Interviews by Brainard Carey

Photo by Whitney Browne Alethea Pace is a Bronx-based choreographer and performer. Her first solo performance work, trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom, was created with support from Pepatian’s Open Call Residency and was performed at BAAD! (2016) and New York Live Arts (2017). Her second evening-length work, Bring Me Flowers, was developed with support from residencies including New York Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks, Dancing While Black, 92Y Harkness Dance and premiered at Pregones Theater in 2018. She is currently working on Here goes the neighborhood... , a multimedia performance installation that reminds us of the wealth of knowledge we have in our bodies, memories and geographies, and empowers us to dream of radical visions for our future. As a dancer, Alethea has performed with a variety of choreographers and was a member of Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre for eight years. She has been a collaborator in numerous multimedia community-centered arts projects including Angela’s Pulse and the Laundromat Project. Alethea trained at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center in the Bronx. She has a BA in Urban Design from NYU where she completed her thesis project on the history of Bronx housing. She is currently expanding her artistic practice as an MFA candidate at the City College of New York’s Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice program. She was awarded the BRIO award and CUNY Dance Initiative in 2019 and was BAAD!’s Muse Artist in Residence in 2020. Read more at aletheapace.com or follow her on instagram @alethea_pace Alethea Pace and Richard Rivera perform Here goes the neighborhood... Photo by Trevon Blondet Alethea Pace performs Bring me flowers at Danspace Project in 2019. Photo by Paula Lobo

Agustina Woodgate (1981, Argentina) practice focuses on the politics of landscapes and infrastructures as a conceptual and public geography. She recombines, activates and repurposes available resources while setting alternative systems in motion. Woodgates' approach is speculative, practical, and site and context-responsive, presenting critical possibilities to concepts on social orders, resource management and information distribution bringing clarity, scale, and accessibility. In 2011 she co-founded radioee.net a nomadic, translingual, online radio station. In 2015 she co-founded TVGOV, a media company providing ecological data visualization. And in 2018 she co-initiated PUB, an experimental publishing platform within Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. She is currently a tutor at the Disarming Design Master Program at Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam and is actively teaching workshops in several universities and organizations. Her projects have been commissioned by BIENALSUR 2021, 2019 Whitney Biennial, 4th Istanbul Design Biennial; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; 9th Berlin Biennial; Peabody Essex Museum, MA; Bienal de las Américas, CO; ArtPort, Tel Aviv; PlayPublik, Poland; DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington; The Bass Museum of Art, FL; Storefront for Art and Architecture, MN and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin amongst others. Agustina Woodgate, The Source, 2019, Miami oolite, concrete, iron, plumbing grid, water.108 x 108 x 108 in. Photo by Steven Sierra; courtesy of Art Basel and Barro, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Installation view in Collins Park, The Bass Museum, City of Miami Beach. Agustina Woodgate, National Times, 2016-2019. Close-circuit network of clocks synchronized directly by the power grid. Photograph by Ron Amstut. Installation view of the Whitney Biennial 2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 17-September 22, 2019).

Christine Suárez is a choreographer, performer, educator and community activist based in Los Angeles. Born in Caracas, Venezuela and raised in Baton Rouge Louisiana, she founded Suarez Dance Theater in 2003. They create at the intersection of collaborative dance-making and community outreach. Their work has been seen in theaters, parks, classrooms and houses and toured nationally and internationally. They have been awarded grants from Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, Flourish Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Christine is co-creator of Dance for Veterans - a program that builds creative expression and social cohesion at Los Angeles VA Hospitals. Christine Suarez & Shelby Williams-Gonzalez performing On Being American for students at Culver Park HS. photo by Alex Millar Pictured are dancer/collaborators Bernard Brown and Nguyen Nguyen performing Mother.Father. @ the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, CA photo by Christine Suarez.

Photo by Audrey King Kimberly Brooks is a contemporary American artist and author of The New Oil Painting with Chronicle Books. She is known for her portraits and landscapes in series addressing identity and memory (“Mom’s Friends”, “The Stylist Project”, “I Notice People Disappear”.) Her paintings have been exhibited and featured internationally. Her latest exhibition “New Abstractions” in Los Angeles at Zevitas Marcus, is a result of a year long investigation of capturing the essence of painting for the cover of her book. Brooks speaks about her work, and the science of creativity to museums, Tedx, and Podcasts including the National Endowment for the Arts. Brooks conducts workshops at institutions online via her acclaimed artist program. For information on exhibitions and more: Storm 20 x 16 in. Oil on Linen Red Wave 20 x 16 oil on Linen

Jeffrey Say is an art historian specialising in Singapore and Southeast Asian art history. An author of numerous essays on art, his seminal co-edited work Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art (2016) remains a critical anthology for researchers, curators and students on Singapore art to date. Importantly, Say undertook pioneering research and study of the history of sculpture in pre-and post-war Singapore. Prior to joining LASALLE College of the Arts in 1997, Say was a curator at the then National Museum where he was overseeing the collection of Buddhist and Indian artefacts. As a museum curator, Say curated major exhibitions on Tibetan Buddhist art, the maritime silk route and Alamkara: 5000 Years of India. Say has been instrumental in the development of art history studies at LASALLE supporting artists to develop a contextual and historical understanding of the evolution of visual arts. In 2009, he designed the world’s first Master’s programme focussing on Asian modern and contemporary art histories. He is presently its Programme Leader. This programme has produced graduates who have made significant contributions to the field in the area of scholarship and curation. Say is a public advocate of the importance of art history as a way to promote visual literacy. He is a frequent public speaker at museums, universities and galleries, and conducts short courses which remain hugely popular among various publics. Say is also a regular commentator on the local visual arts scene. Say’s current research interest is on Singapore modern and contemporary art histories. He has written an essay on the early contemporary art scene of Singapore which offers a revisionist view on the beginnings of contemporary art in Singapore (published in the July-Sept 2019 edition of BiblioAsia). He is currently working on the second volume on Singapore modern art as well as a children’s series on Southeast Asian art and culture, both of which will be published in 2022. His essay on the beginnings of contemporary art in Singapore can be found on this link; July-Sept 2019 issue. Book cover with flap open