Fall 2025
Friendship on Film
Rose Lewis with Dr. Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth
“I do feel like there’s a social ideology where it’s teleological, you’re moving from friendship where you learn relational dynamics to romantic relationships. But what if it’s not that kind of linear progression, right? What if friendship can be the foreground, rather than the thing that leads to something else?” – Dr. Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth
Friendship is the most generative site of collaboration within my own practice. Almost everything I do becomes more interesting when done with friends. Despite friendship’s primacy in my own life, we still inhabit a culture that privileges romantic connection over all else. I prize cultural depictions of other relationships, collegial, comradely, or complicated. I decided to discuss the question of friendship on film with one of my dearest friends. Note: This interview contains detailed discussion of Claudia Weill’s 1978 film Girlfriends–proceed with caution if you haven’t seen it and want to preserve the mysteries of its plot.
Rose: I think that friendship is the main form of collaboration that I have, and of course you’re one of my very dearest friends of all time.
Zoe: Well make sure that your readers know that you and I were first and foremost class friends. I am your friend who’s also an academic and teaches film. We first met in an academic context. All of those discussions were collaborative discussions about texts.
Rose: Knowing that you’re teaching the Greta Gerwig class and that a lot of your academic work is around film, you seemed like an excellent person to talk to about filmic depictions of friendship. I know we have so many depictions of romantic relationships on film andI thought it would be really interesting to talk about other kinds of relationships. And I have a couple films depicting friendships that I love, but I would love to hear what you love. What are your favorites?
Zoe: I think one of my all time favorites was Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends, from 1978. I’ll tell you all about it because I think that it would be very relevant to an art student. It’s a “woman becoming an artist” movie. [The film centers on] this woman, Susan. She is similar to the director, Claudia Weil, who was a young, Jewish woman director.
[Susan] is becoming a photographer at first, mostly specializing in shots for a rabbi, like bat mitzvahs and weddings, but then branches out into her own avant garde photography. The movie opens with her taking these photographs of her roommate and friend, Anne, while Anne is sleeping. Anne is like, “stop taking these photos of me,” and Susan is like “the light! It’s just right!”
The entire movie is their friendship and tension around Susan’s artistic ambitions taking center stage while Anne also wants to be a writer but then ends up getting married to this nothing of a man and moving to Vermont or upstate New York.
The thing about Girlfriends is “how do I keep this bond with my girl friend, who pushes me forward while also navigating the desires around love, creative expression, earning money,” right? I think one of the big tensions is that Susan makes a living through her art, while Ann doesn’t. She’s supported by her husband.
There are some ideas about collaboration and compromise–Susan wants to paint the walls of their apartment red, a very intense, bright red and Anne is like, “I don’t want to do that.” Susan gets her way and is able to paint the walls of the apartment the color she wants because Anne has moved out. But it’s very sad for her, right? The compromise would’ve been better than having this relationship become kind of estranged.
Susan seems very headstrong and sure of herself, but then also has this [process of] finding herself, grappling with being without her close friend. It was very clear that she and Anne had a really special friendship that was important, sustaining, and inspiring to both of them.
The movie ends [as] the friendship is re-formed, on the same night that Susan has her big first gallery opening. Anne’s husband comes to the opening and Susan asks “where the hell is Anne?”
The husband says, “she stayed home to do some writing and she said you would understand.” So then Susan goes out to see Anne, and it turns out that Anne has had an abortion because she had had one child and thought “to become a writer, I need to stop having these kids. I can’t be mothering and trying to pursue writing and going back to school to do the writing.”
It becomes a really nice moment, with both of them sitting together and joking around. Anne says “I think you seem like you have it all together,” And Susan says, “what are you talking about? I don’t know what I’m doing as much as anyone.”
Rose: I love hearing about movies and watching movies where abortion is not treated as some hugely tragic, traumatizing mistake that someone’s gone through, but as just a necessary and straightforward decision.
Zoe: Yeah. This is in 1978, right? Pretty cool movie! Greta Gerwig borrows a lot of parts of it for Frances Ha–really the premise of Frances Ha is Girlfriends.
I feel like what both of these movies have in common is like the [theme of] becoming an artist on your own terms. You’re mourning the seeming end of a friendship, but then it isn’t really the end, it’s actually a new stage or part of its development, which I think is interesting.
The friendships are not without their problems, but they are still sustaining and important. Each of these characters forms their identity relationally, with this other person in their twenties.
Rose: I think that there’s something really crucial in that, and I hope that young people these days still get to have the underemployed period in your twenties where you haven’t quite settled upon your great life’s career path and you get to focus on generative goofing off with your pals.
Zoe: Oh yeah, exactly. I think that that was important for both of us. And it was definitely important for [the character in] Girlfriends, you know, drifting around, taking these photos. And Frances, she’s crashing on a lot of couches at different points.
At some point she moves from being the backup dancer in the dance company’s troupe, basically kind of like Gerwig herself, right? Frances moves from dancer to choreographer, similar to how Greta Gerwig moves from actor to then screenwriter and director.
I do feel like there’s a social ideology where it’s teleological, you’re moving from friendship where you learn relational dynamics to romantic relationships. But what if it’s not that kind of linear progression, right? What if friendship can be the foreground, rather than the thing that leads to something else?
Rose: Right? Absolutely. It’s not like the more important category grows out of the other.
Zoe: Yeah, exactly. And I think that both Girlfriends and Frances Ha make that really clear.
Rose: A movie about friendship that I watched recently that I hadn’t even necessarily thought of through this lens before was The Sting. I re-watched it in memory of the maestro, Robert Redford. I think that what was so cool about that movie is that all of the characters’ motivations have to do with friendship. All of the guys that are coming together to take down the bad mobster are all doing it through their bonds of friendship. For all of the characters, their primary relationships are friendships, even though there are a few romances on screen. And I thought that was really beautiful. We’re talking so much about the male loneliness crisis these days, and what if the answer to the male loneliness crisis is that guys have got to form crime rings again?
Zoe: Speaking of the male loneliness epidemic, [Tim Robinson’s Friendship] also did a good job skewering those guys, right? Satirizing the way in which they’re like, “I am so lonely.” Really? There is nothing that you could do perhaps differently? Perhaps you’re contributing to this loneliness epidemic.
