Born in 1979 in the town of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Poswa studied surface design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Straddling figuration and abstraction, her anthropomorphic totems are characterised by an elliptical approach to form and bold colour choice.

Her work is a deep invocation of her personal journey and an homage to the spiritual traditions and matriarchal stewardship of her Xhosa culture.

Zizipho’s large-scale, hand-coiled sculptures are bold declarations of African womanhood. She is inspired by the daily Xhosa rituals she witnessed as a young girl growing up in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa and the life-sustaining roles that Xhosa women play in traditional and contemporary life.

Celebrating Women

 “I was raised by extraordinary women.  Being surrounded by strong, powerful women in my home and in my community was the inspiration for me. I've always wanted to honor those women and celebrate them.”

Across bodies of work, Zizipho repeatedly returns to a rich repertoire of symbolic motifs – cow horns, braided coiffures, stacked vessels, gathered loads,
hair combs, ‘ukhamba’ beer pots, and bronze crests – through which the intimate rituals of daily life are transformed into monuments of dignity, resilience, and power.

Nurturing Environments

 “I was fortunate to have a mother who supported, who saw the talent from a young age, and she really nurtured it.”

In this conversation, Zizipho recounts early artistic support from her mother, who was a teacher when Zizipho was a young girl; her textile-design training and turn to ceramics, use of bronze, and interest in glass and wood. She also details founding Imiso Ceramics in 2006, with fellow South African artist Andile Dyalvane.

This conversation highlights why nurturing environments support creative growth and development. Look to your own life: What important moments helped nurture and shape your creativity?

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Alexa is a Japanese-Canadian artist who brings together historical and sustainable craft technologies of her heritage, including hand-papermaking, natural dye, linocut, gyotaku (printing real fish), and washi (Japanese paper).

Fresh from exhibiting monumental works at the 61st Venice Biennale, Alexa discusses how she blends historical craft technologies—including handmade washi paper, natural dyes, and gyotaku—with contemporary themes of climate change and mental health.

Drawing on her decade of community-engaged projects in Nunavut and her lived experience with bipolar disorder, Alexa explores how material practices can create spaces for vulnerability, collective healing, and deeper knowing. Together, we unpack the role of art in challenging neurodivergent stigma, the urgency of reconnecting with traditional craft in an era of environmental crisis, and why artistic craftsmanship remains a profound act of care.

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Susceptibility to Gravity

 “The best definition I've ever heard for how to measure depression is ‘what is your susceptibility to gravity?’

The title of her work lining the Giardini in Venice

, Susceptibility to Gravity, explores her practice of working with traditional paper, mostly from Japan, and creating linocut prints.

Susceptibility to Gravity, extends her public art, which she started at the beginning of her career. “I was doing public art for many years, so I've always appreciated that level of encounter. When people enter, they're guided into this procession that they're all participating in. It’s been really special.”

Vulnerability through Art

 “You can only really truly connect with each other through vulnerability and honesty.”

When we tell the truth, we create something people can actually feel.That’s what makes art connect — not perfection, but honesty. And sometimes, sharing the parts we’re afraid to say out loud is exactly what helps someone else feel less alone. Vulnerability isn’t weakness — it’s what turns personal experience into something others can connect with.

This conversation reminded me that honesty is often the most powerful creative tool we have.

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Image: Blair J Meadows, Courtesy Larkin Durey.

On this episode I’m joined by Anina Major. We discuss the themes of identity, migration, and memory present in her work. Discussing her latest works and the context of her practice, we explore the ongoing negotiation between self and place. Drawing from her upbringing in the Bahamas and her life in the United States, Major reflects on craft as a language of memory, the influence of familial knowledge, and the ways displacement can transform both identity and artistic expression.

Her latest exhibition, Tender Seedlings on view at Larkin Durey, is her first in London and explores how identity is formed through movement and transformation. Using the traditional weaving technique, plaiting, taught to her by her late grandmother, Major translates a fragile, portable craft into ceramic form, allowing inherited knowledge to migrate across materials, geographies and time.

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Tender Seedlings

“This work is about lived experiences and my way of documenting them and sharing them.”

Inspired by the poem Seedling by A. L. Major, the works consider how identity is formed through movement, memory, and transformation, as childhood nostalgia collides with adulthood realities and the self is shaped across distance from family, community, and country.

