Fresh Art International

Joana Choumali Embroiders Empathy

We follow artist Joana Choumali from the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 57th Venice Art Bienniale to Dak'Art 2018, as she explores the shared experience of migration and violence in her birth country. Her embroidered photographs trace stories of loss and longing—depicting lone figures disappearing from home and reappearing in foreign environments, and giving shape to the emptiness left by the casualties of terrorism. Needle and thread express Choumali's empathy with the fraught human condition.

Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Photography: Joanna Choumali and Fresh Art International

Key West: Creativity at the end of the Road

 

Come with us to the legendary Key West for conversations about creativity on two live streaming Fresh Art International radio shows. This cultural outpost sits quite literally at the end of the road, Mile 0 of U.S. Route 1, the highway that runs up the Atlantic Coast, from Florida to Canada. At the Studios of Key West, you'll find out what inspires the Studios’ director, why a painter who came to visit never left, and how three artists in residence have fallen in love with the island dream. Inside The Green Parrot bar, you'll meet Key West's Minister of Culture, the Parrot’s resident poet and a band from New Orleans that loves to play here!

Sound Editor Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: recorded in situ by FreshArtINTL, Band at The Green Parrot: Dave Jordan and the NIA| Photography: Monica McGivern

Franklin Sirmans on the Art of Fútbol

Art and Sports? Curator Franklin Sirmans brings them together in The World’s Game exhibition at the Perez Art Museum, Miami. Immersive installations, paintings, sculptural objects, photographs and videos by forty artists reveal how the universal language of this transnational game can define beauty, make social statements, create a sense of community and express a shared passion. Timed to coincide with the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, the exhibition celebrates soccer as the portal to a world of contemporary art.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special audio: Stephen Dean, Volta and Perez Art Museum, Miami 

Concrete Dream: Miami Marine Stadium-Jolt Radio- 04Apr2018

Miami Marine Stadium inspires this tale of modernist architecture and Biscayne Bay, of speedboats and rock stars, of skateboarding, street art and a storm named Andrew. Advocates and artists, architects and restoration specialists tell the story. 

We begin with a flashback to our 2016 episode with dancer choreographer Hattie Mae Williams. Her creative intervention at the stadium is just one example of how the site has beckoned artists for decades. Fast forward to 2018. Miami’s International Boat Show has come the marine stadium’s home on Virginia Key for the third year in a row. The stadium is now in the first phase of a complete restoration. Don Worth, one of the founders of Friends of Miami Marine Stadium, talks about the ten years of activism that led to this moment. The stadium's original architect Hilario Candela, restoration architect Richard Heisenbottle, conservation specialists Rosa Lowinger and Kelly Ciociola explain the restoration process. Among local artists behind the 200 layers of paint that now cover the concrete venue, Hox and Abstrk voice their support for the stadium's face-lift. Over the next three years, the legendary venue will come back to life, reclaiming its identity as a top destination for cultural experiences in Miami.

Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio from Concrete Paradise exhibition at Coral Gables Museum, courtesy of Little Gables Group | Feature photograph by Diana Larrea

The Private Life of Public Art-Jolt Radio-21Mar2018

Today's conversation reveals the role of private investment in temporary and permanent public art across the U.S. Contemporary art collector Cricket Taplin, who with her husband Martin Taplin once owned the legendary Sagamore Art Hotel on Miami Beach, explains her philosophy on collecting as a mode of civic engagement. Curators Claire Breukel and Dina Mitrani tell how they introduce the work of local and international artists through public art. Miami-based artists Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar of R&R Studios share stories behind their privately sponsored and public-funded projects from Florida to California. In a special Fresh Art International flashback, Dejha Carrington talks about the waterfront intervention she realized in 2016, through the Miami Foundation's Public Space Challenge.

Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery: Hiraki Sawa’s Hidden Tree, 2007 

Related links: Cricket Taplin and the Sagamore Art Hotel, Unscripted Bal Harbour, R&R Studios