♪ UPBEAT AMBIENT SONG ♪ Coming up next on State of the Arts, tactile inner landscapes, the dissonance of memories, and embracing vocal arts, this week on State of the Arts.

♪ UPBEAT AMBIENT SONG ♪ Hello, and thanks for tuning in for this week's show.

I'm your host, Mary Paul.

Through oil paintings and drywall works, visual artist Ema Ri explores an inner landscape comprised of loss and grief, but also healing and resilience.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ One of the things that I pride myself in is in my resilience to pull through even the most difficult circumstances in my life, and I think that's where the direction of my work is going.

Exploring and also talking about resilience that I see in nature, but resilience that I also see in the female figures in my life that are here and no longer here.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ Hi, I'm Ema.

I'm a visual artist based in Miami.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ Conceptual thinking in my practice evolved a lot more without me even realizing it.

Whenever I see a material, I sort of put myself in that material, and flowers for me are very fragile, beautiful, delicate things, but they're very connected to the spiritual realm more than humans could ever.

But I like how flowers in a microscale remind me of aspects of ourselves, with the human body and the human spirit.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ The work that I'm doing in this residency through MOAD at MDC Padrón Campus is towards my solo show in the spring, and the work is exploring this idea of resilience, and I definitely could foresee now that the flowers that I've been creating are more like weeds.

[ LAUGH ] And when I realized that was going on, I really liked that idea that these flowers are weeds that just blossom, rain or shine, whether man-made decided to cover this land with pavements or an architectural building.

Nature will always find a way to exist in the space where it used to.

Some of the paintings that you'll see here, they're very reminiscent of that notion, penetrating through ground or being destroyed from the ground and being torn apart, but then creating new life in the process of that.

It's all metaphors when you come to think about it, and a lot of it has to do again with me imposing myself onto these things and seeing myself in a plant that is falling apart or a plant that is still sprouting even though it's in an environment that's not conducive for it to thrive fully, but it'll find a way.

It always does.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ When I was little, I used to draw with my parents' car keys on the wall, and it was something that I discovered by chance.

I would do these little small drawings that weren't really noticeable because it was lightly marked, but then over time those marks would get darker and darker because the metal rubbing would oxidize.

And so things like that I bring into my practice again, and I now create these abstract environmental drawings only with brass brushes, and brass brushes are only used to polish rusted pipes, but I like using tools or materials in an unorthodox manner, and I think in a sense that has to do with me wanting to not feel constrained by my limitations, not letting things hold me back and finding ways to keep moving forward.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR RIFF ♪ I feel like I'm completing a full circle when I decided to go back to school.

I was turning 24, and in my past, I used to have hold-ups about pursuing an academic career or just going to college.

I registered at MDC Wolfson Campus, and while I was there, I was majoring in environmental science.

I needed a little bit of a break from the math, and so I took a drawing class as an elective and also to take a break.

And within the month of taking a drawing 101 class, my professor, Shabon McBride, she was the one that encouraged me to pursue art.

She helped me build a portfolio.

I applied to New World.

It was the only school that I applied to at the time because my heart was split.

My two passions have always been science and art.

Growing up, I wasn't really sure what direction to go to.

While I was at New World, I came into that school with an open mind, so when I came out, my BFA work, I decided to look within.

And where that takes me is to my past, and so I started to make works using drywall because for me, walls are an extension of the human body.

When I walk into a space, whether it's a gallery space or someone's home, I often find myself more interested in the footprints and the scratches that are left on the walls, the scars, the stains, because for me, it tells me a story of what happened in that space without someone having to tell me anything.

I think that, again, it's like the scientist in me that's always curious to know what existed there before.

The work that I started to explore was all about hiding and blending in as a form of survival.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ (Dennis) The thing I like the best about the work is it always makes you feel something, and of course, that's every artist's goal.

When you look at it, it takes you to a place that you didn't expect to go.

For me, for a lot of the paintings, when you're asking yourself, "Well, who's in there?"

the answer is always you.