Rose: I watched that movie on a plane and it was a really bizarre experience because I think that if I had watched it with a group of friends in a theater, the comedy notes of it would’ve hit the hardest. But I think because I had just been rushing through the Chicago airport at the end of this long odyssey that I had been on, visiting a whole bunch of different friends in a whole bunch of different cities, the tragedy of it really came through. The tragedy of his marriage, the tragedy of his very off-putting personality, all the many different ways in which he hasn’t really been able to fit in throughout his life. I just thought, “this is poignant.”
Zoe: And also, who hasn’t had the experience of thinking, “man, this friend of mine, we are really tight,” and then you meet the rest of their friends and you think, “oh no.” He wants so badly to fit in with that group, but they’re into acapella. [He thinks], “Ooh. The other friends of this friend have me doubting the character of the person that I have chosen to all align myself with.”
A friendship movie that we’ve watched together and we both really like is Muriel’s Wedding. The title makes it seem like it’s going to be primarily about romantic relationships, but in fact it is about helping your wild and crazy friend when she faces hardship and disability and being like, “I wanna have my friend with me all the time.” Muriel gets married to this hunk, right? But ultimately that isn’t the thing that gives her pleasure or satisfaction.
Rose: Yes.
Zoe: Yeah. I feel like the turning point in that movie where the friend has the disabling event–oh my God, totally unexpected– shifts the course of the entire movie. These things that happened to our friends deeply affect us and absolutely shift the course of our lives as well. Friendship is just as deeply pivotal as romantic love, if not more so, for a lot of women.
Rose: And I think what’s particularly special about that movie is the way in which the friendships kind of move her personal development forward. She’s able to start developing her own sense of independence and identity through the support and strength of this much more empowered, liberated character.
Zoe: Exactly. But then she gets to actually have a caretaking role when that character becomes disabled and starts seeing the world differently. You know, she still has her spunk and spirit and such, but isn’t going out for a two-guy three-way.
Rose: Yeah. I also just really love the scene where she accidentally unzips the beanbag chair when she’s trying to fool around with that guy.
Zoe: You and I watched that movie during the time that I was in Portland following that very traumatic, difficult life event for me. And I do think it was a good reaffirmation of our friendship through this comedic work of art.
Rose: Yes! I loved our little mini film fest we did when you were staying with me. There were so many times where I would say “oh, you know, I haven’t seen this,” and then you would say, “oh, you know, I watched that recently, but here’s a related title.” I feel like one of the great pleasures of talking to you about movies is that pretty much any movie that I could name, you have seen it, and have a very cogent thought about it.
Zoe: I do love to do that for my students, my own little Zoe Criterion. If I’m teaching Cleo from Five to Seven, I can say “If you liked this more Left Bank, French New Wave, film, maybe you should watch Hiroshima Mon Amour.”
I found out recently, when teaching The 400 Blows, there’s a very tragic scene where his friend bikes away to go visit him at the juvenile detention center and then isn’t let in to visit him, and you just see the child banging on the glass. You can’t hear what’s happening, but you can see the friend being told to go and then biking away. I guess Truffaut’s friend who did the cinematography for The 400 Blows actually did that–it was semi-autobiographical. The collaborations that one has with one’s friends are definitely different, structurally and in terms of power, than the collaborations one has with one’s lover and partners.
Rose: Speaking of Truffaut, and 400 Blows, of course one of the great friendship classics is Jules et Jim.
It’s so funny. When I first watched that in high school, it blew my mind. I love it so much. I re-watched it in college and I still really loved it, but at that point I was also struck by how strange it is and the dynamic these guys have with each other and the different ways that they’re expressing themselves. And in the final moments when they’re realizing what’s happened to Catherine, the only thing they can say is, “well, there’s her car”.
Zoe: Yes, I remember seeing that, I think like at the Paramount in Austin on some French new wave double feature. And I’ve only seen it that one time, but I definitely can remember the final shot of the car wreck, and thinking [so much of the film is about] sustaining homosocial bonds, right?
Rose: Very Barbara Kruger, in that they construct intimate rituals to allow them to touch the skin of other men.
Zoe: Yes! Like [Eve Kosofsky] Sedgwick, Between Men! In teaching Girlfriends, I also contextualize it with the male buddy comedy where the viewer thinks, “this is to the exclusion of women.”
This has been such a good conversation, dude. You know I love to rant and rave about movies, so, I would do this anytime.
Rose: It’s one of my favorite things to talk to you about. I’m so happy that we got to do this. Whenever you come up in conversation with my mom, she always says, “I remember when you said, mom, I met someone who’s smarter than me.”
Zoe: Not true! I just talk really quickly, like Martin Scorsese. I just talk fast because I’m from the east coast, which in Texas is to my detriment, but elsewhere people do think it’s a smart person thing.
Rose: I definitely think it’s a smart person thing. And I love the comparison with Marty, one of the greatest. I actually got my appreciation for Martin Scorsese before I’d even seen any of his work. He was interviewed extensively in a documentary about Joe Strummer, about their friendship and how they had met when he briefly cast the Clash in as background actors in The King of Comedy.
I loved the way that he talked about his early experiences of punk and being in New York at the time that that was all happening. [He got] to know The Clash when they were first coming to America. They were obsessed with this image of New York that had partly come to them through his movies.
That was just such a beautiful basis on which to form a friendship and a collaboration. I thought that was really lovely.
Rose Lewis is an artist, musician, and general busybody based in Portland, OR. Her work is deeply rooted in the DIY tradition of the global punk community and encompasses media including drawing, printmaking, zine-making, show booking, painting in oil and watercolor, writing, electric guitar, and soup. Find her work at rose-lewis.space.
Dr. Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at Texas State University. Prior to her arrival at Texas State, she held a Mellon grant-funded postdoctoral fellowship in digital humanities at the University of Texas where she received her PhD in 2022. Zoe’s research examines the nexus of contemporary cinema, new media, and literature, particularly poetry and theories of the lyric. Her current book project examines poetry-savvy narrative films, many of which also foreground new media forms, in the twenty-first century. The project contributes to discussions of intermediality, the lyric’s ongoing adaptability and survival, and new approaches to theorizing formalism in film and literature.
She is also interested in digital humanities projects that increase public access to archival holdings and contextualize media artifacts.
