have said this to my friend's face. They I, when I come visit all my friends have like, hundreds of stories like that, and I feel like it's only getting rapidly worse with time. So I don't know if I even answered the question, but absolutely okay,

Beverly Aarons 10:53

we had quite a layered conversation about this. Yes, you talked about how people come in and take possession of the land, including the beaches, yes, which is something you speak to in the VR experience, correct? And really your particulars also,but also, we discussed how people come in and rewrite the story of the people, right? We had a conversation about your experience as someone who is indigenous of a Ricoh but who is also an artist, and how you had to discover that indigeneity. Can you talk a little bit about that discovery and also how that impacted your work and your perspective as an artist.

Jo Cosme 11:49

Okay, so in Puerto Rico, we're not really like some of us do grow up with like my grandpa, for example. He is very like into Santeria. He practices like West African and Taino you know, things. And he was also like, yeah, so I grew up with a little bit of that. But then when you grow up in the in the colonial school, you are taught to always look up to America, like the US, and disconnect yourself from that, like indigeneity and like non claim and in like, to your own identity, to your own land. And I feel like I was reading, listening to podcasts in Hawaii, where it was kind of similar, where you're, like, a with a blood quantum, and also, like, in other ways of how the colonial system makes you, like, disconnect to that identity. So it's better, easier to take up the land, because you yourself lose your own identity. So, like, if you don't have that a power to claim what is, like yours or your land, then then it's easy to be like, yes, yes. Like, concept blur. So it's kind of the same thing as we did. Was like, dinos, for example, they had, like, not only a physical genocide, but a paper genocide as well, where, after a while you couldn't even identify as a tiny or indigenous so. So that's been embedded in our own system for all this time now this new generation, myself included, we're trying to relearn all of this and have power and that reclamation of our like indigenous heritage and and land. And I feel like that is also part of why now a lot of more people are, like, more a confident taking up the streets, taking up the land, and being like, No, you are you are foreign here. You do not have a claim to this. So with all these people coming in, so, for example, in Puerto Rico, we say gringo go home. But it's not very different from saying land back. It's the same. It's just go away. Also, the Tainos are another not federally recognized tribe, which is also part of like how it's easier to take your land if you don't even recognized as a nation. You know, in the case of Puerto Rico, we're not we're not nothing, we're not like our own country, we're not a state. We're like floating so it's just very like it's so nuanced and complicated. But I hope, I hope I'm doing a good job at explaining it.

Beverly Aarons 14:09

Just to clarify, and I'm sure everyone probably knows this is in this room, but Puerto Rico is a territory of the US, right? So let's just clarify that. But even that is something that has been made invisible. Can you talk about that experience of people here on the mainland, right, not actually being able to connect to the idea, the reality that the people in Puerto Rico, or that the Puerto Rican land mass is is a territory of the US. Tell me about that extent.

Jo Cosme 14:52

So Puerto Rico is a colony. It's just fancier. Term is used, Commonwealth. Territory, but it is a colony. The UN made it illegal for nations to have colonies. I can't remember exactly the date, because I'm terrible with numbers, but it happened, and because of that,they changed the wordingso they wouldn't get their wrists left. But nothing changed. It's still a colony. And that is why, when I saw history books quote Puerto Rico to be the oldest colony. It comes from that, because it never stopped. It was colonized by the Spanish, and then it got just transferred onto the US, and it has never stopped. So since the 1500s it never stopped being a colony in the US, for example, if you look up on Google the insular cases, you will find that these territories, which is like five, all of us, are classified as a how do you Say? I'm gonna paraphrase, is they called. It's not savage tribes that are not fit to self govern you. That is still to this day, since 1900s if you look it up, it is still under that all Guam Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virginia islands, all of us, like are under that and actually, that is also why I did that piece over there with the car T Spencer. Part of my like, Reclaiming my own background and history, has been doing all this research that we're not even taught on Puerto Rico, even even less so in the United States. So Ihave l ike finding more and more information. We don't know that in Puerto Rico, the insular crisis, I only found out because I finally had the privilege of time to sit down and read and research. But while when you're in Puerto Rico, you're just surviving all the time, you don't have time to be like reading unless you you have access to it

Beverly Aarons 17:02

isn't isn't it also true, I think we talked about this, that on the island, you were not able to access books about the history, Right? Tell us about how you came here and discover a lot of this history you know outside.

Jo Cosme 17:26

So there are old, old books that you can find in the public library, in the public school, a university, but that's, that's, that's it, if you like, your entire life in high school, all you know is the US is the best. They're gonna save us. That's all we hear. So when you unless you already have a family, that is very like proliferation and you know, but that is, it's not very common. And as we all know, like you take away the education of the people, you can control them better. So I feel like that is the case in Puerto Rico. They keep us uneducated on purpose.

Jo Cosme 18:03

And so there's a lot of power in looking, seeking this information. So but on the other hand, a lot of this history is told by word like word of mouth. So going to a bar, even you like, hang out with elders, going to the mountains, stuff like that. Some people have a lot of stories, and you hear them, and then you can, kind of like trace the dots, which is also why I did that card the card dispenser is kind of like a way to, like the word of mouth and tell us, tell us what's in the card dispenser so that people can expect, yes. So the card dispenser. Now there is a lot of more books that you can find, but I also had to find them after there is now a new book called Puerto Rico national history. It's new. It's also in English and Spanish, and I have starting from the dino times up a little bit after the hurricane. So it's a lot of information, but it's not that big of a book. Anyway. That card dispenser is a lot of the research that I was doing to learn, but then I I figured I'd also spread the knowledge, because I feel like that is meant for everybody. So it's titled The history of forgetfulness, called, coming from a Spanish expression like Toria de reveal, which is kind of like with because of that lack of documentation and access to that, or if there is, there's like, a lack of access to it, easy access, you tend to forget what happened. So there's this notion of like, like, it happened a long time ago, you know, but it didn't really and it's happening all over again. So, and then, for example, it's like, settlers coming in and being like, No, I'm investing in this land. I'm doing good for you. It's kind of like, hasn't this happened, like, many times over and over again, in different ways. This is just a modern version of the same thing. So for me, that doing that, it was like I was tracing the the like, filling in. Gaps, really, of the history books, both in Puerto Rico and the US, of the reality of what it is to be impacted by US imperialism in the case of Puerto Rico. And then on the cards as well, I have a QR code at the bottom. And then through that QR code, you have access to all of the cards, so you can read all of them, and then also all of the podcast, books, articles, YouTube, videos, whatever form that you like to consume your like education on a list that I made, and then also another list that is meant for a donation of time or money to grassroots organizations in Puerto Rico trying to rebuild. So all of that is on in those cards.

Jo Cosme 20:45

And one other thing I wanted to touch on is the documentary that you have streaming, if you could just briefly tell folks what they can expect and what that documentary is showcasing. Yeah, so the documentary is done by another Boricua from the island. Her name is Bianca growlau, and she's an independent journalist. So, as we all know, Independence journalists are like the most reliable source. So she is has been English and Spanish. Have a YouTube channel and a podcast like saying all this information that is happening currently, and so through bad bunny, because that bunny is such a, like, worldwide, known celebrity right now, he kind of did this trap of, like, I have this music video of four minutes, and then all of a sudden, boom, a documentary. And then this documentary is by Bianca, and the documentary is about the current problem with the US influx of like gentrification. What, how the settling and the tourism has been partaking in the in the Super Rapid gentrification and pushing out of the native communities and like so the documentary and the Airbnbs all this stuff. So the documentary, like, talks about that, and it's horo aqui vive gente, which is like people still live here because of sin Puerto Rico as a paradise or a vacation resort. People forget that people live there is not just a place to go consume and

Beverly Aarons 22:24

there's also another interesting aspect to this is that because of the lack of investment, the lack of recovery assistance and support, many people have left Puerto Rico right, yourself included, at least for now. Yeah, and we talked in our previous conversation a little bit about the impact of that, if we can unpack that a little bit, tell me, as an artist, leaving the place that you grew up in and coming here to talk about your experiences there, what? What has that been like for you? Because it's almost like you're coming outside of yourself, right? To talk about something that it's just like a fish coming out of water, to talk about water, you know, like, I imagine, I don't have to imagine, actually, I know you're older, yeah, but if you could share and talk about what that experience is like for you,

Jo Cosme 23:29

Oh, wow. It's been, it's been a journey, as they say now, so stepping out was was dramatizing. It was it was hard, struggling with displacement and survivors guild is is not easy. But the silver lining in that is that, as I mentioned now, I had the privilege of time. And with the privilege of time came being able to process everything I went through with the hurricane and before and my family, the i We have suicide rates are super high. We have a lot of friends. I've lost a lot of friends because of that. Family members that have died because of medical my practices, because they're not a lot of doctors, so I have, first hand, have to experience all the, yeah, the lack of bodies in Puerto Rico to keep us healthy, and the colony just slowly kills you. It is we are now also saying that we feel that there is another Puerto Rico has been ongoing with an ethnic cleansing for since the beginning, and it's just happening all over again, because, like part I was reading about genocide, and part of genocide is also displacing a mass of people from their land, as was happening in Puerto Rico. And currently, Puerto Rico is mostly an An archipelago of older folks with no access to medical things. So it's, yeah, it's sad, and I feel like that's also how bad money now released the album with culture, culture, culture, because he's like, we don't want to, want to disappear. We're like, holding on as much as we can. So when I came here to answer your question, I had a kind of a similar thing a little bit before this album release, was like, I wanted, I was like, I felt like, desperate to, like, cling on to what is me? Because everything in Seattle feels so like, like cold, not just the weather, but like, everything was so so, so different from what I'm used to, culturally speaking, socially speaking, legal like, everything is so different that I just, like, had to cling on to, like, to my but boricuan is to Puerto Rico, you know, to my people as much as I could, because, like, I didn't want to lose myself, because the code switching alone already makes you lose yourself a lot, you know, in the second language is like, No, you can't be too loud. You can't be too aggressive, you know. So it was really intense to mold and dilute my personality to fit into Seattle. But what came from that also is, after I got I got over that depression. Now I'm just like, I don't care deal with it. And, yeah, that's why I've been doing a lot of reading. I've been trying to find power in that, in my identity and and try to find empathy and understanding and more people to help us out.

Beverly Aarons 26:38

I want to go back to the artwork. And like I want to go back to the artwork and talk about how this, when this first came together, and why you decided to put this collection of work together.

Jo Cosme 26:58

So this all started after COVID. Um, I did not want to do art anymore, and then I met Hanako, who's a local artist. She's somewhere around here. Yeah, shout out to Hanako. Hanako, when I met her, she was pretty like, established here, and she started talking to me about grants and residencies and art calls. And I was like, what is that? What I went to art school in Puerto Rico, but we never get taught that. I was like, what people pay you to work for what? Damn so I was like, who knows, you know? And then I got really lucky, and I got started getting funding, and I this whole project. I just didn't even have, like, a portfolio for it, because I used to be a photographer, and so I mostly have photographs from, like, my photo journalism work, and also some of the art stuff that I did and like, kind of like, created it as a concept, and that's what I used to say, like, but I'm working on this other thing, and luckily, people could see the vision behind it. So they started funding me with grants and and I went off to some residencies in Massachusetts, Bremerton, I just came back from one in Colorado. And so with that, I was able to to do all of this, because without those brands, there was no way. Yeah, and then just wanting to represent Puerto Rico over here and have people just hear us out.

Beverly Aarons 28:41

It's interesting, because if you had remained in Boricua,

Jo Cosme 28:48

what again? Yeah, sorry, no, you're good. It's a new word.

Beverly Aarons 28:55

Maybe you wouldn't have had access to those resources. That's kind of the irony, right? Oh, yeah. But in that displacement, yeah, you were able to get access to these resources. Can you talk a

Jo Cosme 29:09

little little bit about that? Yeah, it's kind of heartbreaking, because I would rather be back home, um, I also feel like this work wouldn't have the same impact there, because we all know it. So it's kind of I am grateful. Like it's strange to say I'm grateful to have been displaced and re traumatized, but I am, in a way, because I learned so much, and I learned to appreciate, also, as cliche as it sounds, what I had I the only reason why I'm not there right now is because not only is it really hard, but also I just want to finish this chapter, and I want to be able to travel with this show and show it in other places, in the US, to then close it in Puerto Rico. And obviously my dream is to come back we all. Dream and wanting to come back. So I hope, I hope, eventually I'll be able to come back. I want to live in a mountain. But yeah, yeah, I definitely very grateful for the opportunities that I have had here and the support that I have had here.

Beverly Aarons 30:20

And earlier, you said that you were thinking about giving up on art. Why was that?