(Ema) My work definitely revolves around love and grief, and so when I started to work with drywall, a lot of exploration had to do with just processing emotions, and I think the breakthrough with drywall was realizing that when I peeled the skin of the wall, for me, it took me back to just being vulnerable, like opening yourself so that other people can feel and see your pain.

For me, they become windows or vessels into the spiritual realm, and the finger paintings made with oil paints are the places where those things live in.

My work is personal, but it's because I really want to connect with honestly, I just really want to connect with people.

I want to connect with the people that I know are not going to be here anymore, and that could be anyone.

It could be you.

It could be people that I meet here.

I think one of the beautiful things about this residency is that it's allowed me to be more open and vulnerable, and in doing so, students now could have faith in themselves again, because some students have felt defeated in their own journey, and sharing my journey and my struggles with them and how I'm able to overcome them by being real, not trying to be an idea that I know I'm not for the sake of fitting in.

(Fredric) I'm familiar with this work over a long period of time because they were my student in 2017, I think.

One of the things that I think is most important in the work in general is the evolution.

There is tremendous growth from work to work, chances taken, experiments, and so for me, that's the measure of a really, really significant body of work, so that's what I believe we have here.

The whole intention around these ephemeral flower sculptures are for people to interact with the work, because I want people to experience what I experience when I'm playing around with material, and so I encourage people to stand on the installation, to leave their body imprint.

The whole point of that is to show that we're on the same situation, we're on the same footing.

We live different lives, but we're both humans, and we're both hurting, and we're both trying to find love and trust and finding our way in this place, and so footprints and body prints is me trying to tell a viewer that there has been people before us that are dealing with the same journeys that we're dealing with today, and that you're not alone.

(Fredric) There's a sort of this bridge between abstraction and representational.

Maybe the roots of it are in landscape, but it starts to become very, very much about the mark, the gesture, the accumulation of those marks.

From all of that to this comes the void.

So suddenly, in the middle of this work is a very mysterious layered void out of the exploration of the abstraction and the mark making.

Who knew it was going to end up there?

That's super exciting for me.

My HIV status and the virus in general does play a huge role in my work.

I was diagnosed in my early 30s.

After that, the pandemic happened, and then I lost my grandma.

I lost my studio.

I lost work.

I was just dealing with so much stuff and not really being able to channel it in a healthy way.

And so flowers came back into the picture.

And then eventually I realized that collecting flowers is not doing enough for me.

It's doing a part.

And so I decided to start making these finger paintings of abstract flowers.

And the result was that they would become flowers in distress, flowers in constant motion from its environment.

I'm inspired by everything all the time, but that's not why I come to the studio.

I come to the studio to learn about myself, to learn about the things that I'm not aware of yet.

Since my work is process-based, I don't really have a sketch of what I'm going to do.

I come into the studio with complex emotions from the day-to-day, the grind, and I just start to let it out.

So sometimes there are things that subconsciously, I'm thinking of my grandma or a specific moment from my childhood.

And I won't realize what I'm doing in the process of making it, but then once I make the piece and I decide to stop, I just hang out with it for a bit.

And then eventually the colors sort of inform memory and senses.

And then once I start to pick up on that, then I know exactly where the work was taking me when I was producing the work.

And I find that to be really special and beautiful in its own way.

Naeem Mohaiemen is a filmmaker, author, and educator.

His work often explores what it means to be a witness to key episodes in history.

Through a Mirror Darkly is his new work that made its recent debut in the United States.

The three-channel film includes both archival and current footage, chronicling a tumultuous time in American history.

In this segment, he talks about how he approached its creation and what place contemporary art has in reshaping a narrative.

(TV Reporter) In light of the Kent State University incident, could you tell us what, in your judgment, is the proper action and conduct for a police force or a National Guard force when ordered to clear the campus area and faced with a crowd-growing rise?

The film of mine that is at the centerpiece of the exhibition here at Wex is called Through a Mirror Darkly.

The phrase comes from the Bible from the Corinthians, which is also the name of the overall exhibition, Corinthians.

