Fresh Art International

Today, we share with you the finale of the Fresh Art International podcast, ending more than a decade of storytelling from art scenes around the world. Coming full circle, we’ve returned to Baltimore, Maryland. The Magic City is where we released our very first episode in October 2011. Our guest was MacArthur Genius, artist Joyce J. Scott.

In October 2025, we sit down with another long time friend of Fresh Art International: artist Amy Sherald. Inside the Baltimore Museum of Art, she takes us on a tour of American Sublime, her traveling mid-career retrospective exhibition.

This isn’t our first story with Amy. Nine years ago, in July 2016, we recorded an episode live with an audience, in a Chicago, Illinois, gallery. Surrounded by Amy Sherald’s paintings, we acknowledged acute racial tensions in the United States at that moment. Incidents of police violence against black citizens were sparking countrywide public protests. A hopeful counterpoint, Amy’s exhibition A Wonderful Dream met viewers with luminous positive depictions of Black life in America. A year and a half later, in December 2017, Amy joined us on our Fresh Art International radio show during Miami Art Week, in Florida. Again, she voiced her commitment to the work. Recording conversations with this artist along her path to greatness has been a privilege and an honor.

Fresh Art International holds an archive of many such stories—all with enduring value. Over time, we have documented critically important voices from the evolving world of contemporary art. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, Locust Projects and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and most important, Listeners Like You, have made Fresh Art International possible. Thank You, for Listening!

Production: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio | Featured: Amy Sherald

Related Episodes: Amy Sherald on New Racial Narratives, Report from Miami Art Week 2017

Related Links: Obama Portrait Unveiling at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, 2018, Artist Amy Sherald: The 60 Minutes Interview

*Amy Sherald: American Sublime is touring these venues in the United States: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art/San Francisco, Whitney Museum of American Art/New York, Baltimore Museum of Art/Baltimore, High Museum of Art/Atlanta

Today, we introduce Cannupa Hanska Luger, an American artist born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, who now lives and works outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Our conversation reveals a few of the ways Cannupa acts on his deep respect for heritage and community, belief in ritual and remembrance, and fascination with science fiction and mythology. The artist shares the stories behind his mystical re-creation of Midéegaadi, a traditional buffalo dance he filmed against a green screen to show in exhibition spaces, on digital billboards, and even in a virtual reality app. 

The dance is one strand of Future Ancestral Technologies, a new myth that Cannupa has been weaving since 2015. His interrelated projects reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population. As Cannupa builds a framework for understanding, respecting and sharing indigeneity in the 21st century, he holds out hope for our collective future.

Production: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Special Audio: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Midéegaadi and Mirror Shield Project

Related Episodes: Video Performance Art Reimagines the Future, Live from the Everglades—Part One and Part Two

Related Link: Cannupa Hanska Luger

In this episode, we explore an emerging microgenre in contemporary performance art. Some of today’s artists create liminal spaces, construct original expressive forms, and make powerful statements in a range of inventive video performances.

The 2025 exhibition (Im)Posibilidades: Performance Art for Video at Ogden Contemporary Arts in Ogden, Utah, reveals the microgenre’s potential. Featured projects from the United States and Mexico envision ways to correct historical distortions and construct new possible futures. They show us a world where everyone’s stories can thrive through performance and reimagination.

Production: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Featured Voices: Stephanie Garcia and Peter Hay of PROArtes Mexico, Adam Forrester, Lilly McElroy, Cannupa Hanska Luger

Feature Soundtracks, Courtesy the Artists and Ogden Contemporary Arts: María Eugenia Chellet/La Dolorosa, Lilly McElroy/A Woman Runs Through a Pastoral Setting, Naomi Rincón Gallardo/Eclipse, Cannupa Hanska Luger/Midéegaadi, Ileana Moreno/Kowatl y el Mejor Amigo del Sol, Kameron Neal and Jarrett Key/CARGO!, Yoshie Sakai/ Grandma NightClub Music Video, José Villalobos/El Peso Del Rio/The Weight of the River


Additional music:
Caspertron by Blue Dot Sessions
Mergeron by Blue Dot Sessions

Related Episodes: Joan Jonas, William Pope.L, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Carolee Schneeman, Cheryl Pope, Regina Frank

About the Exhibition: Ogden Contemporary Arts

Today’s episode is a poetic epilogue to the Student Edition we produced with university students from the United States and Canada. The emerging podcasters who share this story are enrolled at schools in Chișinău, capital city of the Republic of Moldova. Their tiny Eastern European country declared its independence from the Soviet Union not so long ago, in 1991. Russia’s ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine continues to have an impact on everyday life here. Olga Raileanu, Bogdan Glavan, and Daniel Boldurat reached out to local photographer Mihail Calarașan, Ukrainian artist KAR, and sociologist Vitalie Sprînceană to talk about art in times of war for their new Reflecting Zemstvei podcast.