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Jo Cosme 30:26

I didn't like the it was too a lot of the art where else we all know is very vain. It's very superficial, it's very clicky. It's a cool kids club, and I don't fit in there, like, especially in the US, like, where I just, I hope I have social anxiety, let alone a second language or in another culture is too much. And so I was just like, oh, I guess in Puerto Rico, I couldn't do it. I didn't have the funds of the time. And then we hear, I was like, how where am I gonna start? And that's why Hanukkah was so essential when she showed up in offering me, like schooling me and how to write for grants in English and and all of that. Oh, so sorry. I kind of like, yeah, what was it? My bad coming at

Beverly Aarons 31:22

right? Out right now, when we talked earlier, when we talked so we actually interviewed Joe months ago. Yes, and that interview, the article for that is going to come out. But I fell in love with her work, what she was doing, the importance, because I have a parent who also is from an island that was a colony, in many ways, still is right. So there's something that really touched me about that so. But when we had our conversation, part of that conversation was the technical challenges that you kind of faced like you wanted to do the VR experience, and then you had to kind of learn that. Tell me about the process of learning how to create this 360 VR experience for folks. Yes,

Jo Cosme 32:17

so I'm not very tech savvy, but I mean, I've had to learn. I'm not very tech savvy. I know photography, so as far as video, but like 360 sound, all this stuff, no, and I just, I come from a place as we although it's an island, it's a colony. So you learn, if we say sin exist, that in benta, it's kind of like, if it doesn't exist, you make it up. So I, that's my backbone. So I kind of, like, always like, well, if I ever I'll figure it out. Like, so I have this idea in the art thing. I'm like, I don't know how to sew, but I see it this way, so I'm gonna figure it out. And I never let anything your roadblock is like, I just try, try, try, until I get it. And that's also why I wanted to do multimedia, because I feel photography kind of was limiting me. So I was like, Well, I want to see this everywhere. I want people to be immersed there. How do I figure that out? And then, like, going to art shows and talking to people researching what's new and new media Virtual Reality pop up. And I was like, Oh, right. I was like, I remember in the 90s, I was like, starting in the video game department, and then, and then I was like, I wanted to make a 360 so I started, like, YouTube tutorials, so on, so forth. And that's how I do with everything. I'm kind of like, well, I don't know. I'll learn it. I'll figure it out nice.

Beverly Aarons 33:39

And with that, I want to ask everyone in the audience to just tell us the impact of this experience. How did this experience impact you as someone who maybe knows about Puerto Rico, who doesn't right? So let's just take one or two folks, okay, and then greenish shirt. This

Audience member 34:07

is the map is probably my favorite artwork, because, you know, from my knowledge of Puerto Rico history, I know that from 1898 Spanish. Word where the US got the Puerto Rican medicine from the Spanish people never get the chance to, like, depend independence, and I think I don't exactly know, like, the history now, but I think it's really straightforward, and it's like screaming for independence. And also, like, the message is really clear. And also a little bit about me, and also, I came from China, and. Been here for 10 years, and I can really understand a little bit about your background and all the struggles that you have, especially when you said you don't have any found in Puerto Rico, and how hard it is to be an artist and you have to get found in America. And I'm also doing, like, the internship for University of Washington study there. I'm an environmental studies major. I would really, I'm doing an art scene right now. Oh, and I would

Jo Cosme 35:32

really love to enter with you. Oh, Oh, damn, yeah. Thank you for that. That's right there.

Beverly Aarons 35:45

The greenish, greenish.

Audience member 35:48

First of all, thank you now so funny enough, thank you. I must focus the short film and the ad, pop numbers, perfect timing and ad while watching the documentary sponsored ad right after crying, I crying. Wow, no, this, this is perfect, coming from Bermerton. Just like, oh my god, horrible moment. I'm really, really powerful. I had someone tell me, why don't you go back home? Wait, what? Sorry. Someone told me, why don't you go back home? Okay, never had telecoms identified as American up until last week the album, though, but this, here in Washington, we're really far from happening. A lot of people forget we exist. But stuff like this, they need to see it or to understand why we are who we are. You know, people think you just have the flag to have it. You don't know it was illegal in 1948 until the US made the Puerto Rican flag. You see today, people don't know that, like you say, even the island, sometimes they don't. We need to spread the word, especially here, I don't know, like I was so excited Puerto Rican tear, because I've never seen it in Washington. Never seen us.

Jo Cosme 36:57

Yeah? So thank you. Yeah, thank you. I wanted to play it outside. Yeah.

Audience member 37:14

This is really perfect, right now is the perfect time to have Yeah, because people are paying attention. People see who Batman is they. See we sold out every single show that you do. It for residency sold out. Thank you. Super excited. Anything to support, right?

Jo Cosme 37:29

Yeah. Thank you very much for saying all of that and for coming from brand my friends. Oh, actually, before I forget, sorry, I have a show in November at Arts, at King Street Station. So there will be this and like, double the amount, and then I'm also curating. Part of it is going to be artists from the archipelago touching on the same subject for a whole lot of that as well. So y'all are invited November 6 this year.

Audience member 37:58

That's it. Question. Know the story of this? And do they know that this is a beach town?

Jo Cosme 38:06

Yeah, this is a beach town. I try to do part of I do like totalitarian stuff too, like T shirts, beach towels, tote bags with all these messages for the people in Puerto Rico to use as protest sign everywhere they go. If you put this in the beach, you see it's like, right there. You don't need to be like marching. It's right there. And then you can have it on your shirt. Now it's happening a lot more, even like other artists are also doing it. I'm part of that wave of artists. It's like, so people can have access to to everyday things and also continue fighting. So that's where that beach dowel comes from. Thank you so much.

Audience member 38:53

Thank you so much for doing this. I moved to the States when I was 16 years old, so I feel very much almost every day we definitely know, yeah, like, really, really hard that bunny has always I do get totally tied, really, like, reinvigorated, like, my desire to connect with, you know, my my heritage, but I have such A weird perspective when it comes to this piece, because to me, it looks whimsical, like you're celebrating, like a very much our culture, like beach culture, like all this stuff is so I mean, I look at it, I'm like, Yeah, I remember that shit that was so much fun. And then the mask that's part of our culture is such a good, such a strong symbol of our culture. I have no idea until you just mentioned that, that it's also a symbol of resistance. And I mean, so I, as you're explaining the work, I'm like, having all the fucking feelings, like going through all this other I had no idea what this is about, actually. So really effective, really beautiful. And, like, just. The way that I wasn't expected, expecting it all. But yeah, thank you so much, and I really hope you continue like doing these events. Yeah, everybody gets to learn more about what we're doing. Is resistance.

Jo Cosme 40:13

Yes. Thank you very much. Beautiful words. Thank you.

Beverly Aarons 40:22

You have another Oh, there.

Audience member 40:30

Thank you. This is amazing. We just recently done your work, and we're from Costa Rica, I think I know you.

Jo Cosme 40:47

Thank you for coming. Yeah, and

Audience member 40:53

we're from Costa Rica. We experience, of course, in our country, something very similar this political corruption, oligarchs owning all this land and selling it. Taking all this arrangement is terrible, and our people have lost a lot of land and access to food beaches, and it's and it's incredible when you're here, how little people know that, and just the whole history of Latin America and how the US has been involved in all the coups and all the dictatorships, and it's in some and again, you do this here, and it feels very refreshing, because kind of like this is a place to Talk about it, yeah? Because we all know it back home in the Irish communities, like, yeah, we're preaching to the same crowd. We're never going to have the political class that are the culprits of these things coming to our shows and, you know, paying attention to these things. So when you do things like this, it, you know, it's very helpful. Yeah, we're very grateful for being here today and thank you for the work. It's Thank

Jo Cosme 42:07

you. Thank you, Gracia. I also loved your documentary. Oh, my God. Thank you for that. Also related to it a lot.

Beverly Aarons 42:23

Great. Do we have another comment about the work, or a question in the back I can't see, so you guys have to be rip my eyes. I mean,

Audience member 42:41

Michael says, main thing that happened in Costa Rica, and I want to add that it's very interesting when you are here and you know somebody, and it's like, yeah, we're from Costa Rica, and they're like, oh yes, we've been there, right? Like, everybody, yeah, yeah, same, why are you going here? There is the Paradise, very important for us. Always very uncomfortable. Yeah, next to the paradise that you usually go, and we can't go that you were talking about. It's very interesting. Like, no, we are from the city, and it's happening all of these. And he's not like that, but you're like so it's for us, it's too important this too, because it's a way, obviously it's different the story, right? The colony of Puerto Rico, a different result with Costa Rica, but is the same. It's like people doesn't know just they go, and it's not that you can't go, obviously. But the problem is that when people go to Costa Rica, they know going in, and they are not going like to know what is going on in their communities, right? What is happening in that country? It seems like it's super rich, and it's like this central America country that is incredible, and there's no wars, but it's happening a lot. So it's the least that you can do when you are foreign, like we do here, right? Like to know about the culture and to know about what is going on in the government, right? Like, what are the politics here? So when you go there, you need to do that too. And the problem is that then, because here, obviously people have more money so they can buy the lands go to Costa Rica, to everything is private, that you can go to the beach right there is private access, and is illegal. You can't do that. So it's important to do the work here and to talk about that, because a lot of people doesn't know. And it's not just because they don't know. They give a shit about it. This. Because they don't know. So it's nice that you have thesepeople come.

Beverly Aarons 45:07

Thank you so much. Thank you very yes

Jo Cosme 45:10

on the dot.

Beverly Aarons 45:19

Just to kind of that comment brought something up for me, this idea of telling the truth about a place but also avoiding the trauma porn, right? How do you balance that in your word?

Jo Cosme 45:40

Yeah, I thought about that so much. Okay, so I always, when I do my work, I kind of am like, if this kind of like borderline trauma porn or what. So a lot of times I ask people who are not from Puerto Rico, what they are understanding from it. And that's also another thing I use Hanukkah for. She's learned everything through me. And then I like, what do you see when you see this? And she kind of, like, keeps me accountable. And like, oh, this may be read like, this way or the other way, and but at the end of the day, I've got a lot of like, when I ask that, a lot of times people say, like, I don't see, I see, I see the sadness. I see there's a lot of trauma, but I see a lot of hope. And so I feel like it is kind of a very fine line. But as far as I know, the people who are from the states who have seen it, when I ask that, I'm like, do you see trauma porn here? They always say, like, No, actually I kind of, I can see how you can see that. But actually I see a lot of hope, a lot of like, wanting to seek out, like, like, more attention to this and like, because I do have photos from the hurricane times I was not working as a photo generalist. I do not show those images. I show what we say see every day. And yeah, it may look like sad, but it is what it is. It is that we leave. So I also don't want to censor our reality, but I also don't want to do too much of it, because then Yeah, so there's like, a little bit of Yeah, like, yeah, thank you

Beverly Aarons 47:24

in your upcoming show, and also you, you've been working on an ongoing basis highlighting the stories of other Puerto Rican people. Can you talk a little bit about how doing that gives a fuller picture of the Puerto Rican experience, right

Jo Cosme 47:45

for the for the King Street Station. So, all

Beverly Aarons 47:48

right, so kind of moving forward just a little bit, just because I want to, because I feel like when we discussed, last time we had our conversation, last time you talked about connecting to other people on the island, for them to tell their stories too, and elevating those stories. So I want you to talk about how you're doing that now, and how you're going to be doing that when you do your show at Arts at key Street Station.

Jo Cosme 48:16

So, um, I experienced living in Puerto Rico. Up until 2018 I feel like I am now on the other side of now. I'm like the privileged one, because I live in the States now, and I have medical insurances and I have access, which I have none of that in Puerto Rico. And for that reason, I feel like this now, this other responsibility of uplifting the artist in Puerto Rico. There are so many. We're like, come on, like we're such a small little Archie pie logo. And then we have, like, we're like, a powerhouse in music and arts. And so, like, I want to continue celebrating that. It's like, we're here. We're still here. We're not just a giant hotel and and I want people to see what the people on the ground are experiencing. And then also, there's power in like, in many voices, you know, as a group. So I don't want I never saw my work as like, this is me as an artist. I actually would rather not even have to like, be like, Yes, this is me, the artist. I wanted to talk for itself, because for me, this is the voice of everybody that I know. It's not just me. I'm just one spec. There's a bigger problem, and I'm just a tool to get that message out there. So in that case, that's why I wanted to be like offer space to have all as many artists as I could, and many mediums for this show, so that people see, like a all of our perspective as a group, and then kind of, I see it also, kind of like bringing the protests, the marches, the people here, because we know it over there, but people don't know it here, and it's not even. In the new like, we're taken by the US and colonizer language, we're part of the US, and you never see us in the news, like the some tourists, like, blew up three businesses in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago and like that didn't pop up in the news until people in Tiktok and everywhere else were, like, talking about it, and then they picked it up. So, like, so that's why I'm like, Whoa. I'm gonna bring the protest to you. Then if you're gonna go to Puerto Rico and be like, hey, Pina Coladas, like, I'm gonna be like, No, look at this too. This is also happening. You can't just come here and, like, get the best out of us and not see us for who we are and what we struggle like, start to ignore our struggles. So that's why I want to bring everybody here, like all those artists.

Beverly Aarons 50:48

How many artists are you gonna

Jo Cosme 50:51

as many as I can? I don't know, but I have a big list. I totally my numbers and me are like enemies. But I'm going to Puerto Rican March. I'm gonna get more things, and I'm gonna go see artists in their studios and start scouting. So I think I can get as many as I can.

Beverly Aarons 51:10

And so we're we have maybe eight more minutes left, so I want to open it up for people who want to make comments and questions, but I'm also going to put a question out there so that you can have something to answer if you if you like, what did you learn today about the society that we live in, about Puerto Rico, about the US that you didn't know before you saw this work. I know someone mentioned something. You mentioned the fact that you didn't know this was a sign of resistance. Yep. Yeah. Anyone else, or if you have a question or comment on related to them. I think

Audience member 52:01

I also you from Spam

Jo Cosme 52:02

recognize you from spam. I was in spam, yes. Oh, cute, nice. Thank you for noticing.

Beverly Aarons 52:14

Does someone have a hand up? Anyone? Question, comment, I can't. I

Audience member 52:21

think it's really beautiful that you're here.

