The NewCrits Podcast

with Ajay Kurian
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Visual Arts
  • Updated Monthly

This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com

  1. 16h ago

    The Forum 22 | Baseera Khan

    Baseera Khan joins Ajay Kurian for a conversation that begins with a Garfield drawing contest and expands into an exploration of storytelling, identity, and the politics of material. Khan reflects on finding her artistic voice through tracing comics, navigating graduate school as a search for self rather than an entry into the art world, and developing works that blend performance, sculpture, painting, and sound. Together, they discuss Braid Rage, acoustic blankets, museums, language, surveillance, and the hidden histories embedded in everyday materials. Throughout the conversation, Khan shares how dreams, humor, intuition, and personal experience shape a practice that resists fixed definitions while examining capitalism, representation, and belonging. About the Guest Baseera Khan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores identity, labor, material culture, and systems of power through sculpture, painting, performance, installation, and sound. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and Participant Inc., and they were the winner of The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist. https://baseerakhan.com/ 00:00 Intro 00:20 Garfield, Nermal & learning to draw through comics 05:20 Finding an artistic path through Cornell and self-discovery 12:20 Storytelling, language, and the influence of Michael Asher 18:50 Braid Rage, dreams, and making work without sketches 26:50 Fabric, family, and the materials of memory 29:50 The “I AM MUSLIMA” Nike project, identity, and capitalism 34:45 Performance, acoustic blankets, and surveillance 42:30 Petroleum, plastic, and giving museum objects a voice 50:50 Working with museum archives and historical collections 54:20 Reality television, identity, and staying grounded 1:00:30 Art, ambition, and closing thoughts 00:00:00 Ajay Kurian : Welcome to the forum from the new podcast. I’m your host, Ajay Kurian. The forum is a free monthly gathering in New York where artists and thinkers come together for a live conversation. Well, you’re about to hear was recorded in front of a live audience. For details on upcoming events, sign up for our newsletter at new dot studio. 00:00:19 Ajay Kurian : I was really tickled by this like, fact that I learned about Baseera literally just a few days ago, and just a few minutes ago, I had this idea. Um, so we’ll see how it goes. But basically we both got into art. Art meaning like drawing of any kind image making, um, through Garfield. And I didn’t know this until a few days ago. 00:00:47 Baseera Khan: So do you guys know who Garfield is? 00:00:50 Ajay Kurian : Yes. Okay. 00:00:52 Baseera Khan: Do you know who Nermal is? Of course you don’t. Because that was the femme cat behind Garfield. 00:01:02 Ajay Kurian : It’s true. What I wanted to see if Baseera would be down to do is if we did a little Garfield drawing contest right now. 00:01:12 Ajay Kurian : Do you guys. 00:01:13 Baseera Khan: Like that idea? 00:01:14 Ajay Kurian : Yes. 00:01:15 Baseera Khan: I haven’t thought about Garfield in a very long time. And I have to also tell you the reason why. The reason why I started drawing Garfield was not because I innately was interested in like, Garfield and drawing. It was that I was interested in the stories and the storytelling. And, um, my brother would always run to the library and rent all of the books. And he was in his phase where he didn’t want to share. I mean, he’s a very generous human. 00:01:49 Ajay Kurian : Is he older or younger? 00:01:50 Baseera Khan: Two years older. 00:01:51 Ajay Kurian : Okay. Okay. So it’s close. 00:01:53 Baseera Khan: He’s a generous human. You know, I know I’m being recorded. Love you. William. But at the time, he was going through a phase where he wanted everything to himself. So I would sneak the books out of his bag and I would trace them. I would trace the drawings and make my own books. And I think through tracing the books, I started creating my own version of the cat. So just my pardon. If the cat looks like other things. 00:02:24 Ajay Kurian : That’s totally fine. This is all in good fun. Um, and I also, it’s again, like, it’s just crazy to hear that that’s also how you came to it because weirdly, there’s ideas of familial surveillance. There’s ideas of like having to take a story and make it yours because it wasn’t being offered to you in the first place. There’s just like strange dynamics that feel like there’s parallels in the work itself. 00:02:52 Baseera Khan: One more thing before we start this drawing contest. Um. Garfield was a bully. 00:03:00 Ajay Kurian : This is true. 00:03:02 Baseera Khan: So I, I was interested in the narrative of how he kind of came into the room and took all his space. 