Major emphasizes that Tender Seedlings allows her to revisit her roots while showcasing her growth in skills and narrative depth. The exhibition serves as a platform for Major to engage in conversations about her heritage and the complexities of identity, especially regarding her relationship with the Caribbean and the historical context of the Bahamas in relation to the UK.

Anina’s Bahamian Roots

"I wanted to talk about the things I carried from the Bahamas to the US."

Throughout her artistic journey, Major has been influenced heavily by her grandmother, who played a pivotal role in shaping her understanding of craftsmanship. Growing up in the Bahamas, she witnessed her grandmother’s artistry in the straw markets, which were vital to the local economy. Major’s connection to her grandmother’s work adds a deep emotional layer to her own creations. Major’s art serves as a testament to the importance of honoring these connections while also evolving them in new contexts.

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On this episode of Everything Is Connected, Darryl “FERG” Brown discusses his current focus on world-building. He explains how Harlem shaped his worldview through its flamboyant cultural history and competitive, community-based drive to be innovative and “fly.” FERG traces the intersection of fashion and music to his father’s community-centered businesses and garment work, which taught him screen-printing, painting, and entrepreneurship, and notes attending Art and Design High School.

But this isn’t just a conversation about his music.

Instead, FERG draws connections between Harlem’s competitive spirit and his own creative drive, between the pre-internet era of being outside and the community-centered art practice he is building today — one rooted in the belief that art is, above all, a tool for bringing people together.

Last year, FERG showcased his first art exhibition at SCOPE during Art Basel Miami Beach, screened his short film "Flip Phone," and hosted a fireside chat with the PAMM Acquisition prize winner, Jahlil Nzinga.

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Home is Where It’s At - A New York Summer

After a year of travel, FERG wants to sit still and enjoy summer in New York City.

 “I’ve been all over the place,  Italy, London, Japan. I went to Asia probably like four times last year, and I just wanna sit still and get a beach chair and sit on the block in front of somebody barbershop, have a lemonade, or get a Icee from the Mexican lady,   and just look at people and then listen to music.” - FERG

Ivie Ani & FERG for AWAKE 2024 July 4 capsule collection

Connecting Through Art

“The art is a tool to bring people together 'cause I wanna hang out with people.”

In this episode Ferg shares:

• His upbringing as an only child in Harlem and the neighborhood’s deeply competitive, flamboyant culture

• His father’s legacy — from silk-screening T-shirts in basements to running Ferg Apparel on 145th Street — and the lessons he carries from working alongside him

• Attending Art and Design High School and the community of creatives it introduced him to

• His current world-building vision — curating spaces, taste, and community the way the great creative directors and brand architects do

• Artists he’s studying right now, including Ernie Barnes, Kara Walker, Francis Bacon, and Basquiat

• And why, after years of global travel, he’s planting himself in New York this summer — because home is where it’s at

At its core, this conversation is about legacy — what we inherit, what we build, and how the communities that shape us never really leave us, no matter how far we go.

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In this episode, visual artist Manyaku Mashilo reflects on her evolution from fashion design into a multidisciplinary practice rooted in painting, mark-making, and storytelling. Her work moves through texture, memory, and color—building intimate, emotional worlds that center Black womanhood, spirituality, and ancestral lineage.

But this isn’t just a conversation about the artistic process.

Instead, Manyaku traces the deeper currents beneath her work: memory as a tool for survival, art as a spiritual practice, and the lifelong search for belonging—both within herself and in the communities she builds through her work.

Textures Hold Memory

"The earth and the world is made up of textures. I think textures hold a lot of memory. You could brush your hand against something and that could trigger a memory."

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Tattoos & Mark Making on the Body

Manyaku reflects on how mark-making extends beyond the canvas—onto skin, into ritual, and across memory. From childhood ceremonies to tattooing, her work considers texture as a living archive, carrying emotion, ancestry, and the quiet imprints of where we’ve been.

Spirituality, Womanhood, and Healing Through Art

"My practice is not just about honoring my mothers, but it's trying to relive that feeling that I had when I grew up, when I was with my mothers, exploring their spiritual healing, their motherhood, all the things they taught me.”

