A master of appropriation and transformation, Romuald Hazoumè uses found materials from his native Benin and beyond, with particular emphasis on plastic gasoline containers. In his sculptures and installations, these ordinary objects become pointed indictments of what he has called “Coca Cola culture,” a global plague of exploitation, division, corruption, desire, and conflict.
Connections Beyond the Tangible: A Conversation with Otobong Nkanga
For Otobong Nkanga, human life is inextricably connected to the natural world—the water we drink, the air we breathe, the land we live on. For more than 20 years, the Nigerian-Belgian artist has pondered questions about resource extraction and replenishment through her multidisciplinary practice.
Toshiko Takaezu: Food For the Searching Soul
The belated celebration of Toshiko Takaezu’s work comes as no surprise, considering how Western art history has downsized the achievements of groundbreaking women artists.
Dreaming Material: A Conversation with Dineo Seshee Bopape
Dineo Seshee Bopape’s engrossing biography embeds her birth into a matrix of same-year events in a diffusion of the self that shows how each one of us is irrevocably intertwined with and, in essence, the product of a kaleidoscopic coincidence of circumstances.
Territorio de libertad: Una Conversación con María Causa
Nacida en Villa Mercedes, San Luis, la escultora María Causa se inicia en el campo de las artes con apenas 14 años cursando la Escuela de Bellas Artes Nicolás Antonio de San Luis y luego de migrar a la ciudad de Buenos Aires, cursó estudios superiores como Profesora de Dibujo y Pintura en la Escuela
Default Barometers: Restoring Finland’s Eco Art Icons
We followed a well-trod path through straight rows of 12- to 15-foot-high pines, some scraggly, some ailing or dead, before approaching the apex, where the rows evolve into a spiral pattern.
Hair Turns: A Conversation with Isabelle Plat
Across a four-decade-long career, Isabelle Plat has upended art genres addressing people, places, and things by (re)constructing and (re)assembling familiar materials and then inviting viewers to interact with them. She calls these works sculpture d’usage (“usable sculpture”), but metaphor runs riot as this Parisian artist channels the stuff of everyday life into art.
Out of Very Little: A Conversation with Helen O’Leary
An artist of shreds, remainders, and lost objects, Helen O’Leary, like the great memoirist Joseph Cornell, infuses scraps of the forgotten and overlooked with the poetry of recognition. Channeling the latent energy concealed in wood fragments, scraps of fabric, and pigments, she translates detritus into objects that bear the aura of previous lives.
Sculpture Makes the Space: A Conversation with Didier Vermeiren
For nearly five decades, Didier Vermeiren has been producing works that deal with sculpture’s long-term subordinate—the plinth. His approach, which is rigorous, investigative, and hinges on traditional materials and processes, involves exploring structure, placement, distribution, and links with the history of sculpture.
Beautiful Returns: A Conversation with Amanda Williams
Artist and architect Amanda Williams grew up in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. On a map produced by the federally sanctioned Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), this area was colored red, designating residents as ineligible to receive federal housing loans—a discriminatory, racially motivated practice known as “redlining.”