00:03:10 Ajay Kurian : I never thought about it. 00:03:11 Baseera Khan: I was really interested in normal story, and I thought that I would fashion a career of what would normal do. 00:03:20 Ajay Kurian : Wow. 00:03:21 Baseera Khan: But that never happened because. 00:03:23 Ajay Kurian : My normal was the. It’s, I guess in the context of the comic, it’s like normal was the exhausting, annoying, um, cousin. I don’t know what what the relationship was, but it hearing it from like hearing it out. Like as an adult now I’m like, oh yeah. 00:03:43 Baseera Khan: Nermal was the intelligent, femme capable cat and she knew a lot and it intimidated the more rugged It kind of, you know, like boyish charm that Garfield kind of, like, took advantage of. It was patriarchy. 00:04:06 Ajay Kurian : For sure. I don’t think it was boyish. He had very much old man energy to me. 00:04:11 Baseera Khan: But sometimes I think that boys and old men are very similar. 00:04:16 Ajay Kurian : Okay, I can see that. 00:04:18 Baseera Khan: Anyway. 00:04:18 Ajay Kurian : Yeah, here we go. I can totally see that. All right. Um. No stopwatch. We’re just going to do this quick and see what comes out. All right, let’s go. I mean, I drew him like a, like a thousand times. I would say this is like a very psychedelic Cheshire I’m here for it, though. 00:05:00 Baseera Khan: I think that is the CIA. He was like, did you know? Did you really draw? Garfield, let’s do a contest. 00:05:09 Ajay Kurian : That’s that’s the. 00:05:10 Ajay Kurian : Rest of the interview. Is me just grilling you? 00:05:12 Ajay Kurian : Yeah. 00:05:15 Ajay Kurian : I want to start in all seriousness with. 00:05:19 Baseera Khan: I am an artist, I promise. 00:05:22 Ajay Kurian : She’s an amazing artist. So this is this is, I guess I’m I want to start here, but I also am curious about like this, this ten year lapse. Um, but this was your first major show in New York at participant Incorporated and, um. 00:05:37 Baseera Khan: It’s, it’s participant Inc you know, participant. I know that you like long words, but. 00:05:42 Ajay Kurian : I’m gonna get killed all night. So among other things, this is like when we first see the acoustic blankets, which we’ll talk about. This is the first time. Is this the first time where Brad Rage was performed? 00:05:56 Baseera Khan: Yes. 00:05:57 Ajay Kurian : Okay. 00:05:57 Baseera Khan: That was commissioned. Most of those works were commissioned by the by the gallery. 00:06:02 Ajay Kurian : Okay. Okay, cool. And how how did. I mean, how did that whole relationship start? 00:06:10 Baseera Khan: Actually was introduced to Leo through Jeffrey Gibson, who was. I was his teaching assistant at Cornell. Oh, cool. And he was doing his show, um, at that time with participant. He had just received a capital, a creative capital grant, and he was working on his solo show. And in a way, even he’s so big, you know, in our minds, but in a way, like that was one of his first shows. 00:06:37 Ajay Kurian : Right. 00:06:38 Baseera Khan: So he was like, you know, in due time, you know, I’ll introduce you to, you know, this magical person. And I was like, I’m going to jump the gun here and just go meet her. Um, so I went out to a show that she was doing. I saw Jeffrey show, introduce myself to her and brought her over to Cornell. And so we kind of started a friendship and a very cool kind of a work life relationship at that point. Mhm. 00:07:06 Ajay Kurian : Okay. So it developed over a period. And then like through those conversations, like, did she, I mean, did she get, was she in your corner from the start? 00:07:18 Baseera Khan: Leah’s in every artist’s corner. But I have to say that when I was in grad school, I had like Xerox printout cutouts of horses behinds. I, I was thinking about a fake book of like archiving, I, I refused to paint, but I was painting. It was a very, it was a very interesting time period for me. And, um, I’m, I’m just really lucky that I did it off site because Cornell is not really a place that people go to be artists. That’s my bad. 00:07:55 Ajay Kurian : It’s I mean, it’s yeah, it’s not like one of the super well-known MFA programs, but I do think it’s to me, what’s interesting about it is that like, I think a lot of people in MFA programs get a lot of attention before things are fully cooked. And I think sometimes it’s nice to just be away and like, have some time for things to, to marinate on your own time. Mhm. 00:08:18 Baseera Khan: I didn’t really necessarily know. I know this sounds like it sounds as goofy as me knowing how to draw Garfield, but I really didn’t know about Yale and about I didn’t even know what a tenure track position was when I got into Cornell. My dad on his like last days of health and wealth before he went to the cosmos. Right. He died. He was like, how did you get into Cornell? Because I was like failing out of every institutional interaction I ever had, like elementary school. I was put into a locker because they let you do that back then to discipline you. They put you in lockers. 00:09:03 Ajay Kurian : Oh my God. Wait. The administration put