At its core, this conversation is about returning—returning to memory, to lineage, to the textures that hold us. Through Manyaku’s reflections, we see how art becomes more than image-making; it becomes a site of healing, a language for the unsaid, and a way to rebuild belonging in a world that often asks us to forget.

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“Abstraction was a means for me to push not only beyond my creative practice, but also to encourage my audience to look — to see what else is out there.” —Demetrius Wilson

In this episode, abstract painter Demetrius Wilson reflects on his second solo exhibition at Half Gallery and the evolution of a practice rooted in intuition, movement, and material dialogue. Working at the intersection of environment, memory, and abstraction, Wilson explores how color, scale, and gesture can evoke both personal and collective experience.

But this conversation goes beyond painting.

Here, Demetrius considers what it means to create in a rapidly changing world—tracing how a 1990s upbringing, spiritual inquiry, and a desire to expand visual language all shape his approach to art-making and meaning.

In this episode Demetrius shares:

• His recent exhibition Light in a Dark Mirror and why it represents his strongest body of work to date

• The idea of painting as a “symbiotic” process—where the work responds and evolves in real time

• Growing up on the East Coast in the 1990s and how that era shapes his orts/5RsbhbohCYUperspective and process

• His approach to color—using heat, temperature, and contrast to evoke emotional intensity

• His relationship to spirituality and how religious ideas subtly surface in his recent work

• Key artistic influences including Ed Clark, Jack Whitten, Mark Bradford, Cecily Brown, Francis Bacon, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

• How scale shifts perception, from expansive canvases to intimate works on paper

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Soccer is the most popular participation sport in the world. Do you remember the first time you played sports? Is the picture still vivid in your mind? What are some of the core values sports has taught you about life?

In this episode, award‑winning animator and visual‑effects artist Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr discusses his latest exhibition, his most ambitious project to date, the groundbreaking show - Futbol is Life: Animated Sportraits on view at the LACMA through mid July 2026. Iconic moments from both women’s and men’s soccer are staged as both spectacle and social record, pairing the “beautiful game” with the political and cultural forces it reflects.

But this isn’t just a conversation about his show at LACMA.

Instead, Lyndon draws parallels between sports and politics, art and life, creative expression and mentorship, and the ways in which history, while sometimes hidden from view, is always present - if one knows where to look.

In this episode Lyndon shares:

• His origins growing up in New Orleans

• How he began using discarded chewing gum wrappers to make art

• Studying at the HBCU, Xavier University of Louisiana then at Cal Arts

• His mentor,  John Scott who encouraged him to see his work differently

• The buried histories and inequities in sports

• And how history can be found if one knows where to look

Read some of our reflections below and stay tuned for our next essay where we dig deeper into Lyndon’s episode and his practice.

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Sport is Life

The benefits of sports move far beyond the physical. That’s just the beginning. Past the benefits of greater health, a reduction in the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes, are the invaluable life skills sports helps you build. From teamwork to collaborative bonds, sports teaches patience, understanding, and the discipline that helps to create a well-rounded life.

The Power of Mentorship

No matter what life throws at you or how the cookie crumbles, mentorship in crucial to professional development and personal growth. Sometimes it comes in the unexpected ways someone might suggest a job or career path, or make a meaningful introduction. Other times it’s more traditional and a mentor-mentee relationship may develop in school, with a professor or advisor. The ways that it morphs and takes shape are less important than the relationship and the connections being built along the way.

Listen in as Lyndon shares his experiences with an encouraging professor who helped him unlock new ways of thinking about his artistic practice.

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Lindsay reminds us that the archive is a space for learning but also for unlearning.

““My abstract paintings are a present and living archive. many of the same emotionality and sentiment that exist in these letters or these photos… they’re saying the same thing in a different visual language.”

Much of how we can choose to engage the archive is not simply by looking towards the past but by imagining new futures and alternative realities.

Lindsay’s reflections remind me of a conversation I had with an artist once who described her experience of encountering archives. Images of America’s past, its Black communities, and how Black life was labeled, tagged, and categorized within academic spaces and library collections.