Note: The original version of this episode premiered on YouTube as #1/ Reflectând Zemstvei / Peace Street.

About Casa Zemstvei and the Reflecting Zemstvei Podcast: Since 2013, artists and independent initiatives have rented spaces in a center-city building known as Muzeul Zemstvei. They call their improvisational community “Casa Zemstvei.” Creators and curators, animators and activists, visitors and regulars embrace the crumbling architecture, the arctic cold, the echoey acoustics, and the primitive grandeur of this historic space.

In spring 2025, Fresh Art International’s Cathy Byrd introduced podcasting during a 3-day intensive workshop. Participants recorded voices and sounds for stories about the independent art scene inside Casa Zemstvei.

Workshop participants became producers by learning to master recording equipment, script stories, collect sounds and voices and shape stories. Recorded on location, episodes in the limited edition Reflecting Zemstvei audio program are influenced by the surrounding sonic landscape and informed by the creative characters that inhabit this “House of Wonders.” The venue’s displays and public conversations around the war in Ukraine at the time of our workshop sparked this episode.

Peace Street Producers
Olga Raileanu – Moldovan graphic designer with a background in journalism and media production.
Bogdan Glavan – Moldovan student with experience in sound design.
Daniel Boldurat – Moldovan student with experience in journalism, volunteer at Oberliht Association.

Peace Street Guests
Mihail Calarașan – Documentary photographer, since 2017 he has been working on personal long-term documentary projects.
KAR – Ukrainian artist whose artwork was displayed at the inauguration of the ”Peace Street” at Casa Zemstvei.
Vitalie Sprînceană – sociologist, co-founder and co-editor of platzforma.md.

Post-production for the Fresh Art International version of this episode: Anamnesis Audio

Related Episodes: Starting an Art Podcast in Moldova, Fresh Art International Student Edition

Related Links: 

Reflecting Zemstvei Podcast on YouTube, with Subtitles

Reflecting Zemstvei Podcast on SoundCloud

To introduce the new Reflecting Zemstvei podcast produced by local creatives in Chișinău, Moldova, Cathy Byrd and Olga Raileanu take listeners inside an intensive workshop experience that spanned three days in March 2025. In this episode, you’ll meet the young Moldovans who learned to master recording equipment, script stories, and collect sounds and voices to shape stories from their hometown’s independent art scene. Our story from Eastern Europe takes Fresh Art International's Student Edition outside the English speaking world.

Since 2013, artists and independent initiatives have rented spaces in a center-city building complex known as “Zemstvei,” a state-owned architectural monument that dates from the mid-19th century. They call their improvisational community “Casa Zemstvei.” Creators and curators, animators and activists, visitors and regulars embrace the crumbling architecture, arctic cold, echoey acoustics, and primitive grandeur of this historic space. 

 

Recorded on location, episodes in this limited edition audio program are inspired by the surrounding sonic landscape and the creative characters that energize Chișinău’s “House of Wonders.”

 

Note: The original version of this episode premiered on YouTube as #1/ Reflectând Zemstvei / How We Made the Podcast.

 

Production: Cathy Byrd, with Olga Raileanu | Sound Design: Marian Lupu, Olga Raileanu, and Anamnesis Audio

Voices:

Daniel Boldurat - student and volunteer at Oberliht Association, Franz Cocarcea - producer of the video podcast Omul face locul, Bogdan Glavan - high school student, with experience in sound design, Alex Hanganu - student, activist and cultural manager, Olga Raileanu - graphic designer with journalism experience, Marina Scalețchi - communicator, Vladimir Us - curator, president of Oberliht Association

Related Links: Fresh Art International Student Edition, FreshArt.Education, Reflecting Zemstvei Podcast on SoundCloud, Reflecting Zemstvei Podcast on YouTube, with Subtitles