The NewCrits Podcast
The NewCrits Podcast is a show about critical care for the arts, featuring meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. It includes two recurring series: SPENT with Ajay Kurian, which explores creative burnout and breakthrough, and The Forum, which presents recorded artist talks. Episodes are released on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. Listeners can subscribe via Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, and also watch on YouTube.
Episodes
SPENT Episode Seven | Stephanie Wambugu
Ajay Kurian sits down with writer Stephanie Wambugu, whose debut novel Lonely Crowds arrived last year to considerable acclaim, for a conversation that begins with the anxiety of ambition and opens into questions of friendship, artistic survival, and what it costs to keep working in a world where someone else's book lands on the shelf every Tuesday.Wambugu, the youngest child of Kenyan immigrants,
The/Forum 25 | Alex Da Corte
Ajay Kurian sits down with artist Alex Da Corte, whose recreations, personas and total immersion into figures from Marcel Duchamp to Eminem have made him one of the most distinct and prolific voices working today. So much so that he has been tasked with co-curating the Whitney Museum’s survey on Roy Lichtenstein with Meg Olni, opening on October 11th, 2026.The conversation begins with the sandwich
SPENT Episode Six | Vijay Masharani
Ajay Kurian sits down with artist Vijay Masharani for a conversation that begins with a confession about hating the highway and expands into an exploration of cliché, mortality, and what it means to keep making work from inside an unresolved illness.Masharani, who showed in this year's MoMA PS1 Greater New York, talks about his approach to video and drawing — work that hits hard and fast, straight
The/Forum 24 | Ed Solomon
Screenwriter Ed Solomon discusses The Christophers and reflects on his career and creative process. Solomon discusses mentorship, writing intuitively, working with actors, navigating criticism, and finding a way through creative blocks.Hosted by Ajay Kurian00:00 — Welcome to The Forum00:18 — Garry Shandling02:34 — Writing The Christophers04:05 — Trusting the writing process06:37 — When success get
The/Forum 23 | Inside The Studio Panel
Three artists reflect on their experiences working as assistants to established artists. Ian Cheng, Darren Bader, and Jamian Juliano-Villani discuss apprenticeship, authorship, studio culture, and the lessons—both practical and personal—they carried into their own practices.00:00 — Introduction02:36 — Becoming Assistants04:10 — The Studio as Education07:37 — Learning the Craft09:13 — Building the
SPENT: Episode Five | Marc Spiegler
For nearly a decade, Marc Spiegler served as the Global Director of Art Basel, helping shape one of the world’s most influential institutions in contemporary art. Earlier this year, his New York Times opinion piece on the challenges facing commercial galleries sparked widespread conversation about the future of the art market and the pressures confronting artists, dealers, and collectors alike.In
The/Forum 22 | Baseera Khan
Baseera Khan joins Ajay Kurian for a conversation that begins with a Garfield drawing contest and expands into an exploration of storytelling, identity, and the politics of material.Khan reflects on finding her artistic voice through tracing comics, navigating graduate school as a search for self rather than an entry into the art world, and developing works that blend performance, sculpture, paint
SPENT Episode Four | Erin Jane Nelson
Erin Jane Nelson joins Ajay Kurian to talk about the gap between artistic success and creative fulfillment. They discuss the reality of making a living as an artist, navigating burnout, and why reaching long-awaited career milestones can leave you questioning what comes next.The conversation explores Nelson's evolving practice—from clay pinhole cameras and photography to spirituality, caregiving,
The/Forum 21 | Lucas Blalock
Lucas Blalock’s photographs often look like they’re interrupting themselves.Objects bend out of place. Edits remain visible. Corrections become part of the image instead of disappearing behind it. Rather than using photography to create the illusion of clarity, Lucas uses it to expose the decisions, accidents, and contradictions that make images possible in the first place.In this NewCrits convers
SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet
SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney MalletWhitney Mallet has spent years moving through magazines, galleries, performances, readings, and the shifting ecosystems that surround contemporary culture - not as an observer standing outside of it, but as someone committed to paying attention.In this conversation, Whitney sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about criticism, instinct, and what it means to build
SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price
SPENT: Episode Two | Walter PriceWalter Price’s paintings may present as loose, instinctive, and immediate, but behind them is a practice built on discipline, repetition, and consistency. In this conversation, Walter sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about building a life around making work and what it means to remain committed to the process. Together they discuss ambition, routine, competition,
SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey
SPENT: Episode One | Yaya BeyYaya Bey has built one of the most singular voices in contemporary music not by chasing consensus, but by trusting her own sense of practice. Across albums that move through R&B, house, soul, poetry, and memory, their work resists easy categorization - and she’s increasingly uninterested in trying to make it legible to people who insist on misunderstanding it.In this c
The/Forum 20 | Kamrooz Aram: Painting on the Edge of Ornament and Abstraction
He works through form, perception, and the politics of display — Kamrooz Aram on ornament, abstraction, and the unstable ground of how we see.Kamrooz Aram moves between painting, sculpture, and collage, using material, structure, and exhibition design to question how images are read and how histories are constructed. His work often begins in the studio, through process and formal decision-making,
The/Forum 19 | Rachel Rose: Psychic States, Motherhood, and the Moving Image
She works through feeling, perception, and narrative — Rachel Rose on interior weather, unstable perspectives, and art as a way to process what cannot be easily named.Rachel Rose moves between film, installation, and painting, using sound, light, and narrative structure to explore how experience is shaped from the inside out. Her work often begins with an emotional register and expands into system
The/Forum 18 | Reginald Sylvester II: Discipline as Devotion
Reginald Sylvester II approaches painting as a structure of discipline. What begins in daily rituals—routine, repetition, and care—extends into a larger philosophy about belief, responsibility, and endurance. Practice, for him, is not separate from life. It is shaped by it.Fatherhood, spiritual inquiry, and the demands of time become part of the architecture of the studio. Rather than protecting a
The/Forum 17 | Ebony L. Haynes: The Terms Of Autonomy
When David Zwirner approached Ebony L. Haynes, the conversation didn’t begin with vision statements or prestige. It began with reality: exhaustion, uncertainty, and the question of whether staying in the art world was even possible. What followed was recalibration. If she was going to continue, it had to be on terms that reflected how she actually works—through care, risk, and sustained presence.
The/Forum 16 | Banks Violette: Inside the Machinery of Ruin
He built a career on dark stages, scorched metal, and fragile narratives. Banks Violette looks back at the neo-goth label, the toll of self-destruction, and what it means to walk away from the art world and return on his own terms.Working between sculpture, installation, and sound, Violette treats subcultures, violence, and fandom as unstable stories rather than fixed identities. From Slayer panic
The/Forum 15 | Eric N. Mack: On Tender Assembly and the Politics of Display
He builds with fabric, scaffolding, and light — Eric N. Mack on tenderness as structure and the unseen labor that makes art visible.Eric N. Mack works between painting, installation, and fashion, reimagining how material, care, and collaboration shape contemporary image-making. His large-scale assemblages drape and lean, collapsing distinctions between surface and structure, styling and architectu
The/Forum 14 | Raúl de Nieves: Saints, Stained Glass, and the Work of Belief
He builds worlds from devotion, labor, and light. Raúl de Nieves on myth, death, and the joy of transformation.Raúl de Nieves is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance, stained glass, and music. His work merges ancestral craft with queer exuberance, creating ecstatic spaces where life, death, and rebirth coexist. Known for his intricate beaded sculptures and radiant
The/Forum 13 | Tracing Absence and the Lives We Inherit
She builds archives, conjures futures, and questions everything — Tamika Abaka-Wood on ritual, refusal, and the joy of cultural strategy. Tamika Abaka-Wood is a cultural anthropologist, conceptual strategist, and artist whose practice moves between community building, archival work, and spiritual inquiry. She’s the creator of Dial-An-Ancestor, an ongoing project that collects voice notes as offeri
The/Forum 12 | Candida Alvarez: Codes, Color, and Mapping the Invisible
