Artroverted Michael H. Dewberry

Though Pride month 'technically' ends today, Pride for LGTBQ+ folk is year-round and this week's guest embodies that to the fullest. Ghislain Pascal is the co-founder of London's Little Black Gallery (@tlbgallery) and creator of BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! (@boysfineart) a publication and platform dedicated to promoting queer and gay photography including exhibitions, books, a bi-annual magazine, photography courses, competitions, and an online art platform.
It now represents more than 65 photographers from 30 countries - including China, India, Iran, Poland, Russia, and Turkey where gay rights are repressed and queer lives are under constant threat. 
In our conversation, we talk about the challenges of promoting queer artists, how he combats pervasive institutional homophobia, being kicked off Instagram, building a global platform, and his advice for artists everywhere.  
Head over to the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! site to purchase the magazine and original works by emerging and established gay and queer photographers.

Purchase your copy of BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!: https://boysboysboys.org/collections/books
Purchase With Love From Russia by Vlad Zorin: https://boysboysboys.org/collections/books/products/with-love-from-russia-by-vlad-zorin

Happy Pride Month! In honor of LGBTQ+ Pride, we're focusing on queer creators. This week we speak with Louky Keijsers Koning (@loukykk),  director of the estate of Barbara Hammer (@barbarahammer1). 

Barbara is a feminist filmmaker and pioneer of queer cinema who made over 90 moving image works as well as performances, installations, photographs, collages and drawings over a 45-year career. Regarded as the first lesbian art filmmaker, her works playfully and relentlessly challenged accepted norms and taboos of queerness, blazing the trail for generations of lesbian and queer artists.
We hope you enjoy this episode celebrating Barbara's life and multifaceted work. You can learn more about her work and grant program sponsored by her estate at BarbaraHammer.com and see her work on view at AMP Gallery in Provincetown (@amp_artmktptown).

Wishing you a happy PRIDE month! In celebration of LGBTQ Pride, we’re dedicating the next two episodes to two leaders in the field of LGBTQ film and photography. First we speak with Louky Keijsers Koning (@loukykk), the director of the estate of Barbara Hammer (@barbarahammer1) a Feminist filmmaker and pioneer of queer cinema, who made over 90 moving image works as well as performances, installations, photographs, collages and drawings over a 45-year career. Regarded as the first lesbian art filmmaker, her works playfully and relentlessly challenged accepted norms and taboos of queerness blazing the trail for generations of lesbian and queer artists.
Next we speak with Ghislain Pascal (@ghislain.pascal), co-founder and director of London’s Little Black Gallery (@tlbgallery) and publisher of BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! (@boysfineart) A bi-annual print publication and online platform that promotes queer and gay photography. BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! represents over 65 photographers from 30 countries - including China, India, Iran, Poland, Russia and Turkey where gay rights are repressed and queer lives under constant threat.
We’re so excited to feature these pioneers in and supporters of LGBTQ artists and look forward to sharing our insightful conversations about their work. Stay tuned for the premiere!

Interdisciplinary artist Alicia Eggert creates captivating work, which wrestles with fundamental existential questions in witty and awe-inspiring ways. From monumental inflatables, flashing neon signs, cut flowers, and more, her dynamic works have been exhibited globally. Often taking the form of text, she transforms words and phrases collected in her journals into profound, arresting installations that illuminate her interplay with time and language. She credits her preoccupation with time and existence to her upbringing as a child of evangelical Pentecostal missionaries. At a young age her family moved to South Africa to establish a ministry and she spent much of her time listening to her father’s sermons, contemplating life and performance, which left an indelible impact on her work. One of the beautiful things about her work is its simplicity and legibility which render them easily comprehensible. As a sculpture professor at the University of North Texas, she teaches a course about public art that culminates in students executing their work formally. Her dedication to her craft and students is inspiring and a reminder to live in the present, but with an eye to the future. 
About Alicia:
(b. 1981) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work gives material form to language and time, the powerful but invisible forces that shape our perception of reality. Her creative practice is largely motivated by an existential pursuit to understand the linear and finite nature of human life within a seemingly infinite universe. She derives her inspiration from physics and philosophy, and her sculptures often co-opt the styles and structures of commercial signage to communicate messages that inspire reflection and wonder. Alicia creates neon signs that illuminate the way light travels across space and time, and billboards that allow Forever to appear and disappear in the fog. These artworks have been installed on building rooftops in Russia, on bridges in Amsterdam, and on uninhabited islands in Maine, beckoning us to ponder our place in the world and the role we play in it.
Alicia's work has been exhibited at notable institutions nationally and internationally, including the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the Telfair Museums, and many more. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Galeria Fernando Santos (Porto, Portugal), The MAC (Dallas, TX), and T+H Gallery (Boston, MA). Alicia is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a TED Fellowship, a Washington Award from the S&R Foundation, a Direct Artist Grant from the Harpo Foundation, an Artist Microgrant from the Nasher Sculpture Center, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. She has been an artist in residence at Google Tilt Brush, Sculpture Space, True/False Film Festival, and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. In 2020, she was added to the Fulbright Specialist Roster by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Alicia earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Drexel University in 2004, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2009. She is currently a Presidential Early Career Professor of Studio Art and the Sculpture Program Coordinator at the University of North Texas. Her work is represented by Galeria Fernando Santos in Porto, Portugal, and Liliana Bloch Gallery in Dallas. She lives with her son, Zephyr, in Denton, Texas.
Learn more about Alicia on her website and follow her on Instagram @aplaceintheuniverse.

