Artist Karen McLean: Materials as Metaphors for Resilience and Resistance
Oriana Fox interviews artist Karen Karen McLean about her recent body of work and its poignant and unexpected resonances with current events. They discuss McLean's unique approach to materials as metaphors for the topics she addresses including displacement, migration, resistance and resilience. Also discussed are the emotions involved in making work utilising materials symbolic of and honouring the agency of enslaved women in the Caribbean; as well as other subjects including poverty, gang violence and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Oriana Fox is a London-based, New York-born artist with a PhD in self-disclosure. She puts her expertise to work as the host of the talk show performance piece The O Show.
Karen McLean's work researches and interrogates the legacies of colonialism. She explores her experiences of growing up in post-independence Trinidad in the 1960s - a time of significant social change that saw the dismantling of old colonial structures and the removal of barriers for Black and mixed-race people like her. Her practice includes sound, moving image and installations that incorporate a wide variety of evocative and symbolic materials such as sugar, blue soap, wood, beading, wallpaper and hessian bags.
The works discussed in this podcast were shown in the exhibition Blue Power/ Arn’t I a Woman! at Block 336 Gallery in Brixton 20th May to 12th June 2021. "Arn't I a Woman!" was subsequently shown at New Art Gallery Walsall.
Credits:
Produced, edited and hosted by Oriana Fox
Introductory Voiceover by John Kilduff, aka Mr. Let's Paint
Original theme song written and performed by Paulette Humanbeing
Special Thanks to Jane Hayes-Greenwood, Tom Estes, Sven Van Damme, Katie Beeson, Janak Patel and Mimosa House Gallery, London
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