Shows
Art Is... a podcast for artistsPerspectives from a Performance Artist: Building a Practice and the PerformVu Platform with Asia Stewart (VIDEO)Welcome to Season 6, Episode 3 of Art Is… a podcast for artists. In today's episode, we're joined by Asia Stewart, a groundbreaking performance artist based in Brooklyn, NY, and the founding artistic director of PerformVu.Join us as we explore Asia's creative origins and discover how her academic background at Harvard and Cambridge, studying government and sociology, along with her experience in theater, musical theater, and opera, uniquely informs her practice of performance art. Her work seeks to physicalize abstract concepts related to race, gender, and sexuality. Asia creates evening-length performances and duration works lasting hours or days, ex...
2024-05-3053 min
Open StudiosE11: Jemila MacEwan - Protesting in Advocacy for LifeThis week, interdisciplinary earthworks artist Jemila MacEwan joins Asia to talk about their grounded, meditative practice.
Jemila and Asia begin their conversation by reflecting on the changing of the seasons, and the powerful emotional, psychological, and social shifts that occur when spring begins (1:57).
Jemila contemplates the fear and dread that many people in the Western world experience in relation to spring, with the knowledge that what comes into being in spring will soon die in autumn (3:39).
They discuss how many of these anxieties and transformations are...
2024-04-1245 min
Businesstalk with Henriette#74 Indy Sanders: (NYC-Special) non-binary, queer & pro athlete turning Founder in New YorkThis i a NYC-special recorded in August 2023 and in this episode I, Businesshenriette, Interview Indy Sanders, which is the Founder of PerformVu which is a platform that is creating the digital home for experimental performance art and providing a direct funding route for artists. It can also be called Netflix for performance content.They left school at 13, spent 6 years travelling and living across the world playing elite international tennis. They were a top ranked player on the UK and European rankings with several international titles before competing on the professional circuit across the world. Their time on...
2023-11-2331 minOpen StudiosE10: Lynn Lu - Transforming Audiences into Co-CreatorsIn this episode of Open Studios, Asia is joined by Lynn Lu. Lynn is an artist who embraces participation and collaboration in her performances, making space for the development of intimacy and connections with others that the constraints and isolating nature of our world don’t typically allow for.
Building upon strategies introduced by artists like Marina Abramović and Valie Export, Lynn devises performances that enable audiences to determine the content and outcome of her work (2:16).
Asia and Lynn discuss how trust and consent operate in her interactive performances (3:06) and Lynn mentions a time an audi...
2023-10-1533 minOpen StudiosE9: Sarah Cameron Sunde - Decentering the Human ExperienceSarah Cameron Sunde, an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of performance, video, and socially-engaged public art joins Asia on this episode of the podcast.
Asia and Sarah discuss Sarah's incredible project 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, a series of nine site-specific performances and video art works made in collaboration with communities around the world. In each performance, Sarah, joined by community members, stands silently in a body of water for a full tide cycle that lasts from 12 - 13 hours. Over this period of time, the water rises to almost engulf participants and later recedes...
2023-09-2234 minOpen StudiosE8: Sara Kostic - Integrating Architectural Principles into PerformanceSara Kostic, an interdisciplinary artist who works across performance, dance, visual art, and architecture joins Asia on this episode of the podcast.
Born in Belgrade, Serbia and now based in New York City, Sara has performed internationally at the Mardin Biennale in Turkey, Venice International Performance Art Week in Italy, and Grace Exhibition Space in New York, among many others.
Sara explains how her background in dance and studies of architecture led her to performance art (1:41). She shares how she was first introduced to performance art practices through a workshop with Marta Jovanović back in 2015 (05:56). I...
2023-09-1418 minOpen StudiosE7: Natacha Voliakovsky - Restoring the Denied BodyArgentine activist and hard-core political performance artist Natacha Voliakovsky joins Asia on the podcast this week.