We Can’t Leave Each Other Behind
Clara Harlow with Suzy Messerole, Seniz Yargici and Sharon Mandel
“The communication that happens in the water is making me a better human being outside of the water.” – Suzy Messerole
In August of 2025, I found myself across the pond for the first time on a wedding trip of someone I didn’t know and whose wedding I didn’t attend. I learned early on that when someone invites you to come on a trip with them, you say yes and figure the rest out later. Much to my delight, there happened to be a show up at the Design Museum all about swimming. I’d been doing the bulk of my graduate work on the aesthetics and relationships of the swimming pool, so this felt like a serendipitous gift.
It was within the aqua walls of the Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style exhibition, where I first discovered the Subversive Sirens synchronized swimming team. I stood completely captivated by the imagery of all sorts of bodies in relationship to one another above and below the water’s surface in a short film made by artist Xiaolu Wang about the team. So naturally, the first thing I did when I got home from London was cold email them to learn more about what they were reenvisioning together in the pool.
The Subversive Sirens is not like any synchronized swimming team. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the team is made up of folks of all backgrounds who have come together around their passion for swimming, activism, and how these two can intersect. They swim for Black liberation, equity in swimming and aquatic arts, radical body acceptance, and queer visibility. Every Saturday morning the team gathers in 4 lanes at the Phillips Aquatic Center, which is part of the Phillips Community Center, in the heart of Minneapolis. Although they spend this time swimming and rehearsing for the annual IGLA Aquatics Championship or the Gay Games that happen every 4 years, they see this time as a regular act of collective care and rejuvenation. This fall I had the pleasure of sitting down with Subversive Sirens members Suzy Messserole, Seniz Yargici, and Sharon Mandel to learn more about what we can do in the water that we can’t do on land and what we can do together that we can’t do alone.
Clara: As a former competitive swimmer, the pool has always held this tension for me in being both a site for competition and camaraderie. A site of individual striving and profound teamwork. I’m wondering if that friction comes up in synchronized swimming and how you make sense of that as a team?
Sharon: I haven’t competed yet, but I’m thinking about freedom and expression in the water as individuals, and how that works as a team. And that’s a really interesting thing for me. I’m the newest on the team, and I think it’s a really interesting challenge to be free and creative, and also do all the technical aspects that it takes to perform as a team. So there’s the creativity part, and then there’s the kicking someone and getting water up the nose part, so it’s a real combination of learning skills and still being creative and being yourself while doing what’s needed to create something with a team. There’s no riffing in Synchro. And our spacing is supposed to be very close together. Synchronized. So the technical aspect does outweigh creativity during the practices, I think. I don’t know if it outweighs fun, but it is a lot of hard work, too.
Clara: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m curious if you could talk more about how you guys are thinking about the liberatory potential of the pool space?
Sharon: I think just being there, in our bathing suits, in our bodies, which are bigger and different-shaped. That, right there, is giving maybe some hope for others that it’s okay to be in whatever suit you are, in whatever body you are, and to feel comfortable. I think a big part of our liberation politics is encouraging people to really feel okay about who they are, and to enjoy the water doing that if they wish.
Suzy: I think that’s beautiful, Sharon. I also think that our priority is the seven of us. Well, the eight of us with our coach. And, in doing so, I think we are setting an example for communal care, for setting time aside for your own rejuvenation, so that you can go out back out into the world and be a better participant in the journey to justice.
But as Sharon said, the little kids come and watch us do the routines. You know, I’m one of the white members, but most of the members are Black. Many of us are bigger-bodied and we bring the joy wherever we go. We are so happy to be together in the water, in our swimsuits, to the best of our ability.
Sharon: Two of the members of our team are directors of theater programs, too, and I think that has an influence. Signy, who’s not here, but is one of the co-founders of the team, is very vivacious with her face, with her body gestures, with how she interacts with people. It’s got a theatrical feel to it, so when the Sirens show up, it’s got a zing to it.
Seniz: That’s a vibe, for sure.
Suzy: And I also think, you know, some of the most fun I’ve had in a pool has just been something free, intergenerational, and you get a DJ in a pool.
Clara: You’re so right about that. It reminds me of going to water aerobics classes with my mom. She goes every day, so me and my sisters will go with her whenever we’re back in Omaha. And there’s just something about it. You just can’t not be smiling and joking around, and laughing. Like, it really brings me back to a feeling of being 10 years old and goofing off together. It’s fun to do that with other people in your adulthood, to witness each other in that joy at, like, 6 AM, you know?
Seniz: It’s so true. I’m a youth worker by trade, and I think the reason I love being around kids and watching them play is that it’s just, like, humanness in the purest form, and we lose that sense of play as we get older, and we actually have to work toward that play over and over again. And I do feel like water is a really fast train to feeling young again. Like being in the water is a sensory thing, right? Just poof, it brings you right back to that feeling of being a kid and freedom.
Sharon: I think too that, you know, it’s a process to accept your body in this world as anybody. It’s a process to accept yourself, and water provides a little cover for that. So, I often hear in the water aerobics class that I go to, which has you know, music, intergenerational, and swimming, that people are comfortable because you can modify your style of exercise, and people don’t even know it, because it’s covered by the water. So, everybody’s still getting exercise, the water provides for everyone. You don’t have to be in a gym with everybody looking at you. You know?
Clara: Speaking of the water providing for everyone, I’m curious if you could talk a bit about the public events y’all host for folks to get to try out these synchro techniques and skills. How do you make it accessible to a public audience?
Suzy: For Learn to Synchro we all start in the shallow end with the real basics, like just floating. And then we teach how to skull moving backwards, and then skull moving with your feet first, and then there’s a few really fun things that are easy. We always do a splash mob, that is like a flash mob, but it’s in the shallow end, so people are standing there to dance. The splash mobs are so darn fun. What were they like for you two?
Seniz: I felt really trusting that these people know what they’re doing. I mean, we all know this, all four of us here right now, what it’s like being in a pool with other people, and doing a thing together. It’s like we’re sharing an environment in a way that we normally wouldn’t. It’s like we’re being held all together in this thing, and we’re changing it and moving it, and it’s not something that we get to do often, and I think that’s what’s really special about it. It’s like, we can be artists, we can be swimmers, but creating a thing together in water just has a different vibration. You know? So I think what’s really cool about those big events is inviting people into our vibrations.
Sharon: I would also add that we always do an introduction of ourselves about how the team is connected to human rights and justice and body positivity. So that’s a big part of our events, too, and there’s a real sense of pumping up the audience to feel comfortable, to be excited, to feel good in their bodies, to feel good in their bathing suits, and to have a really good time. And then we have a good sound system, and underwater speakers that are really exciting and fun for everybody. So, that’s another component that really adds a lot of liveliness to it.