And it hinges on the idea of the fact that when you see something in the mirror of memory, things are never as clear as they might have been when you first encountered it.

And the further away you get from events, the more things appear differently.

The film is a three-channel film, three screens together, a mixture of contemporary and archival footage.

And there are three key events in May 1970 that it's really about, the May 4th killing of students at Kent State, the protests called The Hard Hat Riots in New York City, and then the May 14th killing of two more students at Jackson State.

♪ OMINOUS AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ I came here as an international student to the U.S.

from Bangladesh 30 years ago, and I went to Oberlin, and one of the first bits of American history that I was introduced on that campus was the shootings at Kent State.

It was a larger than life event, always talked about at Oberlin, always in the context of contemporary events.

In my time at Oberlin was the first Gulf War, and there were protests against that, and people would say things like, "Well, there are police, but it's nothing like what happened at Kent State."

So it was always a reference point, but I never heard about Jackson State.

In all of those years, I only started hearing about Jackson State in the last 10 years.

And then, rather obviously, we immediately realized that the death of two black students at Jackson State in the same month didn't rise to the level of national headlines.

♪ OMINOUS AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ They sent soldiers to fight in Vietnam.

(Naeem) The film doesn't have footnotes.

You might see something for one second, and you might be still puzzling what's going on, and the next scene shows up.

And not to forget that the film works with three screens at the same time.

So you're actually receiving a lot of material.

You might actually sometimes move your head from this screen to that screen and miss that and go, "Oh, what was that?"

It went by.

So there's a lot going on very quickly, and it's at the pace of relatively fast-paced editing.

I started working on the film over five years ago, and so there was research, but there were also lots of pauses and interruptions and almost, "Well, I don't know if I'll ever be able to make this film."

By the time I actually started editing the film, things had also changed.

So I think people are going to find analogs, and perhaps one of the things that will occur to them is that things they're experiencing now are not really new.

They are perhaps part of a cycle that repeats, and so it's not...it's also important to think of that and have a longer perspective, and also think about if people find something problematic and they want to challenge it using their right to free speech and civil disobedience, there are also methods, and things have also worked out in the past.

I don't want to be overly optimistic because I don't know if that's the time we are in, but still something about the parallel I think is useful.

At the same time, I will say I didn't make the film as a civic lesson that gives you a toolkit.

♪ OMINOUS AMBIENT MUSIC ♪ Corinthians, the overall exhibition, is in two parts.

One is the room where the three-channel film is situated, and we hope people will watch it end-to-end.

Then if they walkout, the hallway all around, is filled with works from the Wex's collection, as well as works we borrowed either directly from the artist or the Columbus Museum of Art, and this heavily focuses on works around or influenced by the opposition to the Vietnam War.

Most of these works are made between 1960 and 1973, with the bulk being 1970.

But what you see is that by 1970, contemporary art, which is not necessarily always the first to take these positions, has fully embraced debates around the Vietnam War, and within that is also the way that the country's culture has dramatically changed.

The 60s isn't just the 60s because of everything else that happens, but it's because all of that happens on top of the Vietnam War and protests against that.

So you see fragments of those in all of these, and then you see one or two works that were made, 1972-73, when the Vietnam War is winding down, but that kind of questioning of national identity, belonging, just a generally spirit of challenge, a spirit of skepticism, or at least I want to question, receive truths are in the work.

(Archival Narrator) We're now approaching the fence.

(Naeem) And here I think there's also a possibility of not explaining everything and leaving it to the audience to start telling their own narrative.

One of the experiences that I have that is quite wonderful when it does happen is if you are in an exhibition and you quietly sit in the corner and people don't know who you are and you're overhearing the conversation and an audience member is giving an interpretation of something they've seen in your work, and it's completely unrelated to anything you thought.

They might even be referencing a film that you've never seen.

That's really beautiful when they've come up with a new meaning.

(Archival Narrator) Some people think it is.

This is the grave where my brother is lying.

I receive a phone call one Friday morning, about 4 o'clock, saying that my brother had been shot at Jackson State College.