Natacha begins by sharing why activism and socially-engaged work is central to their artistic practice (1:21). While discussing the importance of the Latin American feminist movement Ni Una Menos, Natacha reflects on the way their personal involvement in protests has shaped their work (04:28). The "fútbol performativity" (6:06) and energy of flag-waving and rallying at protests and marches is absolutely present in Natacha's public performances.
In the second-half of the conversation, Natacha considers the significance of blood in their work (9:07) and des...
2023-09-0124 minOpen StudiosE6: Katya Grokhovsky - Defining the Contact ZoneIn this episode, Katya Grokhovsky joins Asia to discuss The Immigrant Artist Biennial, which Katya founded back in 2019.
The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) facilitates a platform of support for marginalized and underrecognized artists. Contact Zone, the second edition of TIAB, will take place this fall and winter from September 8, 2023 to January 14, 2024. Co-curated by Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Katherine Adams, and Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, the biennial will present 48 artists from over 35 countries across seven venues.
Katya begins the conversation by sharing what the biennial's theme means to her (02:55). She also discusses how the founding of TIAB runs counter to t...
2023-08-2437 minOpen StudiosE5: Verónica Peña - Opening a World of PossibilityPerformance artist Verónica Peña sits down for a chat with Asia this week.
Verónica Peña is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator from Spain based in the United States. Her performances explore the impact that absence, separation, and loss has on the human condition. Resisting limiting forces, from the enforcement of restrictive immigration policies to the operation of machismo, Verónica aspires to foster unity and connection in a world that sows division. For Verónica, the materiality of the items she uses in performances is key. She often fully envelops her body in these...
2023-08-1631 minOpen StudiosE4: GOODW.Y.N. - Bringing Heaven Into One's BodyPerformance artist, poet, and writer GOODW.Y.N. joins Asia this week on the podcast.
Asia and GOODW.Y.N. begin by discussing GOODW.Y.N.'s journey to becoming a performance artist and how their practice is informed by their work as a poet and writer (01:40). The two focus the majority of their conversation on GOODW.Y.N.'s performance series Ain't I a Woman (?/!), which GOODW.Y.N. has presented in various iterations since 2017. The series shares its title with Sojourner Truth's infamous 1851 speech. However, as GOODW.Y.N. points out, the title and diction of S...
2023-08-0223 minOpen StudiosE3: Lisette Ros - Participating in Evolution and DevolutionThis week, Asia is joined by Lisette Ros, a Dutch performance artist who investigates daily conventions and breaks down everyday behaviors. Lisette approaches her performances as experiments or opportunities to research and collect data about her body, all in the attempt to better understand her fluid, queer identity and consider the question, “Who is she, in the midst of it all?”
Lisette first explains how she familiarizes herself with any performance location and begins the process of research (1:22). She then reviews how her work "Reframing Conventions" shifted when performed in various locations including the Red Light District (03:56). Asia...
2023-07-2637 minOpen StudiosE2: Yali Romagoza - Embodying Freedom Through Alter EgosAsia Stewart chats with Yali Romagoza, a Cuban-born interdisciplinary artist currently based in Queens, NY.
The two begin by discussing how Yali is settling into her new studio at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (01:43). Then they walk through the birth of her alter ego, Cuquita The Cuban Doll (06:17), and Yali describes how she drew inspiration for Cuquita from the Cuquitas she had cut out from the pages of Mujeres magazine as a child in Cuba.
In the second half of their conversation, Asia and Yali revisit Yali's performance "No me pongan en lo oscuro" (17:25...
2023-07-1943 min
Open StudiosE1: Indy Sanders - The Story Behind PerformVuIn this first episode of Open Studios, performance artist Asia Stewart sits down with Indy Sanders, the founder of PerformVu.
After playing tennis professionally and working in various tech roles, Indy fell into the world of performance art with Asia's help; the two are actually married!
Sitting in the audience for many years, Indy recognized some of the problems that artists experience when producing and sharing experimental works and identified the challenges that audiences face in attempting to find and watch performances online. Determined to make experimental performance more accessible and provide performance-based artists with...
2023-07-1120 min