Wishing you a Happy New Year from Artroverted! We’re excited to continue Season 2 that’s dedicated exclusively to women in the arts. We at Artroverted believe the future of the art world is female and we’re delighted to continue to highlight female leaders and changemakers across the arts. This season we’ll feature artists, art advisors, social media influencers, curators, and many more!
If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes from season 2 we published last year we hope you will and would love to hear your feedback - you can DM us on Instagram @artrovertedpodcast 
Please rate and review us wherever you listen, it only takes a second, and will help other artroverted listeners like you find us. 
Remember when it comes to art, it doesn’t matter if you’re introverted or extroverted because you can always be artroverted. 
Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you soon!

In 2020 the Baltimore Museum of Art appointed their first native curator, Darienne Turner, Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas. Her hire signaled a commitment by the museum to promote and interpret the art of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A member of the Yurok Tribe of California, Darienne is one of the few native curators of native art in U.S. museums. In our conversation, she discusses her role and the challenges in presenting and collecting native art in an institutional context and her responsibility to tell the stories of native peoples thoughtfully and reverently.  


When we spoke with Darienne in December 2020, the museum was partially closed. The only spaces open to the public were the gift shop and a portion of the first floor where her first exhibition at the museum, Stripes, and Stars: Reclaiming Lakota Independence (October 11, 2020 — March 28, 2021), was installed. The exhibition presented a small selection of objects from the museum's collection produced by the Lakota peoples of South Dakota. Confined to reservations by the late 19th century, the makers of these objects incorporated the American flag in their detailed beadwork. On caps and vests worn by children, boots, pouches, and a monumental hood for a horse, these emblems of the flag served as a talisman and a way for the Lakota youth to participate in cultural activities which had previously been outlawed. Her exhibition was the first in what we hope will be many that celebrate the achievement of native makers of the Americas. 


 The Baltimore Museum of Art is one of the leading U.S. encyclopedic museums committed to collecting and promoting inclusivity. Being a majority-minority city, Baltimore and the museum is a model for the future of U.S. culture and institutions.


Learn more about the museum and her exhibition here:


Exhibition page: https://artbma.org/exhibition/stripes-and-stars-reclaiming-lakota-independence


Exhibition Installation Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrgHLLqglko


Talk with Darienne Turner and Sheldon Raymore, member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation and multidisciplinary artist and performer, on the occasion of the exhibition Stripes and Stars: Reclaiming Lakota Independence at the BMA.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIycn3OzPMU


Press: 'We Were White and Sleepy Before’—The Baltimore Museum of Art's Radical Makeover – Wall Street Journal, 11/22/19.


About Darienne:

Darienne is the Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is a member of the Yurok Tribe of California, and has taught in MICA's Graphic Design Department since 2017. She earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and an M.A. in Design History & Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center. She is the curator of Stripes and Stars: Reclaiming Lakota Independence (2020) and has contributed to exhibitions at the Bard Graduate Center, Walters Art Museum, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and Yellowstone National Park. Her essay "Terrestrial Gateways to the Divine" was featured in the Ex Voto: Agents of Faith exhibition catalog, named one of the Best Art Books of 2018 by the New York Times.

Episode recorded on December 16, 2020.