Seniz: Oh, I also think the detail of providing nose plugs and goggles for those who need them, and noodles for people, and swim caps even is important too.
Suzy: And that is really important, because there are so many people in our community that haven’t had access to pools. If they do have access to pools, they have been policed at pools, they have been harassed at pools, they don’t feel comfortable at them, you know what I mean? Like, there are a lot of people in our community that need the extra welcome, to feel even comfortable enough to walk in the door, right? Like, we are at the door welcoming people. Because this site, which is so joyful and playful and amazing for me, has been a place of oppression for other people. And Minnesota has the highest percentage of drownings for kids of color in the country.
Sharon: We practice at the Philips Aquatic Center Pool, and that pool took many years and much work to open, just for the reason that Susie was talking about. I’d like to add that the Splash Mob events also invite people of all ages who are interested in synchronized swimming, which is how I got to know about the team. I was 40-something when I heard about… well, let’s be honest, I guess I was 50-something. And I had asked lifeguards and people all over, and looked online and tried to find something, but the teams for synchronized swimming were mostly young white girls, and I couldn’t find any team that I could really fit in on. But, I found out about the Sirens through a lifeguard at another pool where elder synchronized swimmers swim, and I got to participate in a splash mob that way. It was hard to find a synchronized swim team to practice with. We are it.
Suzy: And I think, Sharon, what you said earlier about our connection to social justice and human rights is that we are much more a liberation collective than a synchronized swimming team. Like, we don’t have open auditions every year. If people are interested, we go out for coffee with them, we talk to them about their life, and then we invite them to do Saturday swims with us, and just swim with us for a while, and see if it’s a fit. Because we really are rooted in using Synchro as a communal care for activists, but also as a liberation practice. And you could be the best, most amazing, artistic swimmer, but if you’re not rooted in liberation practices, then this isn’t the formation, right?
Clara: Yeah, it seems like your values really lead. I’m curious what surprised you guys the most about being a part of this team?
Seniz: I mean, honestly, it’s the skill and athleticism required to do this kind of swimming.
Suzy: Yeah, I think one of the things that has surprised me the most is the level of communication that occurs in water, that water radiates the communication back and forth between people. You know, when you are upside down and trying to count and do all of these moves and hold your breath and keep yourself up. Keep your periphery vision open to everyone, and where you are in a form, and keep a form. It really, for me, has made me a better person in movement work because I am practicing liberation in the water, in a method in which you can’t leave anyone behind. Right? Because you’re trying to synchronize, and you are practicing being uncomfortable.
As a white activist in the Movement for Liberation, everything is built for my comfort, and being uncomfortable in the water has really helped me. My duet partner, Signe Harriday, is just a stronger swimmer than me. Like, I didn’t grow up in a town large enough to have a swim team. I didn’t compete in swimming. And so there have been duets in the past where it has taken me 3 months to learn a move that she can do. And so, it’s like, I’m gonna stick with this, I can try and stretch, I can try and grow, I can try and see if I can get this, and then if I can’t, I know that she’ll adjust. It’s hard to explain, but the communication that happens in the water is making me a better human being outside of the water.
Seniz: For sure. I feel like what you said—we can’t leave each other behind—it’s that piece of being in tight formation, trying to keep up with who we can see, and also allowing the next person to keep up with us. And I do feel like for me, and I’m not successful at this 90% of the time, but it’s a practice of continually opening that awareness and that way of remembering with all of the variables happening, which is life, right? All of the variables happening, and I’m checking in, I’m checking in, I’m checking in all around me.
Clara: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that way of de-centering the self allows you to sort of be in relationship with each other in a different way. Being a part of a whole, moving together, making little adjustments as you go along, it can be such a transformative experience. I feel that in the classroom often too, that way of being responsive and getting to be a part of something larger together.
Seniz: Something that is worth mentioning, too, is that our bodies are so different from each other’s, and we all have different ways of moving in the water, so it’s a very physical manifestation of coming from different places, you know? And so being aware of each other’s bodies and movement, and we’re all different heights, we’re all different sizes, so we truly are all moving as one. We all have to do totally different placements for different skills to achieve the same effect, and so there’s a lot happening underwater that might be different from each other that creates an effect outside of the water that is similar.
Clara: Yeah, that’s a really powerful metaphor, I think.
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The Subversive Sirens members are Tana Hargest, Signe Harriday, Zoe Holloman, Sharon Mandel, Suzy Messerole, Roxanne Prichard, Seniz Yargici, and their coach Ana Mendoza Packham.
Suzy Messerole (she/her) is a theater artist, activist & lover of water. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Exposed Brick Theatre whose mission is to tell untold stories, center omitted narratives & create art at the intersection of identities. In theater, she works as a director, particularly for new plays, as well as an Intimacy Director. She is also a lead organizer with the Million Artist Movement, a global vision and movement that believes in the role of ART in the campaign to dismantle oppressive racist systems. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her wife & daughter.
Seniz Yargici (she/her) is a youth advocate, artist, and play-centered experience creator whose work is rooted in creativity, connection, and community. She’s a parent, a lover, and a cancer-surviving one-tit wonder. Şeniz is the founder of OYNA: Family Wellness through Play (oynatoday.com) and is currently an Experience Developer at the Minnesota Children’s Museum (MCM.org). Şeniz performs long-form narrative improv, loves to play guitar and sing, is deep into an epic D&D campaign with her junior high pals, and cherishes time with her two hilarious teenagers, magnetic partner, and extended family.
Sharon Mandel (she/her) is the newest member of the Subversive Sirens. She was adopted and grew up in the Twin Cities. She’s an educator, union organizer, tuba player, single mom, survivor of severe abuse, cancer survivor, and advocate for the homeless and all oppressed.
Clara Harlow (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator interested in the question of how we can make today different than yesterday. Her work operates as an invitation into themes of celebration, exchange, and alternative ways of measuring time and value. Through unconventional parties, workshops, and interactive objects, Clara is invested in how we can turn the dilemmas of the everyday into an opportunity for experimental problem solving and collective delight. Her practice aims to create responsive public containers for unexpected joy and connection, but if she can just get you to forget about your To Do list for a little while, that’s pretty good too.