    The Forum 22 | Baseera Khan

  2. Jul 16

    SPENT Episode Four | Erin Jane Nelson

    Erin Jane Nelson joins Ajay Kurian to talk about the gap between artistic success and creative fulfillment. They discuss the reality of making a living as an artist, navigating burnout, and why reaching long-awaited career milestones can leave you questioning what comes next.The conversation explores Nelson's evolving practice—from clay pinhole cameras and photography to spirituality, caregiving, and family history—as well as the emotional and financial realities that shape life in the studio. Along the way, they reflect on ambition, artistic purpose, and the kinds of relationships that sustain a creative life long after the accolades fade.Hosted by Ajay Kurian Edited by Peter Groppe00:00 – Erin Jane Nelson on the Whitney Biennial and making cameras from clay09:38 – Success, creative block, and the unexpected reality of becoming a full-time artist17:52 – Burnout, financial anxiety, and redefining an artistic practice23:30 – October 7th, Jewish identity, spirituality, and family history31:04 – Photography, caregiving, and finding balance beyond the studio40:06 – The economics of being an artist and why most careers aren't what they seem46:39 – Almost leaving art for law school—and the opportunity that changed everything51:41 – Ajay on ambition, loss, and rediscovering purpose through art Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

    SPENT Episode Four | Erin Jane Nelson

  3. Jun 29

    The Forum 21 | Lucas Blalock

    Lucas Blalock’s photographs often look like they’re interrupting themselves. Objects bend out of place. Edits remain visible. Corrections become part of the image instead of disappearing behind it. Rather than using photography to create the illusion of clarity, Lucas uses it to expose the decisions, accidents, and contradictions that make images possible in the first place. In this NewCrits conversation, Lucas sits down with Ajay Kurian for a discussion about photography, discomfort, and what happens when the process becomes part of the final work. The conversation begins with a story Lucas has returned to in recent years: a childhood accident that resulted in reconstructive surgery using his own toe to replace his thumb—a collision of advanced medicine and old-world improvisation that he jokingly describes as “the first bad Photoshop.” Lucas reflects on discovering art through CD covers before museums, studying at Bard, and coming of age as digital tools began changing the medium itself. Instead of treating manipulation as something to conceal, he became interested in making it visible. Again and again, he returns to the same idea: images become more interesting when they stop trying to appear effortless. 00:00 — Intro 03:10 — The Disney Accident and “The First Bad Photoshop” 09:45 — Origin Stories and Discovering Photography 15:30 — Album Covers, Culture, and Looking Before Art 20:10 — Studying with Stephen Shore 26:00 — Photoshop as a New Problem for Photography 31:20 — Signature, Style, and Staying Strange 36:15 — Making the Worst Possible Image 41:00 — Working for Vik Muniz 46:10 — Labor, Accident, and Unfinishedness 50:20 — Pictures That Resist Digestion 54:15 — Photography, Bodies, and Sensation 58:40 — AI, Anxiety, and the Future of Images 1:03:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

