Ep.2: Safe space for who?
Episode 2: SAFE SPACE FOR WHO?
Ahya Simone, Cristina Tufino, and Nour Ballout consider the limitations, inaccuracies, and obscurities of the phrase "safe space".
SHOW NOTES
ABOUT THE GUESTS
AHYA SIMONE Working across myriad disciplines, Detroit based multidisciplinary artist, performer, filmmaker and harpist. Ahya Simone’s many pronged practice is bound by an exploration of black identity, aesthetic, and community building. Simone’s engagement with music stems from a childhood spent in the Black church, where she learned to sing. In high school, she began to play the harp and became principal harpist for the Wayne State University Wind Symphony upon her graduation. Simone is a featured artist for “Showing Up, Showing Out”, a film dedicated to Motown’s legacy and its future in collaboration with Carhartt, Dazed and NTS Radio. Her unique artistry landed her a spot on Kelela’s “Take Me Apart, The Remixes” and recognized as a 2018 Sundance / Knight Foundation, 2017 Detroit Narrative Agency 2.0, and 2018 Kresge Artist Fellow. She is also creator, co-writer, and director of upcoming fictional web series “Femme Queen Chronicles”. A story of 4 black trans women in Detroit. Initially exploring film through scoring local shorts, “Treasure: From Tragedy to Trans Justice Mapping A Detroit Story”, 2015, she uses film and sound to explore ideas around identity, vulnerability, language and existence.
NOUR BALLOUT (b. 1993, Beirut) is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist and curator. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University and are an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). While working in a wide range of creative media, they maintain a primary practice in photography, reconsidering the right to look, the paradoxes of representation, access, and privacy collide as I pursue the right to love and feel comfortable in their body as a trans-masculine queer person immigrant living in diaspora. They are the recipient of the 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Award, the 2019 Kresge Arts in Detroit Gilda Award, and the 2019 Applebaum Photography Fellowship. Nour has exhibited their work across the United States and participated in several artist residencies including the Ghana Think Tank in Detroit and Flux Factory in New York.
CRISTINA TUFIÑO Inspired by consumer goods, industrial debris and autobiographical narratives and objects, Cristina Tufiño addresses her practice as an archaeologist hoarder rummaging through a broad cultural system of references,with a particular nod to artifacts and museological aesthetics. Her multimedia works arise from a process of assembling, associating and translating images and ideas inspired by seemingly oppositional languages and spaces. Tufiño's photographic compositions, prints, videos, installations and sculptures, give a new meaning to post-studio practices and the use of social debris in our time. Cristina Tufiño lives and works in between Mexico City and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Some of her recent exhibitions and projects include: Dancing At The End of The World, Galería Agustina Ferreyra; The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art. Curated by Maria Elena Ortiz, Perez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; Millenium Mambo, Greenwich House Pottery, New York, US (2018); Gran Turismo, Selena Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, US (2018); Clay Today, The Hole, New York, NY, US (2018); The Axis of Evil, Ruberta, Los Angeles, CA, US (2017) & I GO,YOU GO, GOOD TO GO, curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija & Gavin Brown, Unclebrother, Hancock, US (2017), among others.