NEW MA's House Podcast Episode featuring Juan Giraldo and Cecilia Lim!

📸 Juan Giraldo, a Brooklyn-based photographer whose lens captures the intimate, everyday stories of working-class life. Born in Colombia and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, Juan’s work is a love letter to his family, his roots, and the labor that shaped his journey. His photographs—quiet, honest, and deeply personal—reflect the resilience and tenderness found in the homes and break rooms of those often unseen.

🎥 Cecilia Lim (she, siya, ella) joins us from Queens, New York, where she’s spent over two decades using art to build community. A filmmaker, printmaker, and facilitator, Cecilia’s work centers care, connection, and justice. Through projects like Remember Y(our) Connection, she invites us to look closely at how we relate to each other and the land we live on—and what it means to heal, together.

Tune in as we sit down with Juan and Cecilia to talk about immigration, memory, everyday resistance, and the role of art in reclaiming our stories.

In this episode of the Ma's House podcast, hosted by lead artist Jeremy Dennis, Nigerian American comedian, actress, and writer Saidah Belo-Osagie is featured as a guest. Saidah discusses her experiences and creative growth during her week-long residency at Ma's House on the Shinnecock Reservation. The conversation covers her directorial debut film 'Tinge,' her training in clowning, and her approach to comedy that incorporates vulnerability, playfulness, and social commentary. Saidah shares insights into her performance 'A Clown's Exploration of Identity,' her approach to integrating audience participation, and her thoughts on balancing the fun and stress of her creative projects. She also talks about her producing background, her use of social media to build an audience, and her upcoming performances in New York City. The podcast provides a deep dive into Saidah's artistic journey, influences, and the transformative impact of her residency at Ma's House.

In this interview, Jeremy Dennis, lead artist of Ma's House, converses with Megan Hicks, March 2025 resident and archaeologist. Megan explores community ecologies within colonial and capitalistic transformations, focusing on traditional practices in Iceland and Black enclaves in the northeastern United States, especially during the 19th century. She collaborates with native communities to protect heritage sites using excavation, zooarchaeology, and archival research, often through counter-mapping—an approach emphasized in her work with the Ramapo community in New Jersey to protect endangered land with historical significance.

Megan discusses her current book, 'Exposing Erasure: Archaeologies of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast,' focusing on the Dunker Hook community and its landscape use. An advocate for the importance of land reclamation and preservation, she shares her experiences at Shinnecock and her support against Indigenous land encroachment. Megan also highlights her pedagogical approach, encouraging Shinnecock youth to engage in archaeology. During her week-long residency at Ma's House, she conducted workshops on counter-mapping and connected with the community, sharing insights on challenges and the significance of engaged archaeology.

In this episode, Podcast host Jeremy Dennis sits down with Prince Shakur, the March 2025 resident artist at Ma’s House. Prince, a multimedia artist, award-winning author, and grassroots organizer, shares insights into how his diverse creative mediums—writing, filmmaking, podcasting, and journalism—intersect to explore radical histories and diasporic identity. He discusses how his activism informs his storytelling and his belief in media as a revolutionary tool for social change. Prince also reflects on the importance of overcoming self-doubt to create meaningful work, emphasizing the power of persistence and self-belief in artistic practice.

The conversation delves into Prince’s experiences with organizing, his memoir When They Tell You To Be Good, and his dedication to humanizing radical histories, particularly within Black and Indigenous struggles. He also speaks candidly about the impact of social media, the necessity of building one's narrative, and his commitment to offering alternative perspectives through his podcast, The Dugout. With an emphasis on community, resistance, and creative expression, Prince’s insights provide an inspiring call to action for artists and activists alike.

https://www.princeshakur.com/

@sweetblackprince

@dugoutpodcast

NEW Ma's House podcast episode with January 2025 resident artist Nadira Foster-Williams! In this episode, we discuss mythology, performance, grief, healing, community, resistance, and more.

Nadira is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to exploring transmutation and radical curiosity through multimedia art and theatre-making. Their work challenges colonial constructs that have historically disconnected Blackness from wholeness, mythology, and the fantastical. By weaving together performance, visual storytelling, and immersive experiences, they confront institutions of colorism and paternalism while reclaiming narratives that celebrate Black love, belonging, and esoteric traditions.