Words to describe Black people ranged from the offense, ‘darky’ or ‘coon,’ to the mundane, yet equally offensive ‘unnamed Black boy.’ In Ceremony, the exhibition featuring Lindsay’s work alongside archival materials, she gives reverence to Black American life and the intricate stories the archive tells us about where we’ve been and where we might go from here.

In a moment where local governments and schools are banning and burning books about America’s racial past, the archive as source material becomes all the more urgent.

We carry home with us everywhere we go.

The question of home comes up often in my conversations with artists and curators.

I travel a lot. And the question of home comes up almost as frequently as I travel. Is it the city I was born in or the one I live in? Is it the place I feel most at peace or is it a place I haven’t been yet? Does it exist in my mind and do I take it with me everywhere I go?

What home means, where it is, and how it’s cultivated becomes a center of discussion. Many of the artists and curators I work with and speak with, work across multiple geographies, leave home for months on end for retreats, workshops, and residences. Others travel for research, on sabbatical, and to engage with new and unfamiliar communities along the way. In some conversations I learn about a young artist who’s been forcibly displaced due to violence and political upheaval while others seek upward mobility that isn’t available locally.

All contend with the same question. What does home mean?

“That sense of home or that sense of belonging is not limited to the physical aspect of a place.”

In her works, and in Ceremony in particular, Lindsay reminds us that home is not fixed, not static, but moving, flowing, and actively responding to us and our surroundings. Even when physical sites disappear, are lost, or otherwise erased from view, notions of home persist, shaping identities across time and space.

The Poetics of Looking

Looking is an art.

It is not merely standing in front of a painting and gazing upon it.

To truly see something or someone requires empathy, depth, and openness. To truly see is to see yourself, your mirror, the image life brings back to you so that you may understand yourself better.

“You are forcing the viewer to look differently… I’m making you come closer. I’m making you focus on a scale that is not even the size of our heads.”

Lindsay’s small works require closeness. An intimacy between the viewer and the painting. The passive viewer misses what the intentional viewer is able to see. Here, with her smaller works, Lindsay encourages viewers to come close, to stand near, and to witness her abstract paintings.

Lindsay’s next show opens at Sean Kelly next month.

Have you heard episode 108 with Lindsay Adams and Caitlin Berry?

Listen to it here

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Suggested Resources & Cultural References

• The Negro Motorist Green Book — as a framework for understanding Black mobility, safety, and spatial navigation in America

• Writings on Black geography and spatial theory (Katherine McKittrick, Saidiya Hartman)

• Essays on Black interiority and emotional life in contemporary art and literature. Kevin Quashie in his book "The Sovereignty of Quiet"

• References to Sam Gilliam’s practice—especially his challenge to form and structure as a parallel to spatial and conceptual freedom

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Leonard Iheagwam, aka Soldier, is a Lagos-born, London-based artist whose work moves across painting, sculpture, and design with the urgency of lived history.

Soldier has emerged as one of the strongest voices is shaping the new African creative landscape in recent years. In 2025, Soldier was selected as a finalist for the Arte Laguna prize. The Arte Laguna Prize is one of Italy’s most established international art competitions, recognized for its high-profile jury and global visibility, making a finalist position a respected mark of prestige for emerging artists.

In this episode we discuss Future Tense, a digital exhibition featuring emerging and established artists worldwide, rooted in his interest in speculative futurism and documenting the Black body in the future. He describes discovering MyMa through a friend and valuing its model beyond traditional white-gallery spaces, selecting artists whose personal visions fit the theme from a large application pool.

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In my latest episode with Lindsay Adams and Caitlin Berry listen in as we discuss Lindsay’s latest exhibition, Ceremony.

Ceremony brings newly created paintings and drawings into conversation with archival materials and previously unseen ephemera from Johns Hopkins special collections. Lindsay reflects on how her background in international studies and anthropology shapes a multi-lens approach and attention to interconnected histories. Caitlin describes building a relationship with Adams over several years, Adams’ research-driven practice, and how guest curator Claudia Watts helped merge new paintings with library archives to support the gallery’s mission of dialogue around art and democracy.

Ceremony is on view at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center through March 7, 2026.

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Check out my welcome video. It’s a quick way to get orientated to some of the things I’ll be sharing here and some of the ideas that are part of why I started Light Work and why art is so important, impactful, and meaningful to me.

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