Jo Cosme 52:24

Thank you. So that's Wow,

Audience member 52:30

yes. I mean, I'm from New York, but it was hard from New York, let alone Puerto Rico and but, you know, I think that,you know, finding, like the,I don't know her, of Hanako, you had mentioned the woman that got

Jo Cosme 52:52

you, Hanako, she's right there at the door. And,

Audience member 53:00

you know, there are a lot of nice people, you know, it is a coldest city, you know, come together. And as you can see in this room, there's the Puerto Ricans just grasp, Oh, yeah. And, and, you know, and I think that you know that it's really, it just fills my heart. It really, really does to know that you're out here, that you're doing your art, that we can see your art, that we can see your messages and and we feel burned up on fire. What's going on Puerto Rico since before the hurricanes, hurricanes and the voices that have been coming from there, yeah, many blessings to you. Wow. Blessings to you too. Thank you so much.

Jo Cosme 53:49

That was beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, we gotta stick together. Let's go called Quito over there. I don't know how much. Okay, okay, okay, okay, the back of the hat. Just wanted

Beverly Aarons 54:12

Okay in the back with the hat.

Audience member 54:14

I just wanted to congratulate you on bringing eyes to this as you said, it's attention, like most of the US, media attention, and makes me feel so proud to actually have Puerto Rican .

Jo Cosme 54:37

He is also from Puerto Rico, we just met recently. Thank you for coming and thank you for saying you for saying that too.

Beverly Aarons 54:55

Anyone else? Oh.

Audience member 54:59

I'm just amazed at how many Puerto Ricans there are in here.

Audience member 55:04

Ah, me too. I'm also like, Whoa,

Audience member 55:05

I was here in the 90s, I was here from like 95 to 99 left for a while, came back, 2014 and it always felt like you were alone, like just alone. And every conversation, I mean, I'm sure you've all lived it too, every conversation is like, Alright, letnme tell you what Puerto Rico is. Let me explain. Okay, cool, now we can talk. It's always

Jo Cosme 55:33

just Yeah, yeah. It's draining. It's so drained.

Audience member 55:40

And it was always like we became Costa Ricans and we became, oh yeah, I Costa Rican and Mexican too. Costa Rica and Mexico, but yeah, it's like, we're not the same. Oh

[audience crosstalk]

Beverly Aarons 58:13

Thank you. So one final question for you before we close out, what does liberation look like? Yeah,

Jo Cosme 58:31

land sovereignty, self sustainability. You know, Puerto Ricans like, like Boricuas like calling the shots in Puerto Rico, no more corruption, you know, like in the US, just like leaving us finally open the ports, yeah, Jones are Get the fuck out. Like, just, yeah, auto determination, self determination, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It says yeah, I yeah, he's

Beverly Aarons 59:13

but you're on that road.

Jo Cosme 59:14

Oh yeah, n I don't know, but I definitely do not want the US there anymore.

Beverly Aarons 59:25

So I want to thank everyone for coming. First off, I want to thank you for accepting my invitation.

Jo Cosme 59:31

Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you. It was great.

Beverly Aarons 59:36

Your work is amazing. Thank you. It's so important. And I want to thank everyone. Oh, wait. Oh, you have a, okay. Oh, this

[audience crosstalk]

Audience member 1:00:19

The latest elections the government of like

Jo Cosme 1:00:21

Jenny Frankel, yeah, yeah.

Audience member 1:00:26

The fact that the pro independency candidate got so much closer than any other candidate, oh yeah, gotten like, to me as somebody who states that I saw those I clung to those results, even though, you know, he didn't win. But I come to those results in light of the other results here in the, you know, mainland, because I was like, It's possible, like the the grassroots efforts can make a difference. They don't have to have the 2% vote, the majority of people, is being represented like I felt hope. But then I check with my cousins back home, and they're like, Man, I know. Like, nothing's gonna change next time they're saying the pro Commonwealth party is gonna get the next election. I and, of course, like, I'd love your take on that, because going from like, oh, there's hope, to like, hearing people on the ground saying, girls,

Jo Cosme 1:01:22

I just, I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. So there's a lot of grassroots organizations that have been on the ground, like going everywhere on the island to re educate on how we don't need the US to save us. And that is just a myth there's and it has proven that it has worked. Like, collectives, like stuff like that. Matria, they do all this stuff. There's so many. They're all on the list, actually. But anyway, so I think that, also witnessing what happened with Maria, a lot of people also woke up with that, because it was like, damn, they really don't care about us. Hey, the first time, like, we get like, abandoned, like that, they close the border, all that stuff, kind of like, let them die slowly. So people really woke up with that experience. And now the newer generations are also, like, educating our elders, who have been, like, scared, like, with the monster of, like, socialism, communism, all this stuff and like, like, are you talking about? You know, like, so like they that's why that Mao, which is the pro independence candidate, got so far too that Mao also went on a tour. Like, even scouted for diaspora, diaspora communities to also find a way to vote. I voted in Puerto Rico, but also the elections in Puerto Rico were stolen. You can research it a lot of a ballot box set because they were locked away or, like, reappeared out of nowhere, stuff like that. It's just what happens. Yeah, so, like, We honestly feel like that. Now, did win, but the election got stolen, so I don't know what that's going to look like in four years from now, if there's going to be a better process. But for example, the machines were so old that the papers would not even read them, and then there were blackouts on some of our instances. So a lot of regions were not even counted because there was no electricity. Like that. All happened in this election, so I don't really think that party actually won. I think they really stole it, but the people are definitely waking up, which is hopeful. I just

Beverly Aarons 1:03:34

have a little announcement when you're done, okay, I just want to check in and make sure there are no other questions before I do my close out, and then Janet does our close out.

Audience member 1:03:48

I was gonna circle back You asked what we learned? Yes, I love your lovely questions. Thank you very thoughtful. Learning a lot. I'm just trying to process it, your expression, your voice, your point about not just coming and seeing or taking the best of us, all of us. Thank you for being here. Thank you for pulling this many people together. Yeah, thank you all for showing up. What you're doing is a powerful tool when we think about organizing and making this better. And your question about what I learned coming out of this being much better friends. So

Jo Cosme 1:04:23

that's beautiful. Thank you,

Beverly Aarons 1:04:26

great. Thank you so much once again, thank you for doing this with me and being incredible. And if you want to know more about artists up close, if you want to come to future events. If you want to read our articles and listen to our podcast, there is a card for artists up close with a QR code there by the door. Please grab that on the way out. And we also have a sign up list. Anyone who signs up on the list will get. Three months free for artists up close to read our articles at no cost and listen to our podcast. I have that here. You can come up here and sign it and thank you. Thank you so much.

© Copyright 2025 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

From the bioluminescent floors of Mosquito Bay to the volcanic black sands of Playa Negra, Puerto Rico’s uniquely beautiful and diverse beaches tell a story of geological wonder and ecological richness. Yet access to Borikén’s shores is shaped by a complex history of colonialism, conservation, cultural resilience, and community resistance.

Boricua multimedia artist Jo Cosme subtly explores these dynamics in her virtual reality component in her exhibition Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!, which transports viewers to a pristine beach rarely visited by outsiders and fiercely protected by locals.

“I wanted to make the colonizer salivate,” Cosme said of her choice of location. Puerto Rico has long been portrayed in Western colonial propaganda as a place to conquer, she explained—so she chose to feature a space that has not been conquered, even as it exists within what is often called the oldest colony in the world. “The beach that I recorded is a beach that is still very precious to us native Boricuas,” she said. “And I have not seen one U.S. person there yet. And I feel like it's been kept a secret.”

Since the United States seized Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Boricuas have lived in a kind of political purgatory. As an “unincorporated territory”—a euphemism for colony—Puerto Rico exists at the mercy of U.S. federal power. Its people are U.S. citizens, yet they cannot vote in presidential elections and have no voting representation in Congress. For more than 400 years under Spanish rule and over 125 years as a U.S. colony, the people of Borikén have fought for autonomy, sovereignty, land rights, and both financial and cultural survival. Today, that struggle continues under the growing pressures of displacement, privatization, austerity, climate catastrophe, and disaster capitalism.

Jo Cosme’s creative work serves as a powerful lens through which U.S. audiences can witness the harsh realities Boricuas endure—it is also a clarion call to fiercely advocate for Puerto Rico’s liberation.

In Gringo Go Home, which is part of the Welcome to Paradise exhibition, Jo Cosme’s use of lenticular printing—a technique that causes images to shift depending on the viewer’s angle—is more than a visual trick; it’s a deliberate strategy to expose the skewing of perception under colonial and touristic gazes. By layering contrasting images—such as an untouched beach transforming into a neglected, trashed shoreline—Cosme forces the viewer to reckon with the dual realities of Puerto Rico: the fantasy sold to outsiders and the truth lived by Boricuas. This shifting visual field mirrors the dissonance between how tourists consume Puerto Rico as a paradise and how locals experience it as a contested, endangered homeland. The lenticular format refuses static interpretation; it demands movement, attention, and a confrontation with colonial narratives, revealing what lies beneath. In doing so, Cosme not only exposes the superficiality of the tourist gaze but also reclaims visual power, allowing the land itself to tell a more honest story.

“Something that I would like people to really think about is that when they travel, sometimes they're not aware of what's happening on these places, politically speaking,” Cosme said. “And so, they behave in a way that makes us feel uncomfortable. They forget that people still live here and that we are being pushed out by people like them.” Cosme explained that she has gotten into verbal disputes with new settlers and tourists especially when they respond poorly to being told ‘gringo go home.’ “If you read the news, you would just move, because there is a tension here, and you're coming here thinking it's going to be your little Caribbean paradise, your little vacation, but there are things happening in the soil right now that you have to be aware of when you travel…I want people to really try to look within and recognize how they can be a more conscious traveler, how they can invest more in the local people, or just not go to X or Y place in general. Just don't.”

Cosme lives the consequences of colonialism every day. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she was forced to leave the archipelago after Hurricane María devastated the island in 2017—and the abysmal failure of the U.S. government to provide meaningful relief only deepened local suffering. Like many Boricuas, Cosme prefers life in Borikén, but staying often means battling just to meet basic needs, even as a new wave of settlers snaps up "cheap" land to build their version of paradise. Disaster capitalism—a term coined by writer and activist Naomi Klein—describes how investors exploit the aftermath of natural or manmade disasters to seize land, displace communities, and profit from redevelopment. Its victims are left with impossible choices: fight costly legal battles to hold onto their homes or focus on sheer survival. In Cosme’s case, the cost of staying became too high—not because she lacked roots, but because the system works against those trying to remain rooted in their homeland.

“It was a very conflicting to come into a country that oppresses your own country,” said Cosme. “But I do have a backhandedly imposed U.S. citizenship, which is—if you look at it in one way—a privilege to have. But that made me want to be like, ‘Well, if I'm in the States, how do I make myself useful while I'm in the oppressor country and I’m dealing with survivor’s guilt every day?’ I felt the urge—once I had the opportunity to have time and money—to start creating art again, because I feel this responsibility, and also like it's the only way I can deal with the shame of not being there and struggling with them.”

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There’s a brutal irony in Jo Cosme’s forced migration: By leaving Borikén and moving to Seattle, Cosme gained access to resources—economic, intellectual, historical—that had been systematically withheld from her on the island.

“If you don't grow up with an academic background or class privilege, there's also not a lot of access to our own history in Borikén because we are constantly censored by our own government,” Cosme said. “We're not taught about a lot of uprisings, starting from the Taino. We're not taught any of this. We have to seek this information in order to learn. And I feel like it's also part of keeping us uneducated so we don't wake up.”

The lenticular image featured above powerfully illustrates the visual erasure of the local in favor of the imported. With just a shift in perspective, a sleek, contemporary house begins to dominate the frame—gradually obscuring, then completely obliterating the weathered, densely built structures inhabited by locals. The transformation suggests not only the physical displacement of Boricuas but also the erasure of their cultural memory in favor of settler fantasies and foreign investment. It’s a visual confrontation: Who belongs here? Whose story is being overwritten? Will the layered history and vibrant culture of Borikén be replaced by the sterile, ahistorical fantasy of the West?

The battle begins in the minds of Boricuas who have been subjected to multi-generational identity erasure. Through censored education, the erasure of Indigenous histories, and the imposition of U.S. cultural values, Puerto Ricans have been systematically disconnected from their own past and indigeneity.

“Some of us grow up celebrating our native heritage,” said Cosme, “which is Taino from the Arawak. But then we're constantly told that Boricua is a modern identity, and so we are reclaiming this indigeneity to the Caribbean, which has been taken away from us because of this imposed assimilation due to US imperialism, and before that, the Spanish. So, we were constantly taught that we cannot claim this indigeneity because they had killed off all of the Taino from the archipelago.” But because of genetic testing, Cosme went on to explain, it has been revealed that many Boricuas carry a high blood quantum of native ancestry, even as using blood quantum measurements is extremely controversial in some parts of the community. “That was kind of mind blowing to us, because we were always taught that isn't real. So, a lot of us have been trying to reclaim that identity. And for some of us—for instance, me—we have been born and raised within the community and the culture, and we practice it, we honor it, we take care of it. So, in the face of this assimilation and imperialism, the fact that they were not able to actually erase us from the map, is an incredible form of resistance.”

Later this month we will share the event audio of our conversation with Jo Cosme at Grocery Studios.