    The Forum 21 | Lucas Blalock

  4. Jun 18

    SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet

    SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet Whitney Mallet has spent years moving through magazines, galleries, performances, readings, and the shifting ecosystems that surround contemporary culture - not as an observer standing outside of it, but as someone committed to paying attention. In this conversation, Whitney sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about criticism, instinct, and what it means to build a practice around curiosity. They discuss magazines as art projects, the lag between cultural change and cultural criticism, and why making connections between unlikely people, scenes, and ideas can create something more exciting than simply reinforcing what already exists. Whitney reflects on developing taste, not as something fixed or innate, but as something shaped through obsession, attention, and years of showing up. They talk about influence, authority, and the slow process of learning to trust your own perspective. Throughout the conversation, Whitney returns to a tension that runs through both criticism and creative work: the pull between analysis and instinct, busyness and reflection, skepticism and hope. What emerges isn’t a defense of optimism so much as a practice of remaining open. Believing that culture can still surprise you, that intensity is worth pursuing, and that staying curious might be one way of resisting disappointment. Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits  The Whitney Review of New Writing:   https://www.whitneyreview.org/ 00:00 — Intro 04:50 — Running a Magazine by Instinct 09:20 — Taste, Influence, and Learning What You Like 15:10 — Building Unexpected Encounters 20:30 — Trusting Your Own Authority 27:15 — Information, Obsession, and Developing Taste 33:40 — Work as Practice 38:20 — Edging Burnout 43:45 — Busyness, Avoidance, and Personal Writing 49:30 — Disappointment, Intensity, and Staying Optimistic 55:15 — Criticism, Attention, and Cultural Delay 1:01:20 — The Internet, Institutions, and the Changing Role of Reviews 1:07:15 — Writing Without Permission 1:11:40 — Earnestness, Cynicism, and Seeing Through Things 1:16:20 — Breakthrough or Burnout 1:18:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

    SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet

  5. Jun 18

    SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price

    SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price Walter Price’s paintings may present as loose, instinctive, and immediate, but behind them is a practice built on discipline, repetition, and consistency.  In this conversation, Walter sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about building a life around making work and what it means to remain committed to the process. Together they discuss ambition, routine, competition, and the challenge of continuing to evolve without becoming attached to outcomes. Walter reflects on making small paintings when everyone told him to scale up, embracing experimentation over certainty, and treating limitations as opportunities rather than obstacles. Again and again, he returns to the same idea: growth comes from pushing toward discomfort instead of away from it. Walter describes creativity as something active - a practice of showing up, staying curious, and refusing to get comfortable. At one point, Walter says he doesn’t want the cheers. He wants the boos. Not because he’s interested in proving people wrong, but because he understands what keeps him moving: there is always another level to reach. Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits  More about Walter Price: https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/walter-price 00:00 — Intro 04:15 — Growing Up 08:40 — Early Ideas About Becoming an Artist 13:25 — Consistency vs Inspiration 18:50 — Small Paintings and Ignoring Expectations 24:30 — Wanting the Boos, Not the Cheers 29:15 — Ambition, Restlessness, and Staying Hungry 34:10 — Experimentation as Practice 39:20 — Developing Taste and Trusting Instinct 44:45 — Limitations as Opportunity 49:30 — Growth Through Discomfort 55:10 — Routine, Repetition, and Showing Up 1:00:45 — Success, Satisfaction, and What Comes Next 1:06:20 — Curiosity as a Long-Term Practice 1:10:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

    SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price

  6. Jun 18

    SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey

    SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey Yaya Bey has built one of the most singular voices in contemporary music not by chasing consensus, but by trusting her own sense of practice. Across albums that move through R&B, house, soul, poetry, and memory, their work resists easy categorization - and she’s increasingly uninterested in trying to make it legible to people who insist on misunderstanding it. In this conversation, recorded ahead of the release of her new album Fidelity, Yaya sits down with Ajay Kurian for a wide-ranging discussion about what it means to make work on your own terms while navigating an industry that often wants to flatten artists into narratives that are easier to sell. Yaya speaks candidly about the limits of criticism, who gets positioned as the authority to interpret Black art, and what happens when audiences project meaning onto work instead of listening to what the artist is actually saying. Devotion to making music. Devotion to curiosity. Devotion to continuing even when the systems around you are exploitative, unstable, or actively discouraging. Yaya Bey talks openly about the realities of being a working musician - record deals, touring economics, budgets, labels, expectations, and the invisible labor that exists behind an artist’s public life. What emerges isn’t cynicism, but a kind of grounded determination: a belief that creativity survives because people keep making things anyway. Yaya describes hope not as optimism but as discipline: if you want to be free, you have to believe freedom is possible even when it feels impossible. Otherwise you begin believing in your own defeat.  Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits Yaya’s New Album, Fidelity:  https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity  Yaya’s Substack: https://substack.com/@yayabeybay?utm_source=global-search  Upcoming Show Dates:  https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15521055-yaya-bey?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn-QGJBp8sdAH4IFe4bEeCmP3lrQR-VKQfb8hkYbMxaEaXsUZ1vfEY29Xw4Yo_aem_swM1Nk76aGvpG-4j_ajAFQ 00:00 — Intro 05:00 — Misreading the Work 08:00 — Who Gets to Interpret Black Art 12:35 — Grief, Joy, and Refusing the Assigned Story 15:45 — Being Polarizing / Being Protected 19:00 — The Politics of Interpretation 23:40 — Grief Beyond the Self 27:35 — Refusing Other People’s Narratives 35:20 — The Industry, Capital, and Finding Your People 41:30 — Discomfort as a Teacher 48:40 — Community, Poetry, and Becoming an Artist 52:00 — Becoming a Working Musician 57:15 — Loss, Stability, and Living Through Contradiction 1:00:00 — Making a Life, Not Just a Career 1:09:35 — Curiosity as Practice 1:12:30 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

    SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey

  7. May 6

    The Forum 20 | Kamrooz Aram: Painting on the Edge of Ornament and Abstraction

    He works through form, perception, and the politics of display — Kamrooz Aram on ornament, abstraction, and the unstable ground of how we see. Kamrooz Aram moves between painting, sculpture, and collage, using material, structure, and exhibition design to question how images are read and how histories are constructed. His work often begins in the studio, through process and formal decision-making, and expands outward into larger systems of meaning: how value is assigned, how objects are categorized, and how cultural narratives are embedded within visual form. Across recent exhibitions, he continues to return to questions of ornament, modernism, and the conditions that shape perception without resolving them into fixed positions. He explains: * How openness, curiosity, and “young artist energy” remain essential to sustaining a long-term practice. * Why restraint, stepping away, and not overworking are as critical as mark-making in the studio. * What it means to work within a structure or “mode,” where improvisation can emerge without forcing novelty. * How ornament and abstraction are historically entangled, and why their separation reflects biased art histories. * Why viewers project cultural assumptions onto form, and how ideas of “the decorative” or “the exotic” are constructed. * How value shifts depending on context, authorship, and belief, from museum objects to replicas and everyday materials. * Why art can create moments of transcendence through form, rather than through narrative alone. (00:08) Welcome + Returning to the Studio(04:20) Reclaiming “Young Artist Energy”(10:00) The Nonlinear Life of a Painting(15:30) Disruption, Destruction, and Letting the Work Shift(25:56) Sculpture as an Extension of Painting(28:10) Ornament, Abstraction, and Historical Bias(33:40) Time, Fading, and Letting Go of Control(52:45) Authenticity, Replication, and Constructed Value Watch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube. Follow KamroozWeb: https://kamroozaram.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kamroozegar/ Kamrooz Aram (b. 1978) has built his practice on dismantling the divide between ornament and fine art, renegotiating the art historical hierarchies that privilege Western forms of abstraction above others. His paintings and sculptures do not simply cross categories; they probe the structures that enforce them. Born in Shiraz, Iran, Aram emigrated to the United States in the 1980s, where he found himself forced to come to terms with a multitude of identities imposed upon him. These experiences left a lasting mark. Categories, he discovered, do not merely describe identity—they invent it. This recognition drives his work, which asserts that non-Western ornamental traditions carry the same intellectual weight and conceptual rigor Western art history has long reserved for itself. About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.— Full Transcript Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Apr 10