[ SCRUBBING ] And we wrap up today's show by meeting Soprano Dione Bennett, a vocalist and educator who hopes to inspire others through performance, technical knowledge, and the pure joy of singing with her students.

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ (Dione) I did not sing in the choir in school.

I sang in church choir, and at one point I even directed the church choir.

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ I was so bad.

They gave me one church choir solo.

Girl, they never gave me another one, because I was horrible.

I was horrible.

But I was just not a gospel singer.

I was a classical singer.

♪ PIANO PLAYING ♪ And so my last year, my teacher took me to OMEA, and I got to do solo and ensemble.

It was the first time, and it was my first classical song and my first Italian song.

And I sang "Alma Del Core."

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ So I did my first semester of college, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I had this hodgepodge of classes, all these classes.

I don't even know if I took a music class during that time.

And, but the choir started touring.

Church choir started touring.

I was going with them, but wasn't doing any homework.

So, I ended up on probation.

Had never been on probation with grades before.

So I ended up on probation, and so I needed an easy A class.

So the next semester, I heard my director in my ear saying, "If you ever have a chance to do voice lessons."

So I went down the catalog, and I saw voice, and I thought, "That can't be too difficult, right?"

So I took voice lessons.

Sixteen weeks, they taught me to breathe, and one song.

It was "Caro Mio Ben."

And I'll never forget that, because, you know, Beyoncé just did "Caro Mio Ben."

But anyway, I sang "Caro Mio Ben."

I pretended like I was this little lady that went to my church.

♪ GOSPEL SINGING ♪ ♪ GOSPEL SINGING ♪ When I was younger, I used to tell my brother, "I am music."

And he'd say, "No, you're not.

You just do music."

♪ GOSPEL SINGING ♪ I believe all of this called me.

Like I said, I got here, it seems by accident.

I'd never imagined this.

There's nobody in my family that I could look to that was a classical singer.

There were a couple church people in my church organization that were classical singers.

For me, it's the giving of yourself.

It's your mind, body, soul, and spirit that happens when I do music.

And it's whether I'm singing, whether I'm teaching, whether I'm coaching, it doesn't really matter.

I'm giving all of me.

And there's no other feeling like it.

It has made me the most happy, the most joyful, but it's also made me the most sad.

I've cried.

It's been all of me.

Even my job here at Ohio Christian, it takes everything.

So I have my students.

I love them.

I love them to their potential.

I'm pushing them constantly.

And I also work at Opera Columbus, and it's the same thing.

Being able to give to the community and figure out ways to make things, make opera accessible to the community.

I think when people come to hear me or any artist sing, they come from so many different places.

And they've got so many different situations, so many different circumstances.

So I believe that people are coming so that their world, at least for that short amount of time, can come together.

The world is in line.

The world is beautiful and good.

And I look forward to touching people, touching their hearts, touching their souls, and in some ways changing their lives, you know, so that they are never the same when they leave.

♪ They could not see ♪ ♪ for we didn't know who you were.

♪ Cuba is a beautiful place.

It's an incredibly beautiful place.

And even just the experience took my mind and soul and spirit.

The teaching, though, my Lord, these young people were absolutely fantastic.

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ They were trained really well.

But this music, it was not just training as a skill.

This is in their bones, in their spirits, in their hearts, in every movement.

And these young people, they had huge hearts.

And some stuff I would say, I thought they would think that was kind of weird and strange.

No, they were ready to try it because they were that hungry for the music or for the training.

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ The people are incredibly kind, and I loved making that connection.

Even when I sang, it didn't matter if they knew what I was singing about.

We could connect.

Sometimes I saw people with tears in their eyes.

And then I had tears in my eyes because of that connection.

♪ CHOIR SINGING ♪ [ CLAPPING ] ♪ UPBEAT AMBIENT SONG ♪ We've reached the end of our time together this week.

From all of us at AZPM, thanks for watching.

And I'll be back next week with more stories from the arts world.

♪ UPBEAT AMBIENT SONG ♪