>> All I ever wanted to do was to make sure that I become the voice for change in South Africa.

>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, at the Gardner Museum, "Portraits as Resistance" from a South African visual activist.

Then artist Jeffrey Gibson makes way for a multicolored monolith.

>> The idea of, like, reversing what's oftentimes seen on the periphery, making it, like, the central subject, to me is something that, it's honoring it, it's celebrating it.

>> BOWEN: Plus, making the rounds of two artist circles-- Cape Ann and Monhegan Island.

>> When I was there this summer, I stepped off the boat, and literally the first thing I saw was an artist at an easel.

>> BOWEN: And getting immersed in the world of Van Gogh.

>> Those last two years was when he really decided to be a painter.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, our exclusive interview with Sir Zanele Muholi.

Rather than artist, they describe themself as a visual activist.

And they have been documenting the oppressed in South Africa for decades.

But there is joy in their work, as we found in an exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Because it's Muholi's intent that people be fully seen.

This is Sir Zanele Muholi at work-- intent that people be seen and acknowledged.

In picture after picture, Muholi wants us to take in their pride, their togetherness, their very being.

>> All I ever wanted to do was to make sure that I become the voice for change in South Africa in which every single being who is Black, who is queer, who is trans, is documented in South Africa.

>> BOWEN: For nearly 20 years, Muholi has been photographing LGBTQIA+ people in South Africa.

In the aftermath of apartheid, it was the first nation in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

But that community remains subject to high rates of violence and murder-- especially among young and Black people.

Muholi has used photography to change the culture.

>> It's like you cannot dare to ignore it.

It's Black, it's beautiful.

It's in your walls and it forces you to wonder how can you as a, as a white person, deal with a Black image, deal with Black people in your, in your spaces, deal with Black colleagues in your workplace.

>> BOWEN: Their work, stemming from their role as a self-described visual activist, is on view at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

>> You see a sense of undeniable pride that comes from a confidence in being.

>> BOWEN: theo tyson is the show's co-curator, and the work became even more layered, tyson says, when Muholi began creating stylized self-portraits in 2012, part of a series shot all over the world called Somnyama Ngonyama, translated from Zulu as "Hail the Dark Lioness."

>> They're not playing dress-up.

The costumery, if you will, is part of the storytelling.

There are clothespins used to talk about domestic labor and share stories of their mother.

Luggage wrap that's used to talk about issues with travel, racism, colorism.

There are the plastic gloves that we see in sort of this signs of the times and what that represents, from sexual violence to access to healthcare to now COVID, and what we need to do to protect ourselves.

>> BOWEN: Originally, you didn't necessarily turn the camera on yourself.

What, what was the genesis of that?

>> I guess that after many years of documenting other people, or photographing other people, I needed to remember me.

I wanted to pay homage to my mom.

Her spirit forever lives with me.

If she didn't suffer from labor pains for me to be born, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

>> BOWEN: In these images, Muholi also increases the contrast of their skin tone in post-production.

It's yet another conversation with the viewer, Muholi says.

>> This is just engagement.

How far can we go with our bodies?

How far can we go with our voices?

How fearful are we to say what makes us feel uncomfortable?

So are we brave enough to face the world out there that doesn't allow us to be, either as Black, either as queer folks, either as anything?

>> BOWEN: The exhibition also features Muholi's latest work-- their first sculpture and paintings never before seen in a museum.

Pieranna Cavalchini is the show's co-curator.

>> It's so exciting, you know, this idea of still, you know, dealing with different characters and archetypes, and also connecting the painting to the photography in very interesting ways.

>> BOWEN: Cavalchini came to know Muholi during their time as one of the museum's artists-in-residence in 2019 and during a trip with tyson to Cape Town last year.

The show, she says, paints the duality of Muholi.

>> Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance is the idea of letting Muholi be.

So it's Muholi as an artist-activist.

Very powerfully so.

But at the same time, there's a humanity.

You know, there's that sense of vulnerability.

>> BOWEN: Which Muholi readily talks about.