    The Forum 19 | Rachel Rose: Psychic States, Motherhood, and the Moving Image

    She works through feeling, perception, and narrative — Rachel Rose on interior weather, unstable perspectives, and art as a way to process what cannot be easily named. Rachel Rose moves between film, installation, and painting, using sound, light, and narrative structure to explore how experience is shaped from the inside out. Her work often begins with an emotional register and expands into systems of history, perception, and embodiment. In her recent film The Last Day, she turns inward, tracing the psychological and biological complexities of motherhood, identity, and crisis without resolving them into clear frameworks. She explains: * How personal feeling becomes a starting point for building larger perceptual and narrative systems. * Why motherhood, postpartum depression, and identity loss resist clean cultural narratives. * How sound and light can destabilize reality and reorient one’s relationship to the world. * What it means to make work that stays with ambiguity rather than resolving into message. * How falling in love with characters becomes a method for discovering structure, rather than imposing it. * Why occupying unlikeable or unstable perspectives creates more honest and generative work. * How art can act as a container for experiences that are culturally unspoken or difficult to locate. (00:08) Welcome + Intro(00:31) The Last Day and the Mrs. Dalloway Transposition (01:37) Motherhood, Identity, and the Book Read Twice (03:35) Lake Valley, Saturn Return, and the Invention of Childhood (07:19) Excerpt: Lake Valley (2016) (10:57) Art School, Painting, and the Crisis of Meaning (15:01) Editing as Voice, the First Video, and Finding the Medium (22:34) Transcendent Experiences and the Power of Art Watch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube. Follow RachelWeb: https://gladstonegallery.com/exhibit/rachel-rose-the-rest/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worrrld/ Rachel Rose (b. 1986) lives and works in New York. The work of Rachel Rose explores how our changing relationship to landscape has shaped storytelling and belief systems. Rose’s films draw from and contribute to the long history of cinematic innovation; whether investigating cryogenics, the American Revolutionary War, or an astronaut’s space walk, Rose directs our attention to sites and histories in which the sublime and the everyday blur. She translates this in her paintings, sculptures and drawings, which materially reverberate with one another, connecting the immediate to deep time. Recent solo exhibitions include: Science Gallery, London, UK (2024); GL STRAND, Copenhagen (2023); SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2023); CC Strombeek, Strombeek (2022); Pond Society, Shanghai (2020); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2020); Fridericianum, Kassel (2019); LUMA Foundation, Arles (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2018); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2017); Museu Serralves, Porto (2016); The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2016); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2024); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark (2023); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, Geneva (2023); 3rd Jeju Biennale (2022); 9th Beijing Biennale (2022); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2022); Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (2022); Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (2021); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, US (2021); Artspace, Sydney (2021); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2021); A Tale of A Tub, Tlön Projects, Rotterdam (2021); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Carnegie International, 57th Edition, Pittsburgh (2018); 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 32nd São Paudalo Biennial (2016); Hayward Gallery, London (2016); Okayama Art Summit, Japan (2016). She is the recipient of the Future Fields Award and the Frieze Artist Award. About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio. — Full Transcript Ajay Kurian: Can you tell us a little bit about The Last Day? Rachel Rose: It’s a film that I wrote. Loosely based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the book, but maybe I’ll just summarize the book briefly so that you understand what I did. The book takes place in a day, and it was written after World War I. It describes a bourgeois housewife, Clarissa Dalloway, going about her errands in her day at 50, about to throw a big party for her husband in the evening. She has an 18-year-old daughter that’s kind of separating and rejecting her. There’s a foil character, who’s equally important in the book, named Septimus Smith, who’s a World War I vet who Clarissa sort of passes by. It’s almost like sliding doors throughout the day. He’s suffering