A Bounce House at the Block Party
“I’m a person who believes that making the world a better place isn’t just going to happen magically, that it takes work and effort and everyone working together to make it happen. I sometimes struggle with wondering, what is my part in that? And what can I do beyond what I’m already doing?”
With larger-scale problems feeling so hard to chip away at, the importance of knowing your neighbors comes back to me again and again. When I did anti-surveillance work in New Orleans before I moved to Portland, a lot of the older folks we would speak to about safety and surveillance would say, “We didn’t used to need cameras, but now I need a camera to feel safe, ’cause no one hangs out on their porches anymore, and we don’t know each other.” We can start to organize ourselves right where we are to make a safer, more sustainable way of life, and perhaps those small actions can give a new sense of hope. That’s why I wanted to interview my neighbor Devin Harkness, a school counselor who lives two houses down from me and often acts as a bit of a neighborhood glue. It turns out Devin’s a big believer in hope and conversations, too.
Lou: What makes you interested in conversations with people who might be different than you?
Devin: It feels like that’s the way to understanding. I feel like there’s no number of things that can happen online that will increase understanding. And that the only way for real understanding to happen is just people sitting down, face to face, talking to each other and seeing each other as human beings. There’s a dehumanization that has happened, and our salvation lies in rehumanizing everyone.
Lou: Cause you do that in your work, especially when there’s a conflict or disagreement. That’s the only way to approach it that would be effective, right?
Devin: Every day. Every day. I’m a school counselor, and I work with kids all day. Part of what I try to do is give them tools to make the world a better place and to connect with other people. A big thing I try to do is help them figure out positive ways to resolve conflicts. ‘Cause a lot of the problems we’re having right now in the world are unhealthy ways of resolving conflicts. I try to give the students the experience of sitting down with a person face to face and working things out, whatever that is, whatever that takes. Even big conflicts, like if somebody has hurt somebody physically.
Lou: What is it like to do that work?
Devin: My favorite thing is to take kids that have a conflict, sit down with them and try to help figure out what creative way of resolving the conflict we can come up with. Sometimes it’s just talking. Other times, it’s some combination of talking and doing something that actually bonds us together and reminds us that we enjoy hanging out together, like playing a game. And when they come up with something different, it’s better than anything that I could have thought of.
Lou: How did you get into school counseling? How’d you know you wanted to do that?
Devin: My dear friend Rafe, with whom I had been very close friends for a long time–we had worked together in two different jobs. He left the job where we were working together, an international student exchange program, and he went back to school to get his school counseling degree. And I was like, “That’s awesome. This sounds like so much fun. I’m going to do that too.”
Lou: It’s good to have someone to follow sometimes.
Devin: Yeah, he has kind of been my role model in many different areas of my life. He also purchased a house, and I was like, “Ooh, I can purchase a house too, I think, because you just did that.” That’s why I bought this house, because of him basically. He inspired me to do that.
Lou: Do you guys still hang out?
Devin: Oh yeah, he’s family. We met in the summer of ‘98 cause we both got hired at this day-camp in Seattle. And he was the first trans person I ever knew, and he introduced me to that world. I was definitely not identifying as straight at the time that I met him.
Lou: Seattle in the nineties. How could you be straight?
Devin: I know! But he introduced me to this queer world that I hadn’t experienced before. And I was just like, “Oh my God, I feel at home.” I’d never felt that level of acceptance before. Not that I didn’t feel acceptance, but people saw me in a whole new way that I hadn’t ever been seen in before. Nobody assumed I was straight, which was just the best feeling. I don’t even know why that feeling is so good, but it’s so good.
Lou: It’s something about being seen, right? It feels good to be seen for all your human complexity. And all the different things that make you.
Devin: There’s nothing like that. It’s a euphoric feeling.
Lou: Absolutely. It’s funny thinking about neighbor stuff. I feel like, especially nowadays, a lot of the queer and trans people that I talk to sometimes are like, “I don’t wanna talk to my neighbors ’cause what if they’re transphobic or homophobic?” And I’m like, totally, that is a risk, and it’s important to think of in the context of all your other privileges and identities, but to take that risk feels important. ‘Cause more often than not, people are accepting when you’re right in front of them.
Devin: I think so, too. I have to believe that. And you might be the first trans person they’ve ever met or talked to. Knowingly. And you might be that person who makes them go, “Maybe if my neighbor’s that cool, trans people aren’t all bad!” I don’t know.
To me, it all starts with just one person sometimes. Maybe you have a person in your family, and because of that, you learn more about their identity or politics, and you’re a little bit more open to these ideas. I have to believe that people want to connect with other people, and that’s the way forward, these single connections.
Lou: That’s something I think about a lot. I’m really curious about what makes people feel safe.
Devin: For me, it’s partly that I see human connection as our way to a better world. And also because I’m just super curious about people. Ever since I was really young, I’ve always loved just talking to people and figuring out what makes them tick and what they care about, and what their stories are like.
It started when we lived in China for a year when I was ten years old. We lived on a university campus in a dorm, and I would just go out and wander around our campus without my parents or anything like that. I’d meet security guards or people building a brick wall, and just talk to them and try to learn about them, and have conversations with people.
Then, when I was a little older, like my late teens, I started carrying around a tape recorder. And I would just interview people and talk to people. And I carried it on my travels and backpacked through Central America and interviewed people from all over the place and just talked to them. Just asked them questions and heard their stories.
So I have these archives of interviews that I’ve done with people from all over the world and all different sorts of places that I’ve never quite figured out what to do with. I want to create some kind of podcast, an interview podcast. There are all these people that I want to interview. I just can’t quite figure out what the crossover point is for all of them. Or what the focus is.
Lou: But could your curiosities be the focus, and could that be enough? I think it’s enough. Maybe it’s because that’s what I’m doing. Laughs. What kinds of people do you want to interview?
Devin: All sorts of people. Mostly people whom I respect. Or people who have done something that I think is amazing. That could be a person who’s an amazing parent, or a person who creates something that I think is really amazing or important, or just somebody whose point of view I want to hear—someone who I want to help tell their story.
I want to go around our neighborhood and interview all the people who have been here for a long time in the neighborhood, especially the families of color, the black families who are still here who have not moved away. There were so many black families on our block here in Northeast Portland when I first moved in. And now they’re all gone. Mostly—they’re almost all gone.
Lou: Gentrification and redlining are such a part of this area of Portland’s history, right?