The paintings were mostly made last year, during a period of pain, so these works were a way of healing, even if they're sold at the end of the day.

>> What's different is the color.

So for once, I was, like, trying to dive out of the, you know, the drowning.

>> BOWEN: What did you see when you stepped back after you had completed these paintings and saw the color?

>> It's, it's very interesting.

You, you fall in love knowing that you might lose that lover, you know?

And once it's out of your sight, and it belongs to the other, so it's like losing love and that love belongs to someone.

And you wonder if you'll ever, like, touch it again.

>> BOWEN: But being Muholi means that love was fully realized.

♪ ♪ Next, in his efforts to make sure Indigenous people and their stories are seen, artist Jeffrey Gibson molds the monumental and wades into words.

His exhibition at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is titled after some of his most meaningful.

It's called Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

But as he told me recently, there was a moment when it all almost came to an end.

Jeffrey Gibson, such a pleasure to have you with us.

>> I'm happy to be here, thank you.

>> BOWEN: Let me just start with the title of your show at the deCordova: Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

That is not the title a curator has come up with, but you yourself-- what does that mean to you?

>> (laughing) Well, it was interesting.

I did a body of work in 2020, in fact, actually, yes-- it was shown at the Armory Fair.

And there was a painting in there, which is in the deCordova show, titled Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

And it was interesting.

It was a series of ten paintings, nine of them sold, except for, except for Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

And it was interesting.

You know, the gallery said that people would come in and they would say, like, "Oh, that's, that's the one, that's really special."

Like, "That's the important one."

And they would be, like, "But I'm going to go with this one."

(Bowen laughs) I told the gallery, I said, "You know, I'm really not surprised, "because I think people don't know how to relate to those words."

So they can understand them as important to someone who's Indigenous, someone who identifies as queer.

But I think they're challenging for people who maybe don't feel that that's their background, you know, or who they identify as.

And so that's just always kind of stuck with me, you know, as, as, like, a series of challenging words.

And when Sarah Montross at deCordova invited me to exhibit, we started talking about the structure that was outside, Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House.

And in the writing and the conception of that, it was really meant to invite Indigenous, BIPOC, queer performers to come and activate the structure.

So I would just, we talked about, how could we extend that indoors and how could we personalize it?

And I just thought of that painting and I said, "You know, I'd like to build a show around this painting and sort of unpacking those words."

>> BOWEN: Has it taken you a long time to get to those words in thinking about yourself?

>> Yeah, I mean, I think of myself as somebody who's always very much open to shifting and in tandem with popular culture.

You know, I kind of, that's part of my fascination, is how we're impacted by the culture around us and what we contribute towards it and kind of how we negotiate our space in between all of that.

Probably, if you talked to me ten years ago, I may have felt less comfortable with those words.

But I think as I've gotten older and where I have placed myself, where I've decided to put down roots, these words are the words that are maybe on the cusp of what maybe we're all hoping happens next.

>> BOWEN: How about your interaction with space?

When I spoke with curator Sarah Montross, she was very much talking about that and how you filled that space, you do fill that space right now at the deCordova, and people love it.

People are Instagramming, they're interacting.

It, it is resonating deeply with them.

So how about the magnitude of your work and what it does to its environment?

>> You see, now, the thing about the fringe cubes is, they were built onsite.

And the works on paper that are there, which I, I really love, and they both mark a really big shift for me.

So they're not things that I've done before.

I saw the works on paper framed for the first time once they were hung on the wall.

So that exhibition was really in planning and in my imagination.

I've been working really hard over the past, probably, really, I think, three or four years.

Because I'm really known for handcraft, you know, and these kind of very intimate objects.

But it's challenging to kind of, and maybe even a little exhausting, to think about large exhibitions filled with, like, small, intimate objects.

And so starting to think about space and the kind of environmental, atmospheric qualities of the work and trying to materialize them in different ways, which has been going on consciously for now about two or three years, is really how the fringe cubes arrived.

Fringe in, you know, for instance, pow wow dance regalia, it's not the main subject.

