Exhibitionistas: Notes on Contemporary Art and Life

What does the artist’s body do? No one pushes us to ask this more than the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. Her excavated silhouettes in the landscape, where her body would at times lie, covered with petals or feathers, are but one of the actions and rituals that she performed during her short career. What did occur in her own body? Community? Communion? What was the origin and the purpose of her embodied art? And what is the medium for this kind of art, happening in and with the body of the artist?  

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Celebrated for being a visionary eco-feminist, an activist against violence women, Ana Mendieta’s work is often obliterated by the sensationalism around it. The exhibition at Tate Modern feels like meeting the artist for the first time. For more info: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/ana-mendieta 

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Art Etiquette Segment guest: 
Esther Stanford, is the co-host of award winning podcast Limited Time Only (with Susie Riddell, WINNER: ‘BEST COMEDY MOMENT’ International Women In Podcast Awards 2025 sponsored by BBC SOUNDS), she is a sketch and TV writer. You can find her on Instagram, on YouTube, March House, a channel she has just