In this episode, Ivan talks to Karen Dana Cohen about growing up the daughter of immigrants in Mexico City, wanting her work to serve as a catalyst for conversations about issues of labor (especially the labor of women), and the ways that motherhood has changed her practice.

S02EP08 - Karen Dana

In this episode, Ivan talks to Diana Solis about her early experiences with art and community organizing in Pilsen, her family’s interest in art, going back to art school after a successful career in commercial photography to become a painter and how the pandemic brought her back to photography. We also talk about the incredible archive of images of queer history she photographed throughout her life and has recently started bringing out of storage.

S02EP09 - Diana Solis

In the final episode of this season, Ivan talks to Nicole Marroquin about the Texan experience vs the Michigan experience, how punk music can lead to liberation, learning how to be better from younger generations and leaving breadcrumbs for them, CPS, pedagogy, and how her practice makes the public history of student movements and institutions in Chicago accessible. A truly inspiring conversation and a perfect end to the season!

S02EP10 - Nicole Marroquin

In this second episode, Ivan talks to Edra Soto about the importance of trusting your instincts when making work while staying flexible in your process, how creating, collecting and curating fills her soul, and the importance of professionalism for a successful art career.

S02EP02 - Edra Soto

In this episode, Ivan talks to Harold Mendez about growing up in Chicago and Medellin, working with photographic archives, veiling, ephemerality and in-betweenness, and how thinking about scale and resourcefulness while being involved in graffiti culture influenced his practice.

S02EP03 - Harold Mendez

In this episode, Ivan talks to Yvette Mayorga about how catholic churches, quinceañeras and other traditional celebrations she attended while growing up in Moline IL influenced her work, finding your voice as an artist and claiming space for yourself in the history of art.

S02EP04 - Yvette Mayorga

In this episode, Ivan talks to Salvador Jiménez-Flores about his experience growing up in Jamay, Mexico before migrating to Chicago, his early interest in photography and how ceramics taught him patience and restraint while allowing him to explore the complexity of identity.

S02EP05 - SalvadorJiménez Flores

In this episode, Ivan talks to Caroline Kent about finding and claiming your voice by leaving your context, discovering your own language through abstraction, her experiences in Romania and Mexico City, and how discipline can be your friend in the studio.

S02EP06 - Caroline Kent

In this episode, Ivan talks to Alejandro Jiménez-Flores about discovering, empowering and nurturing Florencio -the main “persona” they count as a collaborator in their practice-  learning to follow your instincts and the importance of artist-run spaces and community.

S02EP07 - Alejandro Jiménez Flores

Archives + Futures (A+F) is a podcast series developed by Ivan LOZANO. Currently in its first season, A+F is generating an archive of interviews and conversations for current and future visual artists to connect to the personal practices and cultural histories, cannons, heroes and ancestors of their fellow Latinx and Indigenous artists of the Americas.

The podcast took shape in early 2018 after the publication of a review for Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, a show that included Ivan, as well as a number of other Latinx and Indigenous artists of the Americas (including Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez, who was one of the co-hosts during the “pilot season”). While this review wasn’t technically “bad,” the writer ignored a majority of the themes and concepts being explored in the show, which all relate to how abstraction is expressed through our identities and points of view as artists of color. We realized this is a common experience: white writers, curators, gallerists, etc are often unable (we’d like to be optimistic and avoid using the harsher “unwilling”) to properly educate themselves on cultural differences that help our work bloom, instead choosing to center whiteness as the primary focal point for interpretation and critique. This whitewashing of our cultural production recalls Linda Nochlin’s essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” of 1971 – perhaps the problem is the institution, the society we live in, the educational system and the many systemic blocks and hurdles we artists of color must overcome to be considered in the running.

A+F wants to help artists break that cycle by providing opportunities for Latinx and Indigenous artists of the Americas to talk to each other and create feedback loops that bypass whiteness as a center. A secondary, but equally important mission, is the archiving impulse behind the project. Our histories are often kept out of official records, made invisible by systems that don’t recognize our achievements. Therefore, it is vitally important for us to create our own records, our own histories and archives, and to make them available to researchers and future generations. We want to create the foundations for their future successes to be built upon.

New tracks tagged #DPAM