Interviews
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READI’ve lived here, experienced what has happened and consider myself personally implicated in it. My priority is to show my people’s resistance, not their suffering. I believe that people are resisting an aggressor, a hollow superpower that imagines it has the right to rule the world, and that resistance needs to be seen.
My Priority Is to Show My People’s Resistance, Not Their Suffering: An Interview with Erfan Kouchari
In this interview, Iranian photojournalist Erfan Kouchari reflects on documenting a war from within, navigating the ethics of bearing witness, and preserving not only the destruction but also the resistance and everyday lives of those who endure it.
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READIn Tayen Tayen Fish, the absurd is neither escape nor decoration. Objects in the exhibition ask what happens when systems of caste, class, labour and power become so familiar that their violence appears ordinary.
“Explaining could be Exploiting”: Speaking on Humour, Caste & Machinery of Art with Yogesh Barve
Anupam Roy interviews Yogesh Barve about his solo exhibition Tayen Tayen Fish, the political possibilities of humour and the contradictions of artistic work. Saviya Lopes, visual artist and writer of the exhibition text, joins them.
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READIt would be tempting to remain focused on the trauma that has led to her artistic practice. I am interested in that history. I admire her directness, and I am not a neutral observer: I carry my own experience of intergenerational trauma, and some of her work resonates with me. But I also want to look at the invitations she extends to the viewer, and at what happens when we accept them.
Are You Coming for Me?: An Interview with Juliana Irene Smith
Juliana Irene Smith’s collages and photographs hold rage and softness side by side, refusing to clean up. She talks about humour as armor, protecting herself and her viewers, and about making work in which survival means being the hero.
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READWomanifesto gatherings and projects have always been inherently socially, politically, and culturally embedded, responding to events and changes without pigeonholing them. It is, in a way, a form of resistance: finding a way to keep gathering, creating, documenting, and putting work out there, even when external forces make it harder.
“There Is No One Way”: The Womanifesto Perspective
In this conversation, Womanifesto members recount the collective’s socially and politically embedded practices, discussing its philosophy and commitment to maintaining autonomy while focusing on friendship, care, and connection.
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READWar always takes away people’s everyday lives. That loss remains. Over time, my work has become more focused on the experience of losing family members through war and remembering who they were through personal stories, loss, love, and my desire to comfort both those who are gone and those who are still here.
Present Through What Is No Longer There: An Interview with Marisa Srijunpleang
Thai-born multidisciplinary artist Marisa Srijunpleang talks to Fahmui Pimpakaporn Pornpeng about her practice, which explores family memories connected to the Cambodian genocide and eventually leads her to question her identity as a descendant who grew up with questions about borders and how they are drawn.
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READCaste is a practice of othering without announcing the “other”. It doesn’t create ‘othering’ in the same way as religion, race or gender; it uses different forms of distinction and differentiation. Hence, it cannot be footnoted as a structure without an elaborate explanation. The unique legacy of the caste system is that it is hardwired into society.
Speaking Between the Silences: An Interview with Suraj Milind Yengde
On the occasion of the launch of Suraj Milind Yengde’s latest book, Caste: A Global Story, in Helsinki in December 2025, Ali Akbar Mehta interviewed him, discussing questions of individual action, political failure, colonial legacy, and the responsibility of the diaspora in how the anti-caste struggle must be centred, named, and made the agenda for actual change.
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READThe cultural periodical is a means of collectively organizing ideas, of practicing and cultivating political and artistic education, and of intervening in concrete situations. None of this is possible without duration, continuity, and organization. Paradoxically, the conditions for duration and continuity in artistic and editorial activity are virtually unviable within a neoliberal context marked by the precarization of artistic labor and the fragility of public cultural policies.
Acrobatic Skills: 15 Years of Celeste
This conversation between editor Paula Alzugaray and special reporter and art critic Juliana Monachesi offers a fragment of the history of a Brazilian art magazine that could be likened to a trench—or to an urban guerrilla.
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READThe rules of the game. Considering that declared theft produces a fracture in the very concept of authorship, and that the procedure of copying is central to Dora Longo Bahia’s practice, this is an interview in which both questions and answers are composed of modified, copied, or plagiarized texts—drawn from articles, lectures, and texts from videos and films—just as the artist, in fact, operates in her own work.
The Writing of a Manifesto of Political Imagination: An Interview with Dora Longo Bahia
Artist Dora Longo Bahia and critic Paula Alzugaray return to their Manifesto of Political Imagination through an interview where every question and answer is plagiarized, and the theft is the point. What does it mean to make art politically — not political art, but art made politically — when fascism is again at the door?
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READEveryone in Vilanismo is someone I met and grew close to within the contemporary art circuit. Some even earlier, through graffiti, like Robson, or São Paulo’s pixação scene. The idea was to understand how their practices could move forward collectively, while also allowing me to be part of that vehicle, amplifying one another. So the starting point was affection and mutual admiration.
Vilanismo: An Ethics of Care and a Philosophical Framework Emerging from Afro-Paulistano Culture
The Brotherhood of Black and Favela Men in Contemporary Art [Irmandade de Homens Pretos e Favelados Das Artes Contemporâneas] is reshaping and radicalising forms of political engagement across the Brazilian visual arts scene.
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READOppression is not always visible in the Nordics. Many believe they have come far, but it becomes clear who truly faces the systematic stripping of identity. This is especially evident for non-white people. While others assume progress has been made, it is we who reveal that their successes are often an illusion.
A True Artistic Sisterhood: A Conversation Between Saadia Hussain & Nayab Noor Ikram
What does it mean to create from in-between worlds? In this intimate conversation, Saadia Hussain and Nayab Noor Ikram reflect on artistic freedom, intergenerational sisterhood, and the search for belonging. Drawing on their Nordic roots and Pakistani heritage, they reveal how art becomes both personal and political.
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READColonial narratives, however, warped these histories, fetishizing these women, printing their images on postcards, and erasing the real story. I’m interested in uncovering these histories of ingenuity and resilience, how Black and Indigenous peoples made something out of nothing—and connecting them to the present. My work asks, what can we learn from these acts, and how might they shape the way we engage with each other today?
Revealing a Quiet Slip in the Archive: An Interview with Kosisochukwu Nnebe
In a conversation with Golrokh Nafisi, Kosisochukwu Nnebe speaks of how she transforms food into living archives, tracing Indigenous and African knowledge through cassava and bananas, uncovering histories of resilience, resistance, and Black women’s ingenuity.
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READSimply using the material is an act of resilience – it asserts that bark cloth still holds significance for Ugandans today. In Uganda, I purchased a large quantity of it and visited the farmers who cultivate and care for the mutuba trees. This is generational work—many of these trees were planted by their fathers, their grandfathers, and even further back.
Migration and the Politics of Belonging: An Interview with Sarah Nakiito
Ugandan-Swedish artist Sarah Nakiito discusses the evolution of her artistic practice, shaped by migration, the pandemic, and shifting notions of home. In this conversation, she reflects on her use of indigenous materials, the intersections of Swedish and Ugandan craft traditions, and the emotional weight of diasporic identity in her work.