It's a kind of supporting role.

Like, it's what hangs off of a dance shawl and moves in the air when someone is dancing.

And I think the idea of, like, reversing what's oftentimes seen on the periphery, making it, like, the central subject, to me is something that, it's, like, it's honoring it, it's celebrating it.

And then to do it at this scale and at this length kind of takes it out of that context altogether.

They're textile-based, you know, you could blow on them and they'll move.

But yet they maintain those, like, hard edges and sharp edges.

So I have to say they actually work better than I would have imagined them working.

Like, they hit everything that I had hoped.

And, you know, it was a challenge to get them done, especially during COVID.

But I'm, I'm thrilled with the, the results.

>> BOWEN: Of course, they evoke Indigenous culture.

How would you describe the, the arc of, of your... ...working with that in your work?

I know you've been asked about it so often, but you didn't have the traditional experience that people might think that you have had.

>> My father was in the service, and I lived overseas, and I lived in cities and suburbs, you know, on the East Coast.

Growing up, I, I never wanted anyone else to be able to take away the fact that I'm Native American.

You know, it's, like, my experience is maybe not the standard, you know, it's not in huge, huge quantities of people with my biography, but it does exist, right?

And for my father, for instance, and mother, the idea of him traveling was really about escaping poverty and wanting to offer his children, like many other families, you know, different options.

And so my upbringing of returning to Mississippi and Oklahoma, always being aware, one, of, you know, conversations of pride, and just, I think probably as an adult is when I started becoming more shocked at how little people were aware of, of Native histories.

And it's something that, you know, I tell people all the time.

If you're a person of color, it doesn't matter what I do.

People will always wonder where I'm from.

People will always wonder where these stories are from.

And so, at some point, rather than trying to pretend to, like, you know, "No, but I'm an artist first.

I'm not Native American, I'm an artist first."

But all of my references initially all came from, like, my grandmothers and growing up with this idea of being different.

And that difference is marked by the words Native American, Choctaw, Cherokee, Indigenous.

I really just try to be honest to who I am in relationship to those words.

And maybe that's where the queer part comes in, because I didn't grow up with an Indigenous queer kind of model to look at, you know?

So that was sort of one that, as an adult, I realized, I'm, like, "Oh, that's an important missing kind of description of, of who we are."

And so there is some degree of, like, self-imposed responsibility about, about who I identify as.

>> BOWEN: I'm listening to you talk about this awareness that you, you have as, as you've grown.

I'm also thinking about a moment I read where you thought about just turning away from art and being an artist.

I think it was about ten or 11 years ago.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: You were going to leave the art world.

Did that need to happen in order for you to be where you are today?

>> I think so, I think, you know, I really had to kind of, like, call out.

Because I think I had opportunities that had I, for instance, wanted to become known as an abstract painter, you know, for instance, who was great with color and who was really good with composition, I probably had some opportunities that I could have done that.

But I knew the stories that I was trying to tell in the abstractions.

And so I was never satisfied with somebody dismissing that story and just wanting to focus on the formal qualities of my work.

I always knew that I was a content-driven artist and person, and I felt like I didn't want to do this if it wasn't going to come together, if I couldn't push the two of them along together.

To me, they're kind of, I can't really have one without the other.

It's, it's what continues...

It's what's opened me up to video, to performance, you know, to painting, sculpture, installation is really, is really that, like, just to push it all along together at the same time.

>> BOWEN: And to have that conviction that you would do what you wanted to do rather than what, what the art world will tell you what you should do, or what it would accept?

>> Yeah-- I think it's what I believed as a kid, you know.

I always believed-- and I know now that there's many different art worlds, and this isn't always true-- but I really believed that artists received the respect for what they believed in and for what they wanted to do.

Like, I believed that was what the possibility of being an artist was.

And so when I wasn't getting that, I was, felt like I was getting sort of half of that, I was just really frustrated by it, and enough to the point of being, like, "Maybe I should be an educator," you know?

"Maybe I should go back and get my Ph.D. and write, become a historian."