© Copyright 2025 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

Explore a powerful artist conversation that challenges the boundaries of art, memory, and identity. In this deeply reflective event, multimedia artist Arthur Asriyants, alongside filmmaker Maurice Reneaux and actress/visual artist Ramona Lee, unravels the layers of his latest project—a visually stunning, emotionally gripping film that explores freedom, grief, and resilience through the lens of performance and symbolism.

🎙 Inside the Audio:

• The Power of Horses 🐎—A symbol of freedom, struggle, and untamed energy. Discover how a rebellious trail horse became an unexpected metaphor for the artist’s creative vision.

• A Question of Joy 🎭—Can joy exist in the wake of genocide, oppression, and trauma? Arthur reflects on his Armenian heritage, inherited grief, and the search for meaning through art.

• The Weight of Symbols 🎨—From a red-stained American flag to a shattered watermelon, the film’s imagery speaks volumes about resistance, memory, and political defiance.

• The Magic of Filmmaking 🎥—How a skeleton crew of just three artists created a cinematic experience that feels grand in scope but profoundly intimate in impact.

At its core, this event is not just a film discussion—it’s an invitation to rethink how we experience joy, loss, and the stories we tell ourselves about identity. With an intimate and poetic approach, this conversation pulls you into a world where visuals, music, and spoken word collide in a deeply immersive artistic experience.

🔥 Listen now and step into the conversation. Let yourself feel, question, and be moved.

JOY (Film)

Starring Ramona Lee

Supporting cast Iris Grey

Director of Photography Maurice Reneaux

SFX Ilya Khmenka

Costume Designers Ramona Lee and Ava Nelson

Audio Transcription

Arthur Asriyants 0:00

Yeah. First of all, wanted to thank everyone, thankful for this event, thankful to be here with you. I wanted to acknowledge the land we all stand on is to Amish Land, land of Duwamish people. And a little intro for me would be, would be, I'm a performance mixed media artist. I do. I mostly concentrate on recording my performances. And this was a special case, because it wasn't me performing, it's me asking someone to someone, someone to perform. And it was, it was a new challenge that I didn't know I'm I'm gonna face, and I was excited about it, and I'm happy to talk about this fun. Finally, not going to get deep into all the works that led to this. We're going to have time to conversate about them as well tonight. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Beverly, obviously, yeah, thank

Beverly Aarons 0:51

you. Thank you. And just to go a little bit further into that origin, because I feel like you, you kind of rush through it, just a little bit. Can you tell me why you decided to create this film?

Arthur Asriyants 1:12

Why is a great question. It's like, Why? Why do we do what we do? I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm very I'm driven by expressions. It was, it was just momentarily I knew I needed to create something when I walked in the studio one day and there's Ramona making her painting. And I'm like, What is this about? And she and she's like, this is my serious Western Hall. And at that moment, I thought, all I want right now for the next five months of my life. I want, I want to think about you being on top of the horse. I really want to see you on top of the horse. And I want to film it for some for unknown to me, reason I, I thought it would be great if I film someone performing the performance that I'm going to going to write for them.

Beverly Aarons 2:01

And you, you mentioned we had an earlier discussion a couple of days ago with everyone involved, including the special effects editor, yeah, who unfortunately wasn't able to be present. And you talked about what horses symbolize for you.

Arthur Asriyants 2:21

I, I often, I often think about, it's very, it's very simple. What I think about is freedom. I always think about freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of love, freedom of speech. I guess if we could go to that extent, I all my works. I never, I never realized until, until recently, I really concentrate my myself around the topic of freedom. And it's, it's, it's funny to think about, because with my belief system, I believe all life, our human brain, pre determines things for us. I don't, I don't think there's like a free wheel, or things like free, free movement, free, free, this free, that we pretty much predetermined biological organism. But I am really fascinated with that idea, and I'm trying, I'm trying to, I'm trying to explore that to an extent I can.

Beverly Aarons 3:18

In the previous conversation that we had author shared with me his work, 1.5 million brush strokes. And tonight I've been kind of somber, because when I looked at that work, and I looked at, you know, the film joy, and all I could feel was grief. I can feel the grief. I could see the grief in that work. And so sorry guys, you know, and it we had so I saw that work after we had our conversation a couple of days ago. And so it's changed. It's shifted the way that I really want to engage, kind of the topics, not really the topics, but the framework in which I want to talk about this work. Because when I look at 1.5 million brush strokes, which is the red paintings out in the lobby that all of you walk through. There's a solitude there that's also present in joy. Can you talk about that? I

Arthur Asriyants 4:41

think, I think all artists are sad like I think I'm a sad artist. Well, well, traumatized by different experience we want to talk about. I think, I think it's an Armenian, it's very, it's very obvious what I'm traumatized about. I grew up with knowing that there are countries I can, cannot ever. There are people out there that don't like me, and they're my great grandparents and great great grandparents that were slaughtered during Armenian Genocide in 1915 and I think living with this grief, I'm not trying, I promise to all of you, I'm not trying to be sad. Artists being sad is a trendy thing, I guess, but I'm not trying. And sometimes I realize a lot of things I do end up being being like, being sad, which I did try. I did try making making making it fun. When we were doing, like, what is our part and Ramona running with the force, I thought that's going to like, break the ice for everyone. It's not that serious, guys. And and then, and then I went into, went to into thinking about what is love, and that's just, that's just like, still, to this point, I watched this video hundreds of times, I want to cry like it's like, it's still part to destroying me from inside. Yeah. There are other things in a film I wanted to touch upon, but I

Beverly Aarons 6:10

just felt that we needed to first touch upon that point. Oh yeah, this connection, because you did talk about the connection between your previous work and what is joy? Because when we first had a conversation, I initially thought that there were all these questions, right? What is faith? What is what is love? What is well, really the central question is, what is joy? Yeah, and when I put that work into the context of your other work, what is joy when you are facing oppression, when you are facing trauma, when you are facing genocide, like what is joy when that happens, and as we continue this conversation, I want everyone here to really think about that, for yourself, for your loved ones, there for that moment, because I know you didn't see that that coming, you know, and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, while you're sitting with that, I'm going to also talk to the cinematographer, Maurice, can you tell me how to pronounce your last name, Renee? And also, Ramona Lee, the actress and visual artist. All right, great. Okay, so let's start off with Ramona, since we were talking about horses earlier, yes, horses represent freedom for Arthur. Tell me what they represent for you.

Ramona Lee 7:58

Great. Well, Horses for me have have been my spirit. I mean, I grew up on the movie spirit, of course, but I also grew up in Montana, where horses were there for us. Anywhere I went, any friends I had, we would always be out, either running with the horses or attacking them up, cleaning them up, using them out in the field when we we do, like prairie digging and things like, sorry, filling holes, Prairie holes. But for me, in my art and in my symbolism, I I never really thought about it. I mainly thought about the color and like what it meant. And, yeah, I know horses for me, they've met a lot of things. I've had imagery where I'm running through my favorite part, Cal Anderson, and I'm in my beautiful dress, and I'm the Bucha, and this horse is trampling me. It's just rearing up as beautiful as it can be, but it's actually hurting me. And I've had images like that, and then the ones that Arthur saw, it was more of I was vibing to the music and the sound that's coming here in America. And I was like, I'm already on this tip, a cowgirl and a horse, and I would just love to portray my work. But at the time, when you saw me drawing the horse, I was hoping to collaborate with another artist, and we both use animals in our symbolism. His was a wolf and mine was a horse, and so I had my horse on I was on top of the horse, and the wolf was following me. So I hope I answered that it's really my spirit. It's my spirit. And sometimes I mean I feel when I when I wanted to mention how this horse was rearing up and feeding me down in one of my most sacred places. I feel like we could do that to ourselves. And so the horse is truly when I draw. I when I'm riding, it, it's my spirit.

Beverly Aarons 10:04

So you also mentioned, yes, you also mentioned, tell us the story about your interesting encounter with the horse while you all were filming this film,

Ramona Lee 10:21

okay, so it was quite a juxtaposition for me. I was so back to when Arthur and I first decided we're going to do this film. Um, he was excited, like we have his equestrian show. We should, we should start. It didn't go through because our expectations were way higher than what it was, but we all thought that it'd be great, great to actually experience it anyways and go through with the felt when he brought it to me, like, hey, Mona, I want to see you up on a horse. Let's go out somewhere in Washington. I was like, No, we're going to go back to Montana, and I'm going to show you where I live, and I'm going to show you how easy it is to ride a horse. The juxtaposition is we had cow retired horses, horses from bullfighters, also known as rodeo clowns. And we also had Outfitters, which are up in the trails on the mountain. So with that horse, the black one you saw with the white Her name is Tinker Bell, and as you all know, Tinker Bell tries to kill Wendy. So that's what she was trying to do with me. It was more we couldn't. I was so excited to get these guys out there. We were up on the trails, and I was like, Okay, I'm going to ride a horse in front of them, and I get on this horse, and I can't. We're not vibing at all. Of course, she's not understanding my direction. She is also, as with these Outfitters, she's a trail horse, so she only follows the horse in front of her. There's a leader of the pack, and so when we went out on the trail once, once our guide left me, she first she wanted to follow, and then she knew that I was like pulling back on her. And that's where it all went wrong. It went extremely wrong. I kept trying to kick her to go, but she wanted to stay in place. She's like, we are off the trail. Now I don't know what's happening, and so I have a huge struggle. I just kept kicking the horse and kicking the the guy was just like, kick her harder. It's not gonna hurt. Gotta get her going. So I was so anxious to kick the horse and to show these guys, because Arthur's like, this is the one shot we're gonna do. Like, Well, I mean, that's how I just

Arthur Asriyants 12:31

wanted to add it to that whole story, because it's pretty awesome, because Maurice is running me and Maurice running through the trail, because we're not on horses. She's on horse. I And Iris too. I'm carrying the chair for iris so we can sit, sit down, sit up. Maurice is like taking shots and the horse is not listening to Ramona. And I'm like, this is the freedom I was looking for. You cannot. You cannot sit on top of the freedom and control it. This is beautiful. So in a film, you can see, in the film, you can literally see horses backing up with Ramona on top of her. And I'm like, this is beautiful. So what we did in post production, we put this parts of the film in a little box, and we put it, put the sign freedom outside of that box. So it's like, she cannot, like, get her freedom there in the shot, and she cannot get her freedom outside the shot to be in the box. It was just such, such like, I

Ramona Lee 13:29

mean, we didn't get the actual shot because you guys were all concerned about my life. So the next thing that happened is she no longer wants to back down, stop she she literally runs. So we're on a trail, and the trail goes like this, and then we have, like, plateaus and prickly pear cactuses, like rocks and things. But she's first, she's like, Okay, I'm going to get a prickly pear. And then she's like, You know what? This I'm going to I'm gonna run down the hill to the river, and so the middle of the river is like this. And so it was my glory moment when she, she took control, ran me down the river, and I braved her back. And there's like, a moment in one of our footages where you can see where the horse takes me away. But that wasn't,

Arthur Asriyants 14:21

it was like, it was like spinning. I just want, I just wanted to see what movie says to say about being like, being in that shot, being on that trail with me.

Maurice Reneaux 14:34

Mentioned is a horse trail. We just, we have been maybe on the trail, maybe like 10 minutes. We found Phil, and then we said, Okay, we're going to, we're going to shoot here. We're not, you know, at some point she made her way back. We had two camera setups, and we did have a setup, but there's a couple of different days. The horse was a trail horse. She's, she's taking, trying to. It could go. It's being a little stubborn, because it's not used to, you know, moving around, just from back. So what happened at some point, I think, so basically, way of work was working out is that she was taking it to go, the directions from the handler was like, you know, steer and maybe go, whatever. But she was kicking it to go, and it seemed like when the horse started to go, she kept kicking it. So the horse is like ghost, I stopped trying to go, and then eventually it seemed like the horse said, like, you see where the horse kind of did, and then kind of jumped into motion and started making way down. So we had two camera setups. One was up on the ridge. The other one was this way. The wide shot didn't pick up much. I had a tight I had a tight shot, but once I saw the horse kind of buck this way, I don't know, my instincts kicked in. And I was like, oh shit. And I was like, you know, put away from the camera. And she, pretty much, she the horse did it. But I think that's that was somewhat of the boring moment that Ramona was talking about, because that's what the instinct of the horse came in, as well as Ramona dancing, and very easily she was able to write it. So the horse was pretty much, we became friends about the Democrat right? Right before I hit the edge. Kind of rang with it, pulled it back, and then it was cool. So it was, it was, it was definitely one of the worst. It had only been like 15 minutes. At some point you'll see the behind the scenes shot where you can see, you know, the horse jump back and then take flight. We had three cameras. You got one on the ridge, a tight shot, and then a GoPro. So in the in the in the tight shot, you'll see a couple of split second where it gets into action, and then you'll see the GoPro that we want to have on the board.

Beverly Aarons 17:04

Did you have the other two on tripods? Yeah, all of them were on tripods. I mean, so you didn't have other camera people working those? Those? No,

Maurice Reneaux 17:13

so, I mean, good question. Usually in a film, you see a credits like about 150 people, 150 people, 200 people. And this scenario. It was three, you know, it was three people. Everybody produced it. Everybody, you know, Ramona handled the wardrobe, locations, you know, a lot of production elements. Both of them wrote it. You know, Arthur just got a location. You know, we all had our hand in production and absorb the roles and the titles of all the people involved. So it's very hands on. We had, I mean, I mentioned the Beverly earlier. We had 10 cameras on site when we only used three. Yeah, yeah. So that was a snapshot.

