Shade

Today my guest is the Director Eddie Hutton-Mills. Eddie co-directed Kanaval: A Peoples History of Haiti in Six Chapters with Leah Gordon. Eddie Hutton-Mills is an award winning documentary filmmaker, who has made films for all the major UK & US broadcasters including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. He’s also made biographicalfeature films about Naomi Campbell and Diane Abbott. His passion is for making films about subjects that need confronting like Fighting The Power: Britain After George Floyd. He is currently directing a film for the prestigious BBC Storyville strand.Eddie and I discuss Kanaval in this episode. A visually arresting feature documentary, set in the present but which tells the rich story of Haiti’s past, that follows a number of carnival performers in the lead-up to, and during, the annual Jacmel Mardi Gras. The performers relate their own personal histories as well as the stories of their carnival characters, which represent moments and people from the distant, and not so distant, Haitian past. Interwoven with the interviews, testimonies and observational footage is archive material, drawn from a wide variety of sources to enhance our understanding of Haitian history and culture from the time of the indigenous Taino through to the present day. This is not the carnival of sequins and sound systems found elsewhere in the Caribbean, but a celebration of rebellion and resistance resonating through the centuries.The documentary was nominated for Best Debut Director and Best Cinematography in the British Independent Film Awards and Best Documentary at the London film awards, in 2022.Watch Kanaval on BBCiPlayerThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - the award winning independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon or Ko-fiSee you next time!Shade Podcast is hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonShade InstagramShade website

Interludes: Black Balloons is a new sound installation by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié now showing at Tate Gallery. Responding to Liz Johnson Artur’s display Time don’t run here, the piece references Artur’s Black Lives Matter protest images and works from her ongoing Black Balloon Archive documenting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas. Experience Liz Johnson Artur’s work with the ear and body. How does sound change how you see the works? What pulses through you when you see the images, braille and thread? The soundscape features the voices of Liz Johnson Artur, artists Imogen Faires and Jamel Alatise from Theatre Peckham, and Research and Interpretation Artist Resident, Marie Smith. It includes extracts from Poetry as Protest, Protest as Poetry, a poem by Faires and Alatise responding to the display and performed live at Tate Modern in April 2023.Visit the installation at Tate Modern, Natalie Bell Building, Level 2 West Room 4, Artist and Society. Black Balloons will play in the gallery at the following times: 11.00am, 12.00pm, 1.00pm, 3.00pm, 4.00pm, 5.00pm.Interludes is an ongoing sound collaboration between Lou Mensah of Shade Podcast and the audio artist Axel Kacoutié.Produced by Lou MensahCreated by Axel Kacoutié

An exploration of race and politics via the dancefloor.Today my guest is the photographer and filmmaker Jermaine Francis. Jermaine and I discuss his recent film Lost in Music: A Post Industrial Dreamscape - an exploration of race and politics within a dancefloor context. This work was recently presented alongside a discussion with the writer Nathalie Olah and photographer Edward "Eddie" Otchere at Camden Arts Centre.His practice works within documentary & portraiture, in the format of personal driven photo projects & editorials, exploring the issues that arise from our interaction in the everyday environment. He has published two books, Something That Seems So Familiar and Rhythms from the Metroplex. Jermaine's work can be found in publications such as i-D, 10 Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, and in exhibitions at GaleriePCP in Paris and Saatchi Gallery.I loved talking with Jermaine and I hope that you enjoy his words on his rich creative life as much as I did.Thank you for listening and for supporting Shade - the award winning independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiSee you next time!Shade Podcast is hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonShade InstagramShade websiteJermaine Francis instagram

Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close at The Barbican.Today my guest is Patrice Robinson who talks about Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close, at The Barbican, her debut curatorial season. With interest in communities, community access to film and the intimacies of the human experience, Patrice is a film programmer and writer working in the intersection of audiences and cinema.We discuss Patrice's late entry into film following a change in career, and how the Independent Cinema Office’s FEDS Scheme led to her permanent position at The Barbican. She also shares how her time at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival informed Snapshots, and why she focused on films that shared themes of connection - to the land, oneself and family.Snapshots offers a rare insight into the flourishing Caribbean film culture. Exploring individual and shared cultural identities, Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close runs from 17-31 May, and kicks off with the UK premiere of the brand new restoration of Kavery Kaul’s One Hand Don’t Clap, her upbeat archive documentary which explores the importance of Calypso music and the community around it. The season continues with Currents, a programme of seven shorts by Caribbean filmmakers which explore universal themes of (familial and self) acceptance, overcoming adversity, justice and pride from a uniquely Caribbean perspective.The season closes with writer/director José María Cabral’s Parsley, based on the real story of the Parsley Massacre, a mass killing of Haitians living inthe Dominican Republic north western frontier October 1937. Parsley tells the story of a heavily pregnant Haitian woman left alone in the wilderness near the Dominican border, trying to escape the attack.Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close - The BarbicanWed 17 - Wed 31 May 2023Shade Podcast is written, hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - an independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiSee you next time!Shade InstagramShade websitePatrice Robinson website