The content was always more important to me than, you know, the, the other side of being an artist.

>> BOWEN: Well, Jeffrey Gibson, it has been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Thank you so much for being with us.

>> Absolutely.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: The ocean is on trial.

At least in a new play headlining Arts This Week.

Sculptor Evelyn Longman was the only woman to serve as studio assistant to Lincoln Memorial artist Daniel Chester French.

Learn about her work courtesy of Jamaica Plain Historical Society Sunday.

Monday, enjoy a free virtual conversation with cellist Yo-Yo Ma presented by the North Bennet Street School.

He'll reflects on crafting a meaningful life despite its many twists and turns.

The world premiere play Ocean Filibuster finds the ocean taking its own defense before a cynical Senate chamber.

See it Tuesday at the American Repertory Theater.

Thursday, celebrate humorist Erma Bombeck with At Wit's End, an homage to homemaking at Merrimack Repertory Theatre.

Alive with Birds brings art and nature together in honor of premier birder William Brewster at the Concord Museum.

Presented with Mass Audubon, see it Friday.

A hundred miles of ocean separate Cape Ann and Monhegan Island.

What bridges the two are the American painters who made their mark in the 19th and 20th centuries-- and made both New England getaways their creative home.

This is the final month to see an exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum featuring the artists connected to these still-thriving artist colonies.

So, here again, a story we first brought you last fall.

As much as artists have always been drawn to, say, the sea, they've also felt the gravitational pull of each other.

Throughout art history, it's been the crux of many an art colony.

>> In the case of Cape Ann, it is a place where teachers and art teachers and students and professional painters, amateur painters all seem to gather and find inspiration amongst themselves.

>> BOWEN: Cape Ann has been a draw for its harbors in Gloucester and Rockport-- places which have long found a balance between bustling and the rustic grit that defines ages of seafaring.

Martha Oaks is curator of the Cape Ann Museum.

>> Here in Cape Ann, where it's a very welcoming place for artists, and everywhere you look, you can find something that attracts you no matter what medium you work in.

>> BOWEN: But many of the same artists who have made Cape Ann their artistic oasis have also found their muse on Monhegan Island.

One hundred miles up the coast from Cape Ann, it's a picture of stony isolation.

>> They find the beautiful rocky coastline, the ocean, crashing waves, and unspoiled land.

>> When I was there this summer, I stepped off the boat, and literally the first thing I saw was an artist at an easel.

>> BOWEN: Oliver Barker is the director of the Cape Ann Museum, which, along with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, is presenting an exhibition documenting the growth of the two enduring art colonies.

>> It's looking at that period of the late 19th century into the early 20th century when artists were searching for their own unique American voice.

And I think perhaps why they were drawn to these two rugged landscapes to try and encapsulate that, that new sense of American identity.

>> BOWEN: Artists began creating arts colonies in both locales in the years after the Civil War, when transportation improvements made access to Cape Ann and Monhegan easier.

Both places, Barker says, illustrated the differing dimensions of an America on the mend.

>> In recalling that these works were made at a time when Gloucester was in its heyday, it was America's largest seaport.

And I think that you see the working industry of the fishing industries here.

Going to Monhegan for the first time this summer, and sitting on that boat and going out from Port Clyde for 12 miles out into the middle of the ocean, and what impressed me about that experience is that there are people that live there year-round, and it obviously was a way of life.

It still is.

And there's a... To me, it shows a pioneering spirit.

>> BOWEN: It was also a spirit of welcoming, Oaks points out as we tour the show.

Especially for women like artist Theresa Bernstein, whose work we find here.

She was a pioneer in her own right as one of the early 20th century's leading artists.

>> This shows a group of women artists in the Folly Cove neighborhood.

And we see some of the local people-- the woman who ran the boarding house where artists stayed, the man who supplied her with the lobsters that she cooked to feed the artists.

>> BOWEN: Well, we just long for days like this here in the fall, right?

>> I know.

Eric Hudson, whose painting is shown here, he's one of the few artists who actually resided in both places.