Devin: I want to find a way to preserve that information. ‘Cause so many of these families are moving away, and then there’s just no way to get that information anymore. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Lou: What do you imagine you might find or discover?
Devin: No idea. I want to know, though—just the history of this place. I want to know more about it.
Lou: What do you know about this block or this neighborhood?
Devin: Not much other than just my own experience. Cause I moved into that house in 2003.
I know that the person who lived there before me was a woman who was, I think, in her seventies maybe, a white woman, who I think had a black husband who died. And she had a couple of kids, or at least one daughter, and then the grandkids lived with her because the daughter was either incarcerated or she was MIA. The kids were maybe three or five. That age. They were very young kids.
When they moved out, there was a lot of stuff left behind, including this stack of letters that had been written from the father of the children, who was in prison, to the daughter. And it just tells a story, a very common story, of families being torn apart by incarceration and the impact of that trickling down. It shows the impact that the incarceration system might have on kids–the cycles of oppression, violence, and all that stuff.
Lou: Do you still have the letters?
Devin: Yeah. I have a whole box of stuff. Artifacts that I collected from the house.
Lou: Is there anyone else on the block who you feel like you know?
Devin: I know a lot of the neighbors really well.
Lou: How’d you do that?
Devin: Just being here for a long time.
Lou: If there was one thing you could do to make the neighborhood better, what would it be?
Devin: I think getting people together, giving people opportunities to be together, spend time together, and to get to know each other. That’s the best thing I think. It takes time and it takes effort, and you have to create opportunities for people to get to know each other.
Lou: Can I ask you a deep question?
Devin: Of course.
Lou: What is your orientation towards hope right now? Do you have hope for the future, or do you struggle with that?
Devin: Definitely. I find myself constantly having to pull back into the present moment, whatever that happens to be, and just try to live there as much as possible. I’m also a person who believes that making the world a better place isn’t just going to happen magically, that it takes work and effort, and everyone working together to make it happen. I sometimes struggle with, what is my part in that? And what can I do beyond what I’m already doing?
I feel like my chosen career path is part of my hope for the future.
I have hope that we can make the world better. And I have hope that we can make things better in our country. I know everything that’s happening right now is destroying a lot of things that have taken a lot of time to build. I think that I can’t give up on the idea that things can be rebuilt and regrown and that there will be a rebound.
And because we are in this two-party system, we’re stuck here, and I don’t know what to do to get us out of that. I don’t hold that much hope that it is going to change in my lifetime.
I see a lot of kids doing really cool things, and especially queer kids. And I want them to have hope. A lot of the kids I work with are very insulated from a lot of the horrible things that are happening.
Lou: Yeah. But you get to see what’s possible when they have resources and support, or as much as they can.
Devin: My school in terms of our support for queer students, it could not really be much better. There’s always more you can do, but our queer kids feel as comfortable as I think kids are likely to feel in school. So many kids are out, and people don’t seem to be afraid to say, “I’m non-binary,” “I’m trans,” or “I’m gay,” or whatever.
There’s lots of kids still figuring it out. We had a big queer party at the end of this school year which was created by the students and my intern, who is a non-binary trans person. And they had what they called an L-G-B-B-Q at the end of the school year, the kids just latched onto this idea, I dunno who came up with it. It was just this big beautiful queer party. That was really special.
Lou: I feel like it helps a lot, being present and being with kids. I’m looking for ways to feel a little more hopeful. I feel hopeful on a small scale, like my relationships with people and the garden and things changing, the seasons continuing—but definitely less of it on a large scale.
Devin: What happens four years from now? I know that the next four years will just mean one thing after another that goes beyond my ability to predict or even sometimes comprehend of how awful and bad it is.
But after that, where is our hope?
Lou: That’s why I think it’s great that even after working in an intense job that you’re still interested in investing into the neighborhood and building a closer community. Cause those are the people that are going to have your back if something happens, like a disaster or something. But it does take effort, right? And it does take work. But I commend you for making that effort. We’ve got to celebrate each other, too, right?
Devin: I feel like part of why I want to get to know my neighbors is because—it sounds weird—but I’m a little bit lazy sometimes, and I want my friends to be like right here. I don’t want to have to go far away.
Lou: That’s a great reason. I’m psyched about the block party. I’m about to leave town for a few weeks, but then I’ll be back. Let me know if I can help.
Devin: So you’ll be here for the block party!
Lou: I wish I had a slip and slide. That could be fun.
Devin: Oh, we’ll get a bounce house like last year. That was pretty epic. Our 5-year-old would be very sad if we didn’t. And even the adults…
Lou: Yeah. When do you get to go in a bounce house as an adult?
Devin: At our block party!
Lou Blumberg is an artist, facilitator, and educator with ties to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Portland. With a belief that a better world is possible, their deeply personal practice deals with conflict and its impact on our relationships and lives; surveillance and safety; and joy in despairing times. They are part of the MFA Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University and a co-organizer of Techies 4 Reproductive Justice.
Devin Harkness is a school counselor dedicated to uplifting student voices, with a particular focus on supporting queer youth, students of color, and neurodiverse students. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his role models: his radical partner and children.
Spirit as a Portal: Death, Ghosts, and Hauntings as a Door to Other Realms of Possibility
Nina Vichayapai with Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander
“When you think about family and your place in the world, you also think about death and dying… My thought was that if visitors meditated on the finitude of their own existence, it would lead to living a more meaningful life.”
When I recently visited the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle to see Spirit House, the timing could not have been better. I had just returned from a trip back to my birth country of Thailand. While there I had begun to feel as though I were being haunted. The feeling took hold in sudden moments. Moments like when Thai words I thought I had lost came together on my tongue with ease. Or when I immediately and accurately identified smells I hadn’t encountered for several years. As bizarre as it sounds, I felt as though I were somehow being haunted by a “more Thai” version of myself.
The sudden lapse in my usual spiritual ambivalence primed me well to find resonance with the themes of Spirit House. Within the company of the exhibition’s 33 artists of Asian descent exploring the boundary between life and death, I found the language to describe the haunting I had been experiencing.
Curated by Dr. Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Spirit House was initially exhibited at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford in 2024. The show’s themes are deeply personal to Aleesa’s own background in which a significant part of her youth was spent living in Thailand. There, the separation between the living and the dead are blurry. Aleesa was inspired by this casual acceptance of ghosts as entities to coexist with and respect. Aleesa’s curation explores the importance of hauntings in all their forms ranging from the ordinary to the monumental. War, migration, political revolution, break ups, loss of language, and moving homes, represents just a selection of subjects that the Spirit House artists reanimate as ghosts in need of tending to through their work.