PerAnkh – The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, now showing at Raven Row London.Today my guest is the film curator and archivist, June Givanni.June's new exhibition, PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, is showing at Raven Row in London until 4 June 2023.The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA) holds a unique collection of artefacts and archival material, which has at its core the interest of PanAfrican cinema and its relationship with Black British cinema and culture. The exhibition reveals histories and ideas in African and African diasporic film. June has been collating and sharing this material since the 1980s. A key figure in the Black British Independent Cinema movement, she was involved in the landmark Third Eye Festival of Third World Cinema with the Greater London Council in 1983, later establishing the African Caribbean FilmUnit at the (BFI) in 1992. June’s archive holds more than 10,000 items connecting African film with the film cultures of diaspora communities in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. June and I met this week to discuss her early connection with film as a child and her four decades of work as a curator and archivist.Shade Podcast is written, hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - an independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiSee you next time!Shade InstagramShade websitePerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, is showing at Raven Row exhibition details and programmingJune Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive website

Featuring Lou Mensah & Sunil Shah.Enjoy this bonus episode of my conversation with the curators of Tracing Absence, a Whitechapel Gallery exhibition opening at the Kistefos Museum in Norway on April 29th, 2023. The MA student curators of Tracing Absence re-imagine the show to respond to the local context. Episode 18 of Whitechapel Gallery’s Hear, Now podcast series was published in October 2022. It delves deeper into the themes that underpin the exhibition Tracing Absence. Students graduating from the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes course, run by Whitechapel Gallery and London South Bank University, had the opportunity to curate this exhibition as part of their course, which confronts the different ways in which absence manifests in the world.Tracing Absence features new sound art pieces by Joseph Sergi and Yiskāh (alias Jessica Beechy) and works from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation. Student Cathy O ‘Sullivan presents and introduces fellow student Ada Egg Koskilouma who talks with Sunil Shah and Lou Mensah, to explore what absence means to them.Sunil Shah is an artist and curator based in Oxford, UK. He is interested in the politics of photographic representation and conceptual post-documentary practices with relation to history, memory and identity.Lou Mensah is a London based writer, photographer and the founder of Shade Podcast, a platform which hosts conversations with creative and radical thinkers on the politics of race and representation within the arts.Please follow this link to view the publication that accompanies the exhibition and listen to the sound art works by Joseph Sergi and Yiskāh: https://linktr.ee/tracingabsenceFor more information: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/tracing-absence/

Writer, researcher and independent curator: Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art.Dr Jareh Das is an independent curator, researcher and writer who lives and works between West Africa and the UK. Das’ academic and curatorial practice is informed by an interest in global modern and contemporary art with a specific focus on performance. In 2022, Das curated Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art an exhibition that spanned seventy years of ceramics and explored how clay has been disrupted, questioned and reimagined by Black women artists. She has written for publications including Ocula Magazine, Frieze, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art and The Art Newspaper.Shade Podcast is written, hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - an independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiSee you next time!Shade InstagramShade websiteJareh Das WebsiteBody, Vessel Clay exhibition information

Curator and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art and curator of Black Venus at Somerset House.*Please note that the sound quality in this episode is compromised due to an unstable internet connection between London and Lagos, where this conversation was recorded. However, Aindrea's insights are not to be missed!Aindrea Emelife is a Nigerian-British curator and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on questions around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation. Aindrea is currently the Curator, Modern and Contemporary at EMOWAA (Edo Museum of West African Art), a new David Adjaye designed museum complex and cultural district in Benin City, Nigeria due to open in stages from 2024. Born in London, United Kingdom, Emelife studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art before embarking on a multifaceted career as a curator and art historian, producing highly acclaimed exhibitions for museum, galleries and private collections internationally. Recent exhibitions include BLACK VENUS; a survey of the legacy of the Black woman in visual culture which opened at Fotografiska NY and will tour to MOAD (San Francisco, USA) and Somerset House (London, UK) in 2023. Emelife’s first book, A Brief History of Protest Art was released by Tate in March 2022, Emelife has contributed to exhibition catalogues and publications, most recently including Revising Modern British Art (Lund Humphries, 2022) In 2021, Emelife was appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.Lou and Aindrea consider Theaster Gates idea that “Black autonomy alone is too radical for current America” within the context of developing dialogues in contemporary art. We discuss the themes in her recent show 'Black Venus' and round up considering a key question of the series: 'Has the BLM period impacted art sector strategy?' We also find out how Aindrea navigates social media as a Black curator.Shade Podcast is written, hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic generously composed for Shade by Brian JacksonThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - an independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiShade InstagramShade websiteEMOWAA websiteAindrea Emelife websiteAindrea Emelife instagramSee you next time!

Bolanle Tajudeen founded Black Blossoms in 2015 to showcase the work of contemporary artists of colour. In 2020, Bolanle launched the Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture, an initiative highlighting the art histories and creative practices of artists from historically marginalised backgrounds. As an alternative art school, Black Blossoms offers short educational courses including Art and Revolutionary China, Black British Art, The Black Image in London Galleries, and Curating Black Art.Lou & Bolanle discuss her shift in focus from studying politics, to art at UAL where, as the Vice President of the Student Union she co-founded UAL So White to address the lack of diversity in teaching staff. At the time there were 1,300 white and 126 BAME staff.Black Blossoms provides public programming for Art on the Underground and partners include The Photographer's Gallery and Tate. We also discuss the media backlash Bolanle received following her Art on the Underground public programme. We round up hearing about Flourish Black Blossoms forthcoming event at Tate inspired by The Unfinished Conversation display curated by Aicha Mehrez.Shade Podcast is written, hosted and produced by Lou MensahMusic Shaded generously composed by Brian JacksonThank you for listening and for supporting Shade - an independent art show highlighting the work of Black art practitioners via Patreon and Ko-fiShade InstagramShade websiteBlack Blossoms Flourish at Tate Black Blossoms websiteBlack Blossoms InstagramSee you next time!