The story is, he would frequently get in a dory or a small boat and actually take his canvases out with him.

So not as much in this one, but some of the paintings, you look like you're actually in the trough of a wave with the artist looking up at these big fishing vessels.

>> BOWEN: What carries through these works is an aura of place, something that comes from years, if not decades, of familiarity and careful observation, as we see in a lifetime of work by Stow Wengenroth.

I love works like this, where you can smell the wood almost, you can smell the evergreens.

>> (chuckles): Yeah.

What we have here is an early lithograph they did in the 1930s of a Cape Ann scene, and then on the bottom, a drawing done on Monhegan.

And he was really a master at black and white.

It's just remarkable.

When you look at them, you really think you're right there.

>> BOWEN: And, as both Oliver Barker and the artists still working in both places today remind us, we still can be.

>> These landscapes are all still here around us.

So we very much hope that people, when they come to see the show, will also then step outside and explore this wonderful place.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: This is also your last chance to see Imagine van Gogh.

A larger-than-life exhibition of immersive projections, it fills a most unconventional space with beloved Vincent van Gogh images, from starry skies to sunflowers.

We're taking another look at a story we first told in January.

For the last two of his brief 37 years, Vincent van Gogh moved to the south of France.

There, in the blazing sun and amid flower-filled fields, his own life as an artist bloomed.

>> You can see in his paintings that there's a lot of positivism, probably to balance with what he experienced in his everyday life.

>> BOWEN: Speaking to us from France, Julien Baron is the co-director of Imagine van Gogh.

(piano piece playing in background) Illuminating a one-time subway power station, projections of van Gogh paintings splash across this cavernous space.

>> People can dive into van Gogh masterpieces.

It's a journey where they can discover a panorama of the main masterpieces in vivid colors and in a poignant, vibrant way.

>> I think it's a feeling experience.

>> BOWEN: Annabelle Mauger is the show's co-director.

In conceiving the installation, she's concentrated on van Gogh's end-of-life work.

That's when, struggling with ill health, the painter produced the bulk of his paintings as he traveled throughout Provence.

>> Those last two years was when he really decided to be a painter.

He really was the painter of all those landscape around him.

You know, Vincent van Gogh paint a dreaming landscape, but he also paint people like you and me.

>> BOWEN: Billed as an immersive experience, Imagine van Gogh is comprised of 57 HD video projectors rendering the artist's work on more than 20 towering screens accompanied by a soundtrack of classical music.

(piano piece playing in background) But what you won't see here are van Gogh's works strictly as he painted them.

Instead, it's van Gogh in pieces-- faces rather than figures, flowers rather than fields, and just a sense of the sea.

>> When you look at all those details, what you will see is that Vincent van Gogh was painting with very straight brushstrokes.

Sometimes it could be very violent, but at the same time, when you take just a little distance with those details, you will see that this painting is curved all the times.

It's very soft.

>> BOWEN: So as you're doing this, are you mindful of changing van Gogh's work?

>> I'm very aware of that.

I'm always remember that I'm not an artist.

I'm a director.

The artist here is Vincent van Gogh.

>> BOWEN: The show is one of a number of immersive van Gogh exhibitions touring the world.

It's made possible because, 130 years after his death, his work is now in the public domain.

And it's made popular by social media and shows like Netflix's Emily in Paris.

>> This is incredible.

I feel like I'm actually in the painting.

>> BOWEN: Imagine van Gogh can be a launching pad, Mauger says-- a way to enter into the world as van Gogh captured it before seeing the real artwork.

>> It's another way to experiment art and culture.

And then if you like it, you can discover more like reading books, go to the museum, you know?

Yesterday, I was in the Harvard Museum.

I saw one of the self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh.

It was such a surprise and I was very happy to discover it.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: That is all for this edition of Open Studio.

We are off for the next couple of weeks, but as always, you can catch my latest art news and reviews on the radio, Thursdays on Morning Edition with new co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel, and regularly on Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Egan.

I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

♪ ♪