Nina: I just want to start off by saying that I really relate to a lot of your background experiences that you shared in the Spirit House catalog. I was also born in Thailand and have also struggled with sleep paralysis. You say that you’ve always had these experiences with hauntings in your life that have influenced you. I’m curious if you could talk about what some of those early experiences were?
Aleesa: The concept of the show being called Spirit House is directly tied to my earliest memories of engaging with Thai spirit houses when I was a child. Having been born there and spending a lot of my early life there, my family would go back and forth between British Columbia and Bangkok. I thought of spirit houses as magical portals that invite you to consider other realms, people who have passed on, and the spirits that live in the space around you. So for me, it was a very natural part of everyday life. My family would tell ghost stories, and it was not something that people scoffed at. The supernatural or the otherworldly was just a part of everyday life. When I moved here to the States, I found that the Western-centric point of view does not take those world views very seriously.
Nina: That’s interesting because I did initially go into Spirit House feeling like I wouldn’t resonate with the show’s themes so much since I don’t consider myself to be very spiritual. But when I was there it really made me think a lot about how this version of spirit that was being explored could relate to my immigration experience. It felt like you were presenting this expansive version of spirit. I’m curious if that was an intentional choice?
Aleesa: Oh yeah. I mean, I wanted it to be a very expansive interpretation of what we could describe as the spiritual realm. I think everybody has a different relationship to some version of spirituality. The degree varies with each person. But the show really came from many conversations I had with artists about their thoughts on intergenerational inheritance, trauma, joy, and collective memory. Then there’s the sadness, the gaps, and the narrative loss that come with migration. And for some of them, being second-generation and not knowing their mother tongue.
It all comes together in this bittersweet way. All those things haunt a lot of people in ways both agood and bad, and also just relatively neutral. So I wanted to think about it in terms of the things that people bring with them when they migrate, the memories attached to those things, the new ones they create, and how they make sense of finding themselves and their families in a new environment home. When you think about family and your place in the world, you also think about death and dying. Spirit House was also informed by a somewhat Buddhist perspective. When I was living in Thailand from eight to 11, Buddhist culture was a very big part of our lives. My thought was that if visitors meditated on the finitude of their own existence, it would lead to living a more meaningful life. Which is a pretty straightforward form of Buddhist philosophy focused on mindfulness. But also, depending on who you talk to here, many people prefer not to have direct conversations about life, death, or passing on.
Nina: That is really powerful. I feel like it’s just so different from the way we think about spirituality in the West and under a Christian colonial context. In the show there’s such an openness and curiosity to the different versions of spiritual relationships that are out there. But it was interesting for me to read that some of the artists don’t believe in ghosts. And many of them are coming from different backgrounds that are informing their approach to the theme. What was the process like in working with the artists? Was choosing the work for the show a collaborative process at all?
Aleesa: Yes. I was able to speak to almost every artist in the show, with the exception of Do Ho Suh and the late Dinh Q. LeWith everyone else, I have some kind of nice relationship with them and had been doing studio visits for many years in preparation for the show.
Some artists’ work really informed the conceptualization of the project. Like the photographer Jarod Lew and his body of work about his mother from his series In Between You and Your Shadow, which is about his mother’s relationship to Vincent Chin [a Chinese American man who was murdered by two white autoworkers]. It’s such a powerful series and really encapsulates a lot of what I was trying to explore with the project
I’ve also been slowly collecting towards the show. About a third of the works in the show are from the Cantor’s collection. I had acquired them thinking that eventually those pieces would be in this show. In other cases, I would do a studio visit with an artist, and after I had done enough to really feel like I wanted to build a checklist, I would go back to some of them to say, “I would love for you to be in the show.”
We would then have a conversation, and they might have another work that they thought was a better fit.. In certain cases, some of the artists made new works for the show. Heesoo Kwon made the only commission in the show. But she’s based in the Bay Area, so I knew that it would be easy to collaborate with her on that. Stephanie H. Shih, Cathy Lu, and Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, all made new works because they felt inspired by the theme. I was really flattered by that. Having new works created by artists who felt compelled to make them truly enriched the show.
I always endeavor to be as collaborative as I can, especially with living artists. I just think that it makes for a more meaningful and interesting project for everybody.
Nina: What has it been like for you to see the show travel from the Cantor to the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle?
Aleesa: It’s nice to be reminded that it’s still having an impact out there in the world. It initially opened over a year ago at the Cantor. I’m looking forward to going back and seeing it again in October, and to celebrating with artists, many of whom have become very close friends and important people in my life. I put every last bit of myself into that project. But what I got out of it was even more than that. I’m really pleased to hear from visitors of the Henry exhibition, including yourself, who have reached out about the show. It’s great to know visitors are having meaningful encounters there and learning about artists who will eventually become important to them.
Nina: That’s amazing. Well I’ve certainly been very moved by the work I saw and it was incredible to learn about so many artists who are new to me. I’d love to know if there’s ways you like to learn about or keep up to date with contemporary Asian artists?
Aleesa: Well at this stage in my career, I’m lucky enough, depending on how you look at it, that I receive constant emails from different galleries, artists, colleagues, and arts organizations. People know what Marci and I are doing, so they send things our way to check out. Or a gallery will reach out and ask if I will do a studio visit with an artist. I also look at biennials too, like Prospect New Orleans or the Whitney Biennial. Of course, that means I’m being sent artists at a particular stage in their career. And I don’t want to be institutional or hierarchical in that way. So, I also look at social media, like Instagram, to see who ends up just coming through on my feed.
I also do a lot of studio visits. I’ve done so many in L.A., the Bay Area, New York, and virtually. I love doing studio visits in new places I visit as well.
Nina: And could you tell me more about the Asian American Art Initiative that you organize as well?
Aleesa: The Asian American Art Initiative is the project that I co-direct at Stanford. It was co-founded by me and art history professor Marci Kwon. I started at the Cantor in 2018, and we’ve been doing it since then. We’re focused on building a preeminent collection of work by Asian American artists, among other things. I collect work that ranges from historical to contemporary. We also enjoy supporting emerging or early-career artists when possible, especially when we’re potentially the first museum to acquire their work. That can make a significant difference in their future. When I started at the Cantor, we had like 30-something objects by Asian American artists out of our collection of 41,000. And now we have something like 800 or more.