Beverly Aarons 17:57

So did so did you know? Because I one of the the shots that really caught me was that indie shot, that VISTA of like mountains and Prairie, right, you know? And it I felt the solitude in there. Did you know? Did you? Did you purposely choose that with that in mind? Or, like, I mean, the

Maurice Reneaux 18:25

way we shot, it is a formula. The way we shoot, Imma leave room for Arthur to jump in there and Ramona as well. But, you know, I was, I came up shooting with a particular format. Why it's tight to mediums. I work with the I'm just going to name that real quick. I work with the oldest Hispanic production company in the US, their towns, Alliance winners, as well as Rodrigo Garcia, a couple different international directors and stuff like that. So being on set, I got a chance to see how they shoot. And for the most part, you want to establish a shot. Want to shoot wide, to establish a shot. And as you go into the conversation, you might hit a medium, you might pick up a type and stuff like that. And that's what you see in the film.

Beverly Aarons 19:14

Did you shoot 4k? Yeah, everything. And so you so you would shoot wide and then punch in and editing or,

Maurice Reneaux 19:22

well, that sin that you talk about is a wide shot. The resolution is 4k okay, but you you see that more so in the resolution and fidelity of the image. Um Arthur actually scouted that location, so when we shot it, it was purposeful all along the way. We, you know, we pretty much dropped in Montana with no real familiar understanding of the surrounding. So we we created the visuals that you saw as we went, like minutes before, days before. So you. I'm sure that location was purposely selected to to illustrate the idea of the journey, the soleness of the journey, the quietness of the journey, the the grand news of the journey. But yeah, all of those, all of those elements were

Arthur Asriyants 20:25

definitely purposeful. Do you want to continue with scattering locations

Beverly Aarons 20:32

where your heart is taking you?

Arthur Asriyants 20:34

Awesome. There was one question before, but I'm going to talk about locations I fell in love with Montana. I've been to Montana before. I finally fell in love coming, coming there again. First day, first day we came. I felt, I felt sad. We had only three, four days to film this whole project. And first day we came. It was rainy. We went down to to the forest near, near Yellowstone, and we went inside the forest, and I saw this river, and I'm like, we set up the camera and rain, and I'm like, we need to just take a video of this river. And we stood there for like, 20 minutes, literally taking a video of the river. That's how the film opens up. There's an idea about that. I can expand on that later on, and then, and then I think, I think I created myself this, this task every evening, when the shooting day is over, when we're done, they're going, they're about to have lunch, they would prepare for, I mean, for dinner. And I would leave the leave the house, and go around in darkness, and it just scattered the areas and talk to people. So talk to people outside, I would come back in, like, couple couple hours with, like, marks, marks on on my map. And I'm like, next morning, I need to check out this location to see the shot, and for the first and the last shot, how the movie begins and how the movie ends. I didn't have location until the very, very last day, and we're already leaving Montana on that day. And, and finally, when I saw it from the farm, we kept on driving up, up up, up the hill, up this mountain. And I'm like, this is perfect. This this is, this is our first and first and last shot. So Ramona, you're going from down the hill all the way up the hill, carrying this toy. And, and she was like, Okay, I got, I got, it was, it was big pleasure to me that Ramona never said no to me. I think that was a big part for me that whenever we never been in the situation, when I'm like, Ramona, I need you to do this. And she's like, No, I'm not going to do this. And this is, this was very important for me. And I always, and I would always say how much I appreciate that. Because when the random person tells you like you got to carry this up the hill, you can always say, yeah, you can carry yourself out of this room. So, and I would always appreciate, I appreciate that. And we carried the store up, up the hill. Set up a shot ran on the side of the road with with the close up camera, so you can see she's actually sweating going up the hill. And then we set up a white, wide camera, Wide, wide angle on the on the ver, on the very top, and the camera perfectly what you said, giving yourself salt into to that extent. So, and the weather worked out perfectly. And we asked people, people were super nice because we asked them, hey guys, people tried to stand there with their cars and try to enjoy themselves. And we're like, Hey, we're trying to shoot this. Can you please move your car? Which, which is kind of crazy to ask random people. We don't have any license to shoot there or anything like that. And we're like, Can Can you please? And everyone was very understanding about about us shooting that. Yeah, very furious,though. Yeah.

Beverly Aarons 23:51

Did the story change at all once you got to on location?

Arthur Asriyants 24:00

Yes, and no, I was I was just the things I wanted to talk about. I definitely did talk about. Those are not the things that came to me the day before. Those are not the things that came to me the week before they came to me. It was months and months of thinking, why do I want to write about patriotism? Why do I want to write about freedom? Why do I want to write about love? You don't ever go wake up one day and it's like, I'm going to create this whole idea about love. I'm going to ask people, What is love? And I'm not going to be able to answer that for myself. So the point, the main point, didn't change, maybe the context it added to me, all of you artists here, and you know what it feel when it feels like when there's more context, you create more context as you go with your work, you context. Context is being added there. There are some pieces that were added for me personally, but I. I don't think the main idea, main topic I wanted to talk about, ever changed in the entire film.

Beverly Aarons 25:05

I wanted to talk, oh,

Maurice Reneaux 25:10

I was just gonna say there was a script, but we didn't have a script. You know, maybe, like, we'll brief, like, the day before, or something like that. I remember the night we got in, or one of the nights we got in Arthur kind of thinking was like, Look, this is what I'm saying. You know, this is not whatever I was like, this is an act. And at that point I realized what, what he what he communicated to me, was the format which he was going to show the film. So it was like, Look, I'm thinking this. I'm seeing all of this stuff in the center, and then we're going to have two panels, uh, only thing that's going to have audio is the side panel. So it's going to be pretty much like a multi sensory experience. It's not going to be this, it's a film, but it's art, you know. So a lot of the, pretty much everything that we shot was like words and conversation, but you never really had a

Beverly Aarons 26:09

script, but you had a screen. He had a he had a script. It wasn't it wasn't written out, but he had a script. Oh, just one second, I'm asking you the question, you had a script in terms of visuals, yeah, story that you wanted to you didn't have a script in the traditional sense of a Hollywood script.

Arthur Asriyants 26:28

No, it's not right. There's nothing like, yeah, that's not what I that's not what I thought, yeah.

Maurice Reneaux 26:40

You know, the magic that was created, essence that was found and captured and hunted, stem from a conversation,

Beverly Aarons 26:50

yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. And yeah, the conversations. And also, there's a visual language there, yeah, right, yeah. And which you you had kind of a vision of, and then you work with your cinematographer, yeah, to make that happen. And also your editor, yeah, who unfortunately isn't here, yeah, and can't be here right now,

Arthur Asriyants 27:11

it would have, it would have time to expand on my editor. I would, I will in a little bit. My editor is in Poland right now, and it's, yeah, but he's in Poland, yeah, my editor, I love to work with people from Eastern Europe, because it's very like, it's that place in the world where we need to ask people to work with. There are a lot of people from Eastern Europe, from Beverly, Russia, Ukraine, who escaped wars, and they go and live in like, closer to Central Europe. People move a lot to Poland, and I like to work with those editors, with those creators, because I feel like we we relate to each other in a way, in a way that, well, first of all, I understand, I understand their languages. Second of all, I understand their problems. Because I've lived in those regions in a world, it's very important for me. That's the only thing about the editor on the language of the vision. The language, why I told you, some of my works are as important and they led me to this film, is I like to use words. I really, I think it's just so so simple to you to use words and to tell people what it is, rather than let let them guess on their own. I think, I think when you you can expand so far on just like adding word. For example, if you, if you add big letters like patriotism on the screen, you immediately going to have, like this drop for a person to think about patriotism, but not to think about anything else, anything else. And then they will just you give them a key to your doors, basically. And film has all these doors that I'm hanging out. I'm basically giving you all of your keys to open and explore instead, instead of making you guess where the key is to this to the store and in the freestyle and the work before I've done, I've done, I've done the same. And I really like how I managed to learn this way of communicating with the audience through like this words that popping up on the screen. I like it. I actually want

Beverly Aarons 29:25

to talk a little bit before we open it up to comments and questions about the symbolism inside of this film. There was a lot of symbolism that we talked about, but I kind of want to focus in on the watermelon that is being pushed down the road and eventually broken. And I'm just going to kind of remind folks of the context, and this is i. Right after the what is art section Correct? Um, we talked about the the meaning, the symbolism behind that watermelon,

Arthur Asriyants 30:12

of course, for me, well, I'm Armenian. I'm expanding on, like, how I have, I have this historical issue with genocide and with what and when I see other people struggling with the same problems around the world, with genocide, with their rights as human being be being oppressed. I get sad about this, but this, but I broke the watermelon. I This is the sign for maybe many of you know, this is the sign of resistance, and this is the sign by which we stand with Palestine. And I would say proudly, I'm free, free Palestine. I'm I'm against genocide that is happening there right now. And I also, and I also think the fact that we still have genocides around the world. Lays on this problem, lays on our shoulders as much as it lays on the shoulders of of the government, because we as society letting these things happen. We never learn a society we we're too late. Well, it always feels too late when we start supporting causes like this. Kids. Children are already dying. People are already dying there. There are kids losing their mothers, their fathers already so, yes, it's important to to be resilient. Yes, it's important to go to this protest, but it always feels like a little too late, and I think it's very controversial. I think I think I would face a lot of critique in my future, in my future, conversation about breaking this sign of re silent, of being re silent, but it's important for me to have this narration, this, this conversation about we shouldn't. We shouldn't ever allow this to be too late to talk about like we should, we shouldn't let this happen in the world.

Beverly Aarons 32:06

You mentioned, you mentioned that you were nervous about smashing the watermelons. Yeah, tell us why that was the case.

Arthur Asriyants 32:20

It's well, not I would, I would be very upset if some, if someone would like, there are different symbols in this world. There are different logos. For example, Forget Me Not is a symbol for Armenian genocide. And if someone would, would bring this Forget Me Not symbol and smash in front of me, I would be upset, and I would ask them to expand on why they did did that. I was it's very nervous moment when you when you smash a strong symbol on top of that, it's a it's very, it's very nervous moment. And I wanted to Ramona to expand why I've had this conversation with Ramona, where I've had this conversation with you during the pre interview. I I said, I said, I don't know if I have full rights to do that. I I'm not, I'm not sure. And there are many more. There's another. There is not a symbol that underlies the watermelon and especially in this context. And I want Ramona to expand, to expand,

Beverly Aarons 33:25

yes, and I have to make an apology, because I got slightly distracted with musical chairs and forgot to let Ramona and Maurice do their their short introductions. I jumped right into the interview. So I want to give them an opportunity before we open up to include everyone. I want to give everyone the opportunity to to, you know, to share. Oh, my intro, yeah, I think you suggested your camera.

Ramona Lee 34:04

Hi, y'all. I'm Ramona Lee. I am a multi dimensional artist and or multimedia my bad and anywhere everywhere, once, I definitely am on the road to owning my own gallery, that is my goal. I have come up on through a residency. I was looking for a studio space, and I have since, since last June, been able to be here and actually produce work as an art entrepreneur, I've transported public art. I'm like, I do project management and a lot of administrative consulting for artists and our advocacy. I'm also an artist myself, and that's what I'd say. Get back into this year as I was so busy organized. And structuring that I lost sight of my art and how to free free flow and things like that. I'm really excited to be on this project with Arthur. It's been real, and he's the first artist I've met that actually brought an idea to me. I throw it back at him, like, let's do it. And it's, it's, it was just immediately taken. And I say that in a sense of what we always think about is money off time in any way, shape or form. We always say the art isn't about the money. But when you are a full time artist, that is something, and it was, I wouldn't say that I never not had an artist come up to me and have a great idea and do it, but we've always shied away from it because of resources. Going home, for me was so important, because I realized where the true resources for myself are, and that is in my hometown with my family, and just where the true support is. And so I felt like we we had a flawless victory with our three to four days. But yeah, I was, I was just really flattered that my Western CO which is up in the the big blue right now on Amber ravens studio wall, yeah, and it will be there for the next Art Walk. Western COVID will be starting off there. I also have digital and digital artwork, and also, what is it called 3d sculpture as well that I'm working on, I will thank

Beverly Aarons 36:36

you. Yeah, thank you. Alright, now, now, Maurice, your introduction that we totally skipped over. Good

Maurice Reneaux 36:47

to see everybody. My name is Maurice. I'm a painter. My background is I came out doing graffiti, elevated that into graphic design, advertising. I mentioned earlier, I've worked with the one of the oldest Hispanic production companies in the US. Got an opportunity to connect with a lot of really good filmmakers and stuff like that, to be honest, like my work, talking about myself, my work stands different mediums. I'm a painter. I shoot. I've ran a I've started and ran a record label. I've done marketing, I've I have a lot of experience with startups, whether it's individual artists agencies or just concepts and projects in general. I found myself out here in Seattle for the last year. I'm a bit of an explorer. I'm from California, Canada, Seattle, and it's been about a year. At some point I've connected with Ramona. She introduced me to this beautiful community, and since then, we've continued to develop or produce work commercially, individually and, you know, independently and stuff like that. I've worked some of my some of the pieces I've signed with, like Kendrick and Mars, first video, first music video. Um, come from a very creative open space where it's a lot of music videos and independent work. So some of you guys may have seen my show that remotely curated back in April with this new project, give me an opportunity to showcase my work and filmmaking Great.