A key highlight of their practice was their contribution to Miles Greenberg’s The Embrace at the Faurschou Museum. This durational performance blurred the boundaries between sculpture and life, exploring the presence of Black bodies in art and public space. As noted in Brooklyn Rail, the performance invited audiences to witness and reflect on the power of Black tenderness—challenging societal perceptions of intimacy and existence. Foster-Williams’ involvement in The Embrace underscores their commitment to performance as a form of protest, centering Black narratives that resist erasure and demand visibility.

Through their work, Foster-Williams reimagines identity, power, and the surreal, bridging the gaps between the mystical and the political. Inspired by thinkers like Michael R. Jackson, they seek to dismantle imposed limitations on Blackness, addressing the estrangement between Black identity and the fantastical, the occult, and mythology. Their art serves as both an interrogation and a celebration—inviting audiences to question, dream, and engage in a world where Blackness is whole, unbound, and luminous.

http://www.nadira.work/

NEW Ma's House podcast conversation with November 2024 alumni artist Fadl Fakhouri! Fadl Fakhouri (b.1997, San Francisco, CA) is a Palestinian-American, nonbinary artist whose work centers on dots, lines, and color as a method of pursuing definition and positionality. Through the utility of body, images, and contextualized objects, they formulate poetic statements of determination. Fadl has exhibited work at SFAI (San Francisco), A.I.R. (New York), Times Square (New York), Jacobs Institute (Berkeley), Worth Ryder (Berkeley), The Cincinnati Art Museum and The Jewish Museum (New York). They hold a BA in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California Berkeley and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University.

Fadl is a recipient of the Homebody Fellowship for QTBIPOC artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area for the Artist Residency Program at Ma’s House. Chosen artists are awarded an additional unrestricted stipend during the residency, which spans two weeks at Ma’s House on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, NY.

NEW Ma's House podcast conversation with October 2021 alumni artist Pamella Allen! Pamella shares her journey of reconnection with her Jamaican roots, driven by her artistic exploration of memory, nature, and identity. She recounts her experiences finding long-lost family members and the profound influence these rediscoveries have on her artistic processes, including her work with mixed media, foraged materials, and healing herbs. Pamella discusses the contrasts between Jamaican and American public school art programs and highlights the importance of preserving and learning from elder knowledge. The conversation delves into themes of environmental consciousness, community immersion, and the creation of sustainable artistic spaces, emphasizing universal historical and societal issues reflected in Pamella's art. Pamella shares future plans of fostering global artist residencies and maintain connections between artistic communities in Jamaica and New York.

This podcast features Ma’s House October 2024 resident artist Kiani Kodama! Kiani (b. 1996, Seattle, WA) is a Brooklyn-based artist. They received their BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2020 and studied at Kyoto Seika University in 2018. Kodama is currently a member of Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. In 2023, they received the Liu Shiming Foundation Art Grant (New York, NY), were Curator-in-Residence at Underland Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and held residence at the LA Warman Writer’s Residency (Brooklyn, NY). They have exhibited at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY; 2023), Vox Populi Gallery (Philadelphia, PA; 2023), and The Godwin-Ternbach Museum (Flushing, NY; 2022), among others. Recent curatorial projects include Mouthing a Star Shaped Grave at Underland Gallery (Brooklyn, NY; 2023), Deliverance at Trestle Art Space (Brooklyn, NY; 2023), and Brooklyn Voices at Brooklyn Children’s Museum (Brooklyn, NY; 2022).

Alongside their studio practice, Kodama is an organizer and advisor of exhibitions and public programming throughout New York. They have collaborated with organizations such as The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, The Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Chinese American Association, NYC Department of Education, The Lenape Center, and more.

Kodama deeply believes in the horizontalization of knowledge and teaches pottery classes at Greenwich House Pottery (New York, NY) and Mouse Ceramic Studio (Brooklyn, NY).

https://www.kianikodama.com/

@kiani.kodama