We’ve done more than ten shows related to the initiative here at the Cantor. Marci teaches courses out of my exhibitions as well.
Nina: That sounds like such an undertaking to sort of have to go back into history and sort of fill the gaps.
Aleesa: It’s fun. I like being able to do both. I like not being confined to either historical or contemporary work.
Nina: That does sound fun. I’m curious if you could talk about your time in the Pacific Northwest and what that was like for you? It was cool to learn that you had studied at Willamette University and spent a lot of time here.
Aleesa: I lived in Oregon from when I was around 12 years old to when I was 24, which is when I left for graduate school. I lived in Salem for all those years and went to Willamette University. I mean, you know, everything in life has its high points and low points. The best part of going to Willamette was that even though it’s a small liberal arts college, it has its own university art museum. So I got my first museum job working there. That is when I realized that working in museums was what I wanted to do. And specifically at a university art museum. So that’s really where I got my start.
I have great relationships with the people who are still in Salem, and I had one very beloved art history professor whom I kept in touch with until he passed away a couple of years ago. He’s one of the people I dedicated the Spirit House catalog to.
Since Oregon is predominantly white and was my first real home in the United States, I assumed the entire country was similar to Oregon. I wasn’t aware that things could be different. It was very common for me to be the only Asian American/person of color in a room. And since I’m mixed race, it’s complicated in a different way, as I am not always perceived as a person of color. That’s a separate conversation.. But I didn’t learn about any Asian American artists at Willamette. I didn’t even think to really look for it. Maybe that’s my own lack of imagination, but I think if you never see something, you don’t even think to look for it.
It wasn’t until I left that I realized that it could be different. There are places in the United States that are more diverse. I did an internship at the Art Institute of Chicago after I graduated, and it was amazing to finally be in a big city. During the last year of my PhD program, I lived in New York City. It was such a relief to finally feel like I had fulfilled that high school dream of living in such a vibrant art scene, where so many things are happening and there’s much more diversity. That was so revitalizing for me.
Living here in the Bay Area, of the things I love most about it is that it feels extremely Asian American. It’s just a part of life. It’s the food that everybody eats. Asian Americans have been here for a very long time. San Francisco was one of the most important historic ports and has the oldest Chinatown in North America. Many of my colleagues are Asian American. So we have Asian American curators, people who work in galleries, and people who work in the arts. I’m not the only one, and I love that so much. It’s part of the reason why I do the work that I do here. So it’s wildly different than when I was in Oregon. That really changed me, knowing that it could be different. But it did take leaving.
Nina: Thanks for sharing that. That’s all very relatable to me. I also had no idea it could be different until I left the Pacific Northwest for the Bay Area when I went to college. The experience of being in non-predominantly white spaces was so somatically different then what I was used to.
I’m curious about what you just shared about how working at the museum at Willamette University led you to want to work in more university museums. What is it about university museums that you like over other kinds of museums or art spaces?
Aleesa: Well, being able to support myself by working in an art museum while I was in college had a profound impact on my life. I love working with students because many don’t even understand that museums are an option in the world if you’re interested in art.
As far as the type of work I do, I feel like university art museums are allowed to do more experimental projects. Projects that have a more distinct point of view and are more critical of American or institutional history. All of the things that this current administration is trying to suppress.
The Cantor, for example, doesn’t charge admission. And that impacts the work that you do as a curator. Because at many other museums they’re concerned with revenue and ticket sales. You have to make sure the projects you do bring in droves of people. I, of course, want people to see my shows, but I think what’s more important is the impact an exhibition can have on specific individuals. And that can’t always be reflected in the number of people who come and visit the show. We make art accessible and take chances that other larger museums might have a harder time doing.
Nina: I definitely love that university museums are free. It provides so much access for people.
Aleesa: I want people to be able to just come to the Cantor even if it’s just for a few minutes. Take a break, chill, and look at something, without the commitment of spending $35 to enter a museum and feeling like you really have to stay and get everything out of it. $35 is a big entry fee. And you’re going to want to feel like you really got everything out of your visit that you could. So it kind of forces you to have a particular way of engaging with art. And I want people to have many different ways and approaches to engaging with art.
Nina: Definitely. The art museum kind of becomes a theme park at that point where you feel like you really need to get the most out of it.
Well I really just have one question left for you. Do you have a favorite ghost or ghost story?
Aleesa: Oh yeah, I was very traumatized as a child by a story of a particular ghost in many Southeast Asian cultures. Her name in Thai is Phi Krasue. The ghost is basically the floating head of a woman attached only to her viscera. She floats around and I believe she eats livestock, rotten food, whatever she can find. She would be in Thai soap operas that I would watch growing up and was the scariest thing that I could fathom. I was very afraid of horror films and ghosts growing up. Now, I love horror films. I think horror as a genre can be such a great form of subversive critique or an expression of culture.
So, I grew up being afraid of something–scary movies–that ended up becoming something that I really love as an adult. I think that’s a good way of moving through the world with the things that we are afraid of. There’s a reason for it. If you figure it out and you confront it, then maybe there’s something there for you.
Nina: Yeah, I love that. That’s a really great way to look at it. The second you started talking about Krasue I could just see it in my mind. So many movies with her. I feel like there is just something about the ghosts in Thai and Asian cultures in general. Like, they’re so scary!
Aleesa: Truly! There’s just something amazing about that, too. That they’re willing to go there. I’m also interested in horror that doesn’t rely on Christian theology and philosophy. I want different source points beyond that. So that’s also why I love Asian horror.
Nina: Yeah, it’s definitely cathartic for the culture it seems. They are willing to go there for sure. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate being able to chat with you.
Dr. Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander (she/her/hers) is the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Co-Director of the Asian American Art Initiative at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. At the Cantor, she is the curator of Spirit House (2024), Livien Yin: Thirsty (2024), East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art (2022), and The Faces of Ruth Asawa (2022 – ongoing).
https://www.instagram.com/aleesapalexander
Nina Vichayapai (she/her) makes art that explores what it means to be at the intersections of margins and peripheries. Her interdisciplinary practice includes anything from soft sculpture, public art, pie making, dog petting, and eavesdropping. She was born in Bangkok, Thailand and lives in Portland, Oregon.