from severe PTSD from World War I. Clarissa throws a party and at the end of the day he kills himself. I had read the book in high school and not thought about it much again. I had always been into Virginia Woolf and that was that. And then one day, I have two kids and I was getting our Tesla fixed in Red Hook at the Tesla dealership, and I was texting my friend sitting there in the waiting room. She’s said oh, what a Mrs Dalloway day you’re having. And I was like, oh am I Mrs. Dalloway? Let me think about that. So I read it again and I was completely blown away. As a mother reading it, I now understood the book totally differently than I understood it as a 16-year-old because obviously the perspective and consciousness changes as that’s what Virginia Woolf does. But now I was sitting in Clarissa’s position, obviously I’m not 50 and my kids aren’t 18, but I was feeling her pain, her rudder, her sense of loss of identity, all the kind of acts of self-actualization she had reversed or given up in exchange for her motherhood. I was incredibly moved and so I decided to transpose it into a modern day New York story, and the Septimus character, I transposed into a labor and delivery nurse that was suffering from severe postpartum depression. Ajay Kurian: Oh, wow. Rachel Rose: Which is something that I also suffered from. Ajay Kurian: Yeah. Rachel Rose: So I kind of, in different ways, felt myself in the different characters. Ajay Kurian: So much of what I’ve understood about your work prior to this moment is like larger systems in which humans find themselves in. It feels like this movie is a shift to the internal weather, rather than the external weather. I know it's just a matter of what the focus is. They're all kind of an ouroboros of sorts, but did it feel like a shift? Did you feel like you were going into something more intimate with the film? Rachel Rose: Before making the film and also before having children, so much of my experience in making works was a combination of I’m feeling this thing. For example, I’m feeling really anxious. Could I attach it? Now of course there’s all kinds of internal reasons why I might be feeling anxiety, nothing to do with, let’s say the weather or something. Ajay Kurian: Sure. Rachel Rose: But can I attach it to something I’m spotting outside, and make the artwork the container for that connection. So the work was always coming from something that always began with a personal feeling, but the difference is, that you’re right to point out, in this film it doesn’t go beyond that. A guess if you’re talking about motherhood, but the film isn’t a political comment on motherhood structurally in society. It’s actually totally not that. Ajay Kurian: What you’re saying there, there was a moment in an interview, I can’t remember who you were talking to, but you were talking about the process that you go through to make anything. Which is almost like you’re a sensor that’s like feeling things around you. And then as soon as you feel it and kind of know that you’re feeling something that’s worth noticing, that you then almost zoom out to see what the feeling is doing. Rachel Rose: I’ve done it in some really rudimentary, almost stupid ways. Ajay Kurian: I love stupid. Rachel Rose: This film The Last Day, than I made, is me contending with my ambivalence, confusion, pain and ecstasy around being a mother. For me, that’s why I made it. To kind of figure something about that out and give voice to a crisis I feel many other women experience, but there aren’t clear places to put that necessarily. For example, if I think back to when I made Lake Valley when I was 28, that was a work that I made in the beginning of my Saturn return. Actually, it was just the year after I had that Whitney show, and I was beginning this new stage of oh, I’m a working artist now and I have a career and I’m like a grownup. Of course we all become grownups to a certain extent when we’re 18 and we leave home. But then there’s this second thing, which is your Saturn return. Many of us know it, where you experience a new version of adulthood, like what’s this thing gonna look like? So this work came from that. Questioning, what does it mean to turn 28? It sounds so, honestly trivial, but at the time it didn’t feel trivial to me. It felt somehow kind of big. Ajay Kurian: 28. I guess I thought you were older at that time, ’cause there’s so much that’s related to childhood here. Rachel Rose: Yeah. Ajay Kurian: Now it makes sense that it is a reckoning of the idea of leaving childish things behind, but then also those things translating into this, as you’re gonna see in a second, very baroque visual language of all these different ways of storytelling coming together. Before we continue, let’s just play this excerp

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    with Ajay Kurian
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Ajay Kurian
  • Show Website
    The NewCrits Podcast