She paints memory, sensation, and the space between languages. Candida Alvarez on intuition, inheritance, and color as a vessel for care.Candida Alvarez is a painter whose work explores personal and cultural memory through abstraction, vivid color, and layered visual language. She draws from Caribbean diasporic experience, family history, and city life to build complex surfaces that hold both clar
The/Forum 11 | Janiva Ellis: Contorted Worlds, Distorted Identities, and Cartoons as a Conduit
She paints distortion, vulnerability, and the psychic residue of history — Janiva Ellis on contortion as language and survival.Janiva Ellis is a painter whose work stretches emotional and political registers through fluid mark-making, surreal juxtapositions, and animated dissonance. Her paintings contort and erupt, channeling humor, grief, and ancestral hauntings. She’s exhibited widely, including
The/Forum 10 | Aaron Gilbert: Emotional Realism and the Architecture of Feeling
He paints exhaustion, desire, and the ghosts of modern life—Aaron Gilbert on how to stay human in a fractured world.Aaron Gilbert is a painter whose work bridges the mythic and the domestic, capturing moments of intimacy under the weight of spiritual, political, and economic pressure. He’s exhibited internationally and is currently represented by Gladstone Gallery. His paintings are both tender an
The/Forum 09 | Salome Asega: Culture Gardening and Counter-Futures
In this dynamic conversation, artist Salome Asega sits down with Ajay Kurian to explore the intersections of art, technology, and collective imagination. Salome shares how her upbringing in a family of engineers shaped her collaborative approach to creativity, setting aside the notion of the singular artistic genius in favor of nurturing ecosystems of innovation. From her early encounters with art
The/Forum 07 | Elaine Cameron-Weir: Blasphemy, Objects, and Politics
A BDSM dungeon for alchemist Bitcoin investors. A druid hideaway in the abandoned Palo Alto headquarters of the corporation Theranos. A crossover between Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones where Walter White cooks meth for White Walkers. These are some of the images that Elaine’s work conjures up for people. In this case, the writer and art historian Colby Chamberlain. I like to look at Elaine’s wor
The/Forum 05 | Sagarika Sundaram: Expanding Textiles as Sculpture
Sagarika Sundaram creates sculpture, relief works, and installation using raw natural fiber and dyes. Drawing on botanical imagery and material process, her work meditates on the impossibility of separating the human from the natural. Layered, tactile, and immersive, her practice moves between structure and spontaneity, craft and conceptual inquiry, Western and Eastern frameworks.In this conversat
The/Forum 04 | Steve Locke: Personal Pain Isn’t Art
I met Steve last summer at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where we were both resident faculty members. I quickly fell in love with his wit (biting), his work (also biting), and his tenderness (much less biting). In our conversation here, we cover his first experience with an artwork, his relationship to portraiture, and the origins of Modernism in the auction block.He’s unabashed
The/Forum 03 | Jamian Juliano-Villani: Artistic Autonomy and Collaboration - Stay Freaky
Jamian Juliano-Villani was born in 1987 in Newark, New Jersey, and lives and works in New York. As the daughter of commercial silkscreen printers, she spent time as a child working in her parents’ factory, folding more than four thousand Pope John Paul II T-shirts in ninety-seven-degree heat while absorbing the influence of 1990s and 2000s mass-market print design. She attended the Mason Gross Sch
The/Forum 02 | Ser Serpas: Trash, Ruined Objects, and Horror
Ser Serpas was born in 1995 in Los Angeles, California and lives and works in New York. Primarily interested in death and legacy, her work is preoccupied with its own urgency in the face of fossilization. At present, she’s taken to sequestering the mundane. Serpas’ work takes the form of unstable assemblages of found objects in which painting, sculpture, drawing, and text bring together personal m
The/Forum 01 | Elliot Jerome Brown Jr.: Identity, Racial Cliche, and the Difficult Image
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr is an artist who uses photography to explore representation through privacy and fiction. Sometimes his images work towards the mysteries a person can hold. Other times, they might explore the tension created through juxtapositions, or wisps of narrative and context, leaning further into abstraction. Altogether, his work foregrounds the possibilities and problems of photogra
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