Beverly Aarons 38:29

Thank you, Maurice, awesome, and with that, it Yes. Let's give everybody a hand. I know we got started a little bit late, and there was a little bit of a change in in the schedule. I'm glad you did show the show the sound, yeah, so we have a the time to ask questions and make comments is a lot shorter than we had. Oh, but we're glad that you stay, and now it's your turn to ask questions, to make comments. Feel free to raise your hand All right,

Beverly Aarons 39:15

so the person with the black shirt and then the person right in front of him. Yeah, yes, my

Audience member 39:24

My question is...

Arthur Asriyants 39:32

is this going to be my favorite question, because me, me and my friend from Eastern Europe, we wrote it together. I come from the family of musicians. And I mean, I did it. I didn't sit down at the piano. Is the instrument I'm trained to play, but I didn't sit down at the piano. I use fruity loop studio. If anyone is familiar with pretty loops, that's how that's how people write music nowadays. It's way more exciting. Possible you don't need, usually you don't need musical degree to do that. I know some of I was inspired by Chopin. Chopin is my favorite when it comes to class. Classical Opus 60 4c, minor. And I was also inspired C sharp minor. And I'm also out and and the the minor flag by Chapin, it was number not number one. Nocturn also inspired, inspired me for some of them, for some of the trio's. And I want to talk about musical terms, but yeah, we were running it together and being inspired, taking pieces from like, chopping and things and chopping it up.

Beverly Aarons 40:48

Yeah, all right, and yes, you the intense power saturation.

Audience member 40:59

After all the in

Arthur Asriyants 41:08

the film, yeah. Is that? Is that a question about, like, Oh, yeah. I think I think, like, I wanted it. I wanted to be so Western, Western hole in my in my film. And I think there's nothing more Western. They're like, saturated, saturated film looks like, looks like, very like 78 when did we have, like, color 770, when they're when they were like, you know, all this spaghetti western films. They were like, super yellow. And I was like, I was

Beverly Aarons 41:43

like, pastel, yeah. It's

Arthur Asriyants 41:47

very, like, yellow, Orangey. And I want, and I wanted to achieve that color for some of the shots, especially, especially for horses, yeah. So, so it was, it was fun to pick the colors and just like go through them. But yeah, it was, it was definitely inspired by, I wanted that like Western hole, how I see it, not how Ramona sees it, but still, like references glorify colors that do not

Unknown Speaker 42:21

exist. Colors that

Arthur Asriyants 42:32

do not exist in

Beverly Aarons 42:37

nature. Yeah, yeah, why the

Arthur Asriyants 42:48

about why the section also the best questions, the best questions ever so so me, me and my me and my friend, my my editor, we're both in the outcome and it's we both. We both were editing, and we had section for that, right? We we sat down, and with that, we thought about that section. We kept on, like choosing the colors and doing color correct correction. And he's, he loves, He loves this girl. And when we're writing the song. He was thinking about this girl all the time, and he thought about, he just, like, he thought about closing his eyes, he told me he's like, Arthur, I did something. I don't know if you're gonna like it. Can you? Can you? Can you watch this section again? And he sent me that section. I press play, and I'm like, where's the picture? And like, in a matter of second. I'm like, it doesn't need one. You don't need to see, see what's happening. You need to feel what's happening. I maybe it's way, way too romantic or poetic in a way, but hey, I think that's a beautiful description of what love is. It's just like, you don't need to see it, you you need to feel it. So I you just like, killed. It is basically the, it's the highest point for me when it's just like, goes black. Yeah, I

Ramona Lee 44:19

would love to speak on that. It's like as a mother and not seeing my daughter, I almost felt, I felt safe. I felt every time I watched this, especially with an audience, I was drained, and I mean, in the best possible way, but like it took a lot of me and to see myself and to hear my daughter's voice, which is so pregnant, and to know we made a whole scene for we did peace, and to just hear how you guys really used our voices to really play like the Marco Polo around the room. It. Made me emotional. I made me think when I speak to my mom, like on the phone or someone, so when you're at that guy told us, yeah, I really miss this girl and I love her. And make this way it is I it just makes me continue to be emotional. As someone who prays and the reference that comes with it, some people are confused that they have to surrender to two ways in space and sound. So at some point, it's just close your eyes, yeah, and just listen to my daughter say, I love you, and to know that is pure and for me to be planning on here that was cute, special piece that didn't need to be seen at all.

Arthur Asriyants 45:56

Just heard, I like, I like, there's the sound. Save back, and it is also part of love. It can go to that extent, to like, say, back to me, I wanted to Yeah. It is yeah. That part is just, I love to

Ramona Lee 46:12

do that, yeah, to share. It wasn't just a job for him. Can you tell us exactly what happened? Yes, because I think that's important. Okay,

Arthur Asriyants 46:28

it was, I would show I would show you. But I don't want, I don't want to, like, get into details. I wish I would break down and actually would spend the rest of the night here breaking, like, pausing on the and stopping. But we got to this beautiful, beautiful field, and I was seeking for that field all over Montana, and we came to that field, and I gave them a string, a red string, to play. And there it was, cannot, I'll walk around. I'll walk around. So, so you can imagine this shot right Right, right there. And it was like Ramona walking in the shot, and Iris is like following her holding a red string. And that's the game they were describing while you hear it. And, and I think, and I think it doesn't need my description of how to how I want, I wanted people to imagine that that little simple. It's a simple game of pulling the string and, and that's that string, um, it was just like mother daughter connection that will never cease to exist. The string always going to be there, and she's always going to be you're always going to be pulling by that string, and she's always going to be on the other side of that string. It's just like, this will always be there, and it's to the extent that's the best extent I can feel, the mother daughter, love I would never be able to experience that I it's, it's not, it's not something I would be that's, that's the best extent I can see it, how, how?

Beverly Aarons 48:02

Yeah, are there any other questions or comments,

Audience member 48:09

yeah, at the end, when they leave the wooded horse overlooking from your from your past day, are they leaving any of the ideas, were you intending a specific idea? Or any of the left behind the patriotism above edge? Like, are they growing up? Are they pregnant, or they go through a particular thing that you were imagining that was being left on that edge? Yeah,

Arthur Asriyants 48:39

it's really, it's nothing. Nothing is nothing is being left, uh, nothing. This is, this is all this, all content stays with, within the character, within, within ramuna, all of those ideas can or cannot, cannot say, I'm not. I never tried to attempt saying something is bad and something is good in a movie like, like, even the the scene with faith. I'm an atheist myself. I I'm an atheist, but I still, I still can show the scene and not tell you that it's good or or bad. It just is. It just exists. It's just, it's just there and to accept. But it is the horse. The horse is like, it's my metaphor that I let I left there. And my thesis goes that in order to experience joy, you need to discover, discover it, or rediscover, rediscover it for yourself. So you cannot hold on to one thing. You cannot hold on to joy in your life, to to keep on experiencing it. You kind of need to let it go. You kind of need to let that you need to unleash that horse and and move on to rediscover and find new joy in your life. Maybe that horse is silly. It's like it's a toy horse that she's carrying. But for me, it's just like, just such, such beautiful representation. No joy, just like this, this soy horse, and you just need to let it go. Try to rediscovering and one of the options, maybe that I gave you, maybe, maybe patriotism was going to bring you joy. Maybe, like going to church tomorrow will make you feel good, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with I'm okay with you, um, experiencing joy by creating art. For example, yes, did I answer your question? So,

Audience member 50:37

charge me why so many layers Yeah,but there's always your vision, right? Also as Eastern European, yeah, came to the United States. How you Yeah, being America. Yeah, and Eastern European also. And to me, it was like, so America. But then it'salso wondering about the choices, like,

Arthur Asriyants 51:20

how you go? Ah, yeah, yeah.

Ramona Lee 51:27

I really, I enjoyed it. I felt the whole time Arthur wasn't a

Arthur Asriyants 51:31

lecture, yeah, I was, I was like, living in, in her world, yeah, and,

Ramona Lee 51:38

I mean, cars did it in a hole, especially, I was very proud. I feel here in America. A lot of people who are generations and generations Americans are both feel the same way anymore, and we create world flags, which is great. I don't think suck. Maybe blacks anywhere, but we forget just kind of what this company stands for and the freedom set along with it. And as a black person, I really love being the imagery for this, and also as a mixed person who is also white, who is also half past members who are immigrants from COVID, from Italy, all over really, but to know that I could what like be this, be this kind of mental and like, and make sure like I could say yes, because I have the freedom to do so I and where I'm at in my artistry as artists, and what that's going to be. I wasn't. I was fearless, and I feel like I would only be that right because I am here and because I have this type of community and and the community of my home so that that I thought Google felt that, yeah,

Arthur Asriyants 52:58

I mean, I'm a senior opinion, and I just wanted to say my perspective on that. She answered most of my questions. She said she said she was, she's proud to be an American. I don't see a problem of being proud to be an American, unless you tell someone else to be to feel the same way you do. Ramona never told me to Hey, you got to be proud. Feel proud holding this flag with me next to me. She didn't care hold this flag, but I wanted to capture how she holds the flag. I wanted to capture what she feels holding this Flag. Flag, it's not it's not about it's not about me. What I feel about flag like I didn't. When I came to an American high school, they told us to learn Pledge of Allegiance. And I remember that. And that's what, that's why I'm like, can you read Pledge of Allegiance? Like, can we record you reading pledge of religions? And that's what we essentially, essentially put there. I thought it's very like, it's fascinating. And like, things I don't understand are always fascinating to me. I would never be able to experience what it is being proud of being American, because I'm clearly not, but it's fascinating to observe it from from the distance, and like, like to look at that, and I'm like, wow, that's really cool. The way you take care of the flag, that's really cool. The way, the way Ramona folded it, and that was you guys, you guys should watch her for folding the flag. And right after the painting, her hands were red, and she was okay with that, because everything, all those details we described together. And I'm like, You do realize America does start worse somewhere else in the world? And she's like, Yeah, but it's still I'm like, I feel it. I feel it right. Like you cannot change you cannot change your parents. You cannot change the place you were born. You cannot, you cannot just run away from that. That's that's still part of your identity. And we're not trying to judge it, or we're not trying to say you must love it. It's just again, it's just, it's like for most of the foreign it's just is you. Yeah, I'm very fascinated by her. Like, I

Beverly Aarons 55:03

want to take one more question, but I want to ask everyone to come closer, if you don't mind, because I really want it to be, I mean, close. Pull your chair up, because we're going to just have a conversation, because we're coming to the end of the moderated portion of this, yeah, and we just want to have a discussion now, like old friends talking about this film. But before we do that, I want to take your question because you had your hand up and you told me your name anyway, yes, my final question

Audience member 55:53

was, what did you decide to layer the vocals throughout? When did I decide to layer vocals? Vocals is very beautiful. So what did you decide tolayer everything together like that?

Arthur Asriyants 56:19

Yeah, it was at the very beginning when I saw this view. So I show, I showed, I showed the model. If you saw her on the screen, she pops out on the on the left or right side, and expanding how, how we saw the movie at the beginning, when I when we started producing at the center, there was supposed to be no sound, and the sound wave was supposed to come from, from the screen, screens on the on the side, and she was supposed to be constantly sitting on the side. But we cannot. We cannot just we don't have an infinite amount of money to make, like video for three, for three screens. So I had to connect all, all the sound, all the sounds, together and make her pop out on on different sides. She's just like, pops pops in. She says something pops out. And then when we started layering this, layering the sound, it was like it was, it was a game to me of I don't, I don't care about what, what you think, what, or what you're hearing. I want you to experience her talking to you, to not understand what she's telling you. It doesn't matter what she's telling you. I just want you to experience her talking to I wanted to you to experience her poem to you. Yes, words are important, but it's more important to me for you to experience the poem like feel it. So it was, like a game of just like this feels perfectly good. It was a puzzle, basically a puzzle, and, like the sound editing, yeah, did I ask for your question? Very.

Arthur Asriyants 58:05

A little bit like how Cleo said during the American black section, yeah, we like, kind of doubled and triple her sound. So when you start seeing the scene, it's like, I pledge allegiance, and then I pledge Allegiance. I pledge allegiance. And it's just like, voices of people, but it's all in Ramona. Yeah, I had to

Ramona Lee 58:33

laugh a little bit off the screen. I didn't know last generation, like I was four, 910, two, I graduated the last generations in school and who, and all those things and and so when I hear it now and then, I figured out to do the land, land acknowledgement, which is beautiful and wonderful, but I not that we ever had to hold it, but now we're holding that. We're holding that freedom of like we, we might not say the pledge of allegience but we're acknowledging this land and to think that as as a group conglomerate. What is the word? We decided that that we can do that. Yeah, it's all relevant. I heard Maurice trying to speak up

Maurice Reneaux 59:26

on the subject. I was blown away, too. Came back, like, yo. I got a cut out. I was like, where the who scored it? I was like, who scored it? Yeah, his buddy. The fidelity of the audio is definitely no and, you know, and I think it, it speaks to the idea of it being a multi sensory, you know, and the idea of onset for it to have that visually as well as audibly.

Arthur Asriyants 59:57

Yeah, I was hoping someone would just like. There will be not enough since followers or someone would would have to sit down on the carpet. In my ideal world of perception of how I want people to watch it, I want people to walk in the gallery with their favorite pillows, sit down and close their eyes and don't even open them throughout the film. Don't even, don't even have to open them, like, like, just sit down and meditate there in the gallery. Because

Ramona Lee 1:00:21

every time have to mention every time reason I would watch it over and over again, and every time Maurice would hear my, like Iris voice, and he would immediately come in to watch it, and he was always the part that was blacked out, screaming, hilarious, compelled to, like, what is that? What's going on?

Beverly Aarons 1:00:45

There were so many more questions we wanted to explore but before we close out tonight, I want to say thank you to everyone for being here and for staying for the duration. Once we're done, you're going to have the opportunity to be with Arthur in his studio and with the rest of the crew, Maurice and Ramona and Ramona daughter, who is like vanished, and to ask as many questions as you want, to ponder The themes and symbolism of this film in your own answer to the question, what is joy?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Crafting art rooted in respect for nature is as ancient as the Sami peoples of Sápmi—the Arctic region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. For 10,000 years, the Sami have transformed every part of the reindeer into objects of utility and beauty: ceremonial drums made from hides stretched over wooden frames, intricately carved antlers shaped into jewelry, and sinew used to stitch boots, jackets, and rugs. This way of life springs from an ethos of resourcefulness, thoughtful stewardship, and a deep awareness that reckless environmental choices made today could deny future generations their natural inheritance.

Since the 17th and 18th centuries, territorial encroachments into Sápmi by Scandinavian nation-states and Russia have posed ongoing threats to Sami cultural autonomy. Land annexation, assimilation policies, and industrial expansion have systematically disrupted their traditional way of life. The large-scale extraction of natural resources—iron ore, gold, silver, copper, nickel, and, more recently, rare earth materials used in smartphones and electric vehicles—has cut off the vital ecosystems that have sustained Sami livelihoods for centuries. Over generations, reindeer herding, a cornerstone of Sami culture, has become increasingly unsustainable as mining operations encroach on grazing lands and fragment migration routes. This disruption has caused widespread starvation and prompted a mass exodus of Sami people from their ancestral lands. Some migrated south to cities, while others left for countries such as the United States in search of better opportunities. Today, Sami descendants like artist Meredith Ojala are returning to Sápmi to reconnect with their heritage and explore environmental justice and the impacts of corporate and military interventions in their art.

“I went there because I'm just trying to reconnect with my roots,” said Meredith Ojala. “And then as an artist, I just kind of make art wherever I go. So, I wouldn't say I went there to make art I would more say I went there to see my relatives and also just to learn more about the traditional ways of life of my ancestors. And obviously, since my great grandmother came, now there's electricity. Where she lives, there still is no running water. You have to just make a hole in the ice. And, you know, some of my relatives think that it's a good thing that a lot of people left the area because a lot of people were starving. … That was a well-documented time period of starvation. But at the same time, development, industrialization, the creation of the mine in northern Sweden has also been highly destructive to the local environment there.”

The permafrost is melting, and warmer winters now bring rain that freezes over reindeer grazing areas. Thick layers of ice form, cutting off access to lichen, the reindeer’s primary food source. Meanwhile, state-owned mining operations continue to churn out greenhouse emissions, intensifying the warming trends and throwing the fragile Arctic biosphere into chaos. Ojala plans to create an artistic series about the impacts of this extractive industry, although it remains a controversial topic in the region.

“I have some gouache, acrylic, watercolor paintings that are directly about the climate catastrophe in the Arctic,” said Ojala. “And pertain to the impact of climate change particularly on the reindeer because my great grandma's family had reindeer and her grandmother was from a reindeer herding district in northern Sweden. So, I have been spending a lot of time in reindeer herding communities, and just helping out with whatever—whether that's packaging reindeer meat or separating herds. … We've had to go out and actually feed the reindeer quite a number of times in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, because the ice is melting during the winter, which it normally wouldn't do, because it rains and creates a thick layer of ice, and the reindeer can't get to their food. So, a lot of herders are being forced to bring food out to reindeer for their survival. And feeding reindeer, as opposed to them being able to get their natural food. is extremely expensive. I've met some reindeer herders who actually have to work in a mine in northern Sweden, which is very destructive. And yet, some reindeer herders have to work in the mine parttime in order to afford the food for the reindeer, even though the mine is destroying the reindeer habitats. So, it's kind of an awful dichotomy.”

Much like the renowned Sami artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, whose poetry and music celebrated the enduring connection between the Sami people and nature—bringing their worldview to the global stage with his acclaimed book The Sun, My Father—Meredith Ojala aims to use her artistic voice to highlight both the challenges and the beauty of Sami culture as they fight to survive climate change and corporate exploitation.

“I feel very passionate about injustices, local and global,” Ojala said. “I realized while studying sociology heading towards law, that I would be miserable the rest of my life if I went the law track. And I would definitely not have any time for art. And I just realized I'm not good at speaking so I wouldn't be good speaking in a law room. And then I'm not good at writing, so wouldn't be good as a researcher. It's not to say that it wouldn't be helpful at all in environmental law, or one of those arenas, but the reactions I got from my political art were compelling me to move in that direction as something that would actually have more of an impact. And I do make art that’s not political, but a lot of it does relate to, you know, the environment and climate change and some sort of political movement.”

FATIGUES: Examining Cycles of Conflict and Militarization

Meredith Ojala has been creating political art since 2007, challenging audiences to rethink what they accept as "just the way it is." Her work has been featured in notable venues, including the Portland Art Museum, Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery, and Joshua Tree Art Gallery. In March 2024, her solo exhibition, FATIGUES, debuted at Studio 103 in Seattle, Washington. The show presented striking and visceral imagery: an American flag constructed from shards of glass, a motionless figure wearing military fatigues sprawled on the floor, faint voices recounting a school shooting, and jagged wire mesh enclosing a nude figure, pinning her to the wall. Ojala’s art confronts viewers with unsettling questions about violence, societal complacency, and conflicts at home and abroad.

“FATIGUES is centered around the history of America as a military state,” said Ojala. “The actual fatigues and camouflage used in the exhibition is from my dad. And he's a veteran of Saudi Arabia, Persian Gulf War, and Afghanistan. His father and his uncle both fought in World War II. His uncle died fighting the Nazis. My brother who came to the exhibition is also a veteran, and my aunts. I come from a military family. … Perhaps that is where some of my spirit started is from being more aware of the wars going on, because I have family members actually going to these wars. … It's kind of creating a space to think about this unending cycle of invading other countries and America itself being created through invasion of native land here.”

Meredith Ojala’s FATIGUES examines cycles of conflict and displacement through the lens of her personal history and the broader societal forces that shape it. Her family’s legacy of military service—defending a country built on the invasion of Indigenous lands—carries an unspoken irony. As a descendant of Sami people who fled persecution in Scandinavia, Ojala courageously uses her art to critically examine systems that simultaneously offer refuge while perpetuating harm. While the FATIGUES exhibition didn’t directly address environmental issues, the shards of glass evoke a pre-industrial craft transformed into tools of destruction, extinguishing life and poisoning nature. During the Cold War, parts of Sápmi were used for military exercises and left behind spent munitions that contaminated the lichen crucial to reindeer survival. Similarly, modern U.S.-led conflicts leave toxic chemicals in their wake, poisoning water and land while disrupting human lives. Through her work, Ojala seeks to disrupt and minimize her own participation in these oppressive structures, challenging viewers to confront these complexities and envision alternatives.

An Artist’s First Steps into Protest Art

“The first protest I can remember was in high school,” Ojala said. “It was an Anti-Iraq [war] preemptive strike walkout. And that was notable because there were riot police on Capitol Hill. And the school said that we would be expelled if we walked out. So that kind of made an imprint in my mind. … Originally, I went to university to become a lawyer to sue corporations for environmental and social injustice. So, I was studying as a sociology major with a minor in visual arts. And the two of them were starting to merge.”

Eventually, Ojala began to feel drawn to the idea of bringing protest and art together. In the summer of 2007, her first installation performance art premiered at the Chautauqua Institute of Art and explored the inhumane interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay.

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I was also using these mannequins made of galvanized hexagonal mesh or chicken wire,” said Ojala. “And you walked in and you didn't really know which person in there was actually human. Because I was in there, also covered in the chicken wire and covered in a sort of paper-mâché, and the other mannequins were the same size as me. So, it was sort of like asking the viewer to really think about how we are defining what is human and nonhuman. These inhumane interrogation methods is kind of on the basis of dehumanization of suspected terrorists who are not even… I mean, these people that were being interrogated were not even 100% terrorists, they weren't even convicted.”

A good 90% of art spaces don’t want any political art in their space, Ojala said. “Because perhaps they feel like they'll be responsible for the artist’s statement in some way. Just by giving it a platform, somehow, they are sharing your view of what you're saying.” So, Ojala has sometimes taken a more direct approach to getting her art and message in the public eye.

“I laid down in front of the Campus Center, almost naked,” Ojala said of her public performance art at Princeton University, “and just slowly started burying myself alive until the police stopped me. And I was almost completely covered. But a lot of people just walked by. And these sorts of pieces I wouldn't do where I’m alone. I had a small group of friends who knew about it. And I asked them not to stand around and watch because I wanted to see who would stop. How would the public engage when there's no signage around it? And it's not in an exhibition space, which is different.”

Meredith Ojala’s work bridges the past and present, intertwining the personal and political to explore the complex issues of environmental justice, cultural survival, and militarization. Drawing on her Sami heritage and her family’s military legacy, she reveals the interconnectedness of displacement, exploitation, and resilience. Through her art, Ojala challenges viewers to reflect on their roles within these systems and envision a future where humanity and the environment are nurtured and protected.

A note from the publisher/writer: Happy New Year! May 2025 bring you beautiful art and inspiring stories.

In this interactive event, which took place at Blue Cone Studios on January 19, 2024, we explored the emerging phenomenon of the global artist. Examined through the lens of the vibrant South African arts and culture scene, "The Rise of the Global Artist: Lessons From South Africa" is a journey into the heart of human creativity and global interconnectedness. Our featured artist is Mpho Mokgatlhe.

Mpho Mokgatlhe is a self-taught South African sculptor based in Johannesburg Soweto.
Originally a visual artist that has been painting for several years before experimenting with ceramics for the past 3 years.

Her sculptures and pottery are a remembrance of ancient Africa in the modern age.

The work is an ongoing quest of self-discovery and celebration of old Africa in a world that has erased the significance of art in the life of an African as an integral part of community and spiritual practice.

Mpho's clay works are aimed at reviving indigenous techniques that have been lost through time while exploring the spiritual aspect of art in Africa.

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Materials

She uses wild clay and minerals for painting, mostly red ocher, white clay and terracotta, currently experimenting with various rock pigments.

Control Your Narrative

Don't let anyone control your story. Join us for our 3-day workshop on December 17, 18 & 19 - 6pm - 9pm.

There is a concept in psychology known as a “controlling narrative.” On a macro level a “controlling narrative” is a story that is created and disseminated about an individual or a group designed to malign them. But even as an individual artist, you may have felt the pain of a “controlling narrative.” Maybe you’ve been ostracized from certain high-brow artist circles for being “too feminine,” “too weird,” “too commercial,” or “too ethnic,” or you’ve felt that gut punch of having someone presumptuously define your story and explain your own artistic motivations to you. But what if I told you that you don’t have to submit to anyone’s half-assed narratives about who you are? You have the power to take control of your story. The truth is that you can control your narrative, and that’s exactly what you will master at our 3-day workshop, Building Your Media Confidence. Through hands-on exercises and expert guidance, you’ll gain the confidence to share your unique story with journalists, funders, influencers, gatekeepers, and the world.

Workshop: Building Your Media Confidence

Where: Online (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1044425403497?aff=oddtdtcreator)

Dates: December 17, 18 & 19.

Times: 6pm - 9pm

Workshop: Building Your Media Confidence

Where: Online (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1044425403497?aff=oddtdtcreator)

Dates: November 19, 20, & 21.

Times: 6pm - 9pm

What To Expect

This 3-day media confidence workshop will provide high-level skills and techniques you can use to enhance your artist statements, press releases, grant applications, and more. We will focus on building your media confidence and storytelling skills in a way that is meaningful and relevant to your unique needs.

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Here’s how the workshop is structured:

Day 1: Core Storytelling Techniques - November 19, 2024 6pm - 9pm

Overview: Learn the foundational principles of effective storytelling and communication. We will explore high-level techniques that can be used to craft artist statements, develop your elevator pitch, or write engaging social media posts, and more.

Activity: Choose a storytelling project to work on, whether it’s drafting a new artist statement, refining a press release, or developing a unique story angle for traditional media interviews or social media. Apply the techniques discussed in class to your chosen piece.

Takeaway: Leave with a deeper understanding of how to structure and communicate your story in any context.

Day 2: Speaking with Confidence about Your Art - November 20, 2024 6pm - 9pm

Overview: This session is dedicated to helping you verbally communicate your story and talk about your art with confidence to collectors and the general public. Learn how to articulate your message effectively in various situations, including interviews, artist talks, panels, and when engaging with collectors.

Activity: Participate in mock interviews and role-play scenarios where you explain your work to collectors. Receive feedback and guidance to refine your verbal communication skills.

Takeaway: Gain confidence in talking about your art and leave with a set of best practices for engaging in any speaking situation, whether it’s a formal interview or a casual conversation with potential buyers.

Day 3: Applying Techniques and Receiving Feedback - November 21, 2024 6pm - 9pm

Overview: Apply what you’ve learned to your storytelling project and focus on the practical application of the skills gained. Get personalized feedback on your chosen project and learn how to adapt and refine your approach based on real-time input.

Activity: Share your work with the group or in two-person breakout sessions. Receive targeted advice and learn how to further polish your work.

Takeaway: Gain confidence in your ability to articulate your story and create high-quality marketing pieces that resonate with your audience.

Sign Up For The Workshop

This article was originally published in the South Seattle Emerald in June 2020. This version has been updated, expanded, and adapted to audio.

When third-generation visual artist George Jennings arrived in the Puget Sound area in 1997, he came with his grandfather's small drafting table and a vision to transform his passion for art into a viable business. He and NaKeesa Frazier-Jennings, his wife and business partner, hoped to continue the Jennings family art legacy that began with George's maternal grandfather.

"Before we moved to Seattle, when we were dating, I got a chance to meet his family. At the time, his grandmother was still alive. She was, I think, in her eighties," NaKeesa said. "Her house was filled with his grandfather's work that I thought was really beautiful. His grandmother would show us interviews of her husband and herself that the local news would do with them from time to time … And I just always felt sad that this Black man who was so talented did not receive the recognition that I felt his work deserved. Though he has some pieces in the Smithsonian and posthumously his work was included in a traveling exhibit of the hundred best self-portraits in America or in history … I just really felt like if George wanted to try to get his work out there that I wanted to help this particular Black man do that and kind of fulfill their family's art destiny and continue that legacy."

George fondly remembered growing up in Washington D.C., visiting the Smithsonian, and learning the craft from his grandfather who also taught George’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. But just like his grandfather, George Jennings didn’t create art from a profit mindset. And although he has sold many pieces of art over the past 20 years, he is still humbly surprised when anyone is willing to pay for his creations.

“I don't want to seem self-deprecating, but it's like, who am I for you to buy my artwork?” said George Jennings. “Especially since when I do my artwork, like my grandfather, it was a labor of love created for himself and his family. So, I wasn't actually trying to create pieces of artwork that I thought I would sell, I mean, you know, to appeal to the general public. It was the items that would appeal to me from the type of art that appealed to me.”

While George continued to create artwork from his heart, he and his wife NaKeesa developed their venture into the business it is today. Even as he took various day jobs and at one point joined the Air Force and the Secret Service, he continued to practice his art. George would create paintings and NaKeesa would get them framed. Eventually, they began to make prints and greeting cards, and sold his artwork at art fairs and a local tea shop where NaKeesa worked. They had very high standards—the quality needed to be top-notch. But in the beginning almost everything was a bootstrapped, DIY affair.

"We would go to Michaels or JOANN Fabric and get the supplies, and we would print out our own cards and glue-stick them together and seal them in the bags. And we made our own prints the same way and put them in mats, and we started selling them that way," George said.

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But the Jennings family wasn't content with bootstrapping everything, because it didn't create the level of quality they preferred. Eventually, they employed professionals to make sure that the framing and print quality met their high standards. And that commitment to high standards seems to have paid off. George is currently exhibiting his first solo show The Women, The Paper, and The Light at ARTE NOIR Gallery in Seattle until February 2, 2025. I wrote a detailed analysis of the exhibition which is a portrait art show that celebrates the beauty and legacy of Black women in fine art. You can read my in-depth analysis of the exhibition on Arte Noir’s website.

When I first interviewed George Jennings and his wife four years ago for the South Seattle Emerald, we were less than 3 months into the pandemic. George was planning his first solo show that was slated to premiere at the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) in 2022 but none of us imagined that state-ordered closures and restrictions would last more than 3 years. At the time, I was interviewing artists in Seattle and asking them how they were being impacted by the pandemic. George was candid about his feelings.

"Well, I guess the first thing is fear," George said. "The fear that things won't return back to the way they were. I have that planned show at the Northwest African American Museum two and a half years from now, which, you know, on one hand I thought it was pretty far off. And then when this happened, now I'm thinking either that may not ever happen, that it may be pushed back or that it will be fortunate for me that it was two and a half years off. I just wonder, are we going to have crowds because every artist at their first big art show is hoping to have a great opening night with crowds of people. But that may not be possible in the near future."

Even as uncertainty loomed in 2020, George and NaKeesa embraced a glass-half-full attitude. Since they could no longer depend on promoting George Jennings Art at physical galleries and museums during the pandemic, they adapted and went virtual. In the early days of the pandemic, NaKeesa took the lead and built a virtual gallery where George showcased his work in live-streamed studio tours on Facebook.

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"I think it was a decision that should have been made earlier on, but you know, starting out, we were still playing the same art game that every other artist had played up until that point," George said of his decision to take his art online and leverage social media. "I think the biggest thing for me is that I was not very enthusiastic about putting myself out there as far as social media or anything like that. I'm still not comfortable doing it because I know that it doesn't come off as polished as I wish it would. … When you're doing social media, and I guess also a gallery show, you're not just selling your art, you're selling yourself. I'm not that type of person. I'm not trying to make you purchase anything because you like my personality or something like that. So that's really difficult for me. I want my art to stand on its own."

NaKeesa gave a knowing smile as George voiced his apprehension.

"We are almost polar opposites when it comes to that,” NaKeesa said as we burst into a knowing laughter. “Because we want to be real and we want to be authentic and share what it's really like. … First of all, I'm an outgoing person, and because I do a lot of public things in my professional life and in my community work, I have no problem getting on a stage, getting on a mic, being recorded, and doing an interview with little to no notice. And I'm a lot more active on social media than George, and I have been for years, so I understand that. … But I am also very clear that a lot of times, people will be introduced to you or be introduced to your work through their interest in you.”

NaKeesa went on to explain that many people are initially drawn to them because of their story as a power couple where one is an artist while the other handles business and marketing. It’s a reality that George had slowly learned to embrace but it wasn’t his only major change. He had also transitioned from traditional mediums such as oils and acrylics to digital art.

“When I first started looking at digital art, it wasn't too appealing to me because it just had that 1980s special effects look to it,” George said. “It did not look as good as traditional art, and it was because computer processing and programming and, you know, at that time, it wasn't up there. And the tools that were needed weren't available. So, it was almost like videogaming back in the beginning, when you were loading programs by typing in things at the command prompt. And it was pretty rudimentary. I look back, just in the last 10 years, how far we’ve come with drawing tablets and what the iPad can do, the iPad Pro, what it can do, and then the programming and the pricing of programs coming down, and three-dimensional stuff and Physically Based Rendering and that sort of thing. And with 3D and virtual reality, it's almost limitless now. I remember listening to an artist who made a transition from traditional to digital art. He said the biggest thing is the overwhelming possibilities to the traditional artists, because your tools are almost limitless. Everything you can imagine you can do if you've learned the tools. So that's what I'm mainly excited about. It was a hard thing going from that tangible paint on canvas or drawing, and that one off piece to be sold to that one person to being respected for doing digital art. But for me, it comes down to getting the image that I wanted to get out of my head, and the digital tools were much better for that.”

You can view George Jennings’ The Women, The Paper, and The Light, digital portraits printed on metal, at ARTE NOIR Gallery in Seattle until February 2, 2025.

© Copyright 2024 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.

We are all sacred geometry. The truth of that belief was confirmed for mixed-media encaustic artist Nichole DeMent in a vision years ago. Today, some of the details have faded, but what she does remember is a figure surrounded by an undulating aura of sacred geometry symbols: the circle, icosahedron, Metatron’s Cube, and more. These ancient forms, believed by some to be the building blocks of the universe, are layered into DeMent’s artwork—sometimes in form, other times in spirit—giving viewers a deeper glimpse into humanity’s hidden connection to the cosmos.

In her large-scale painting Jupiter, a white horse gallops from and to some unknown place, black specks of dust scattered by its hooves. The horse symbolizes strength, freedom, and good fortune in many cultures. In Mongolian Shamanistic beliefs, horses transport Shamans between the physical and spiritual worlds during rituals and carry messages and blessings back from the spiritual realm. In Jupiter, the white horse seems to represent birth and life while the dark dust embodies the chaos and mystery of the cosmos. Together, they illustrate the journey each living being must take, to life, then death — coming from and returning to nothingness.

The human and non-human figures featured in her work are “collaborators” or “co-creators,” terms DeMent prefers to the word ‘model.’

“I don't like to use the word model because it's there's an association that it's me doing something to them,” said DeMent. “But really, we're coming together. I mean, all models are really providing a lot of input and inspiration. So, it's not just me. But anyway, there are co-creators. So, I really want to know. I want to go under the surface of what or who they are. My work is about the soul of things, really. It's not a portrait, for instance, but a deeper element of their psyche.”

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DeMent, who has a BA in Fine Art Photography from The Evergreen State College, typically begins each artwork with a photograph as the foundation. She then applies layers of encaustic materials such as beeswax, resin, and pigment, along with an assortment of organic elements such as tea and rust. Most of the photography in her work are originals shot by DeMent herself.  

“If I want to include animal faces in my work, then I go to the zoo,” DeMent said. “I've done a lot of animal photos at the zoo because I want to include that. It's part of my process. If I absolutely am driven, if I have received guidance through my spirit and through my process to put some kind of animal in there, and I just can't capture it, and I really need to do that, then I'll try and find something.”

When photography first emerged in the 19th century, many people believed that photographs held a piece of a person’s spirit or essence; and some, like the ‘spirit photographer’ Georgiana Houghton, believed that photography could also capture the likeness of a person’s dead loved ones. In the context of DeMent’s work, the tradition of capturing a living being’s essence is carried on through both photography and mixed media.

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Amontaine Aurore’s multimedia stage play The Ever-Expanding Moment is premiering at Common Area Maintenance (CAM) in Belltown, Seattle until September 22, 2024. This 90-minute performance delivers emotional intensity and narrative complexity, tackling pressing social issues and deep existential dilemmas.

What happens when a Black man killed by the police is trapped in the afterlife with the white officer who shot him? Jamahl King (Anthony Simmons) is an ambitious college student expecting a child, while Victor Lane (Daniel Christensen) is a seasoned yet jaded cop, resigned to accepting the police force’s culture of callousness and indifference.  Together, they confront their pasts, their emotional wounds, and their complex relationships. The Angel Sophelia (Zoë Wolf) serves as a guide taking on the role of mother, wife, and judge, steering both souls through their interconnected afterlife journeys. While the time period is unstated, the themes of police brutality and accountability ground it in a present-day context, wrapped in an otherworldly soundscape and mesmerizing visuals projected onto stage panels.

Set on a black box stage, The Ever-Expanding Moment uses minimal props, low lighting, and simple set design. Yet, it remains visually dynamic through actor movement, projected visuals, and narratively responsive sound effects. This trifecta of movement, visuals, and sound make the bare space feel alive and full, even crowded, at times. It tickled my senses as I experienced a wide range of emotions—startled, intrigued, saddened, hopeful, and angry—while feeling an ever-present, deep sense of grief throughout the story. There was also laughter, a lot of it. Despite the very serious nature of the play, the audience laughed at every comedic moment, providing just the right amount of relief in the otherwise tense narrative.

On its surface, The Ever-Expanding Moment seems like a play about the afterlife consequences of police brutality but it digs deeper than that. This play explores what happens when two human beings, separated by circumstances and societal boundaries, are forced to confront each other, their self-perceptions, and their response to the societal expectations placed on them during their lifetime. It’s also about the struggle to find light in a world filled with darkness and the courage required to challenge the culture we’re born into.

Aurore’s expert storytelling immerses us in the lives of both characters, portraying them as fully human—flawed, yet driven by good intentions. And while there were moments where Jamahl’s dialogue wasn’t believable, it didn’t diminish the emotional impact of the story. At one point I wondered if the unnatural dialogue was intentional. Since Jamahl was a college student, I imagined that maybe the playwright intended to demonstrate how the character was awkwardly regurgitating ideas he had read in books. The lighting design was powerful overall but there were times when it detracted from the experience—actors sometimes performed in shadow, making it difficult to see their facial expressions. Unfortunately, this lessened the dramatic impact. One of the most creative technical aspects was the use of stage panels, which shifted between opaque and translucent, effectively transporting the audience through time, space, and multiple dimensions. The emotional range of all three actors was impressive, enriching the experience—I didn’t take my eyes off them, not even for a moment.

The Ever-Expanding Moment is Amontaine Aurore’s third major play produced in Seattle since 2018. Her play Don’t Call It A Riot premiered at 18^th & Union in 2018 and When A Tree Falls, a filmed theatre production, premiered at SIFF Cinema in 2023 during the heart of the pandemic. All three of Aurore’s plays explore what it means to live in a society that racializes its people. They boldly delve into how this racialization impacts inner lives, personal relationships, and the ability to exist and find joy despite circumstances.

Many of Aurore’s contemporaries have explored the emotional and existential impacts of police brutality. Based on summaries and reviews, plays like Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over (2017) and Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1993) focus on the psychic toll of police violence. But Aurore’s play stands out because she uses a narrative framework similar to Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 existentialist play No Exit, placing it in a modern American context. When Sartre’s idea that “hell is other people” is applied to America’s racial and policing dynamics, it forces the audience to question their understanding of the world and their place in it.

The Ever-Expanding Moment delivers rich storytelling with an emotional punch, challenging audiences to rethink their understanding of the culture they live in and their assumptions about “the other.” It uses classic existential frameworks to explore current social realities in a way that’s fresh and creative. And it takes simple, barebones staging and breathes life into it with mostly effective lighting and sound design. For anyone willing to experience its emotional and intellectual depths, The Ever-Expanding Moment is an unforgettable and rewarding experience.

© Copyright 2024 - Artists Up Close/Beverly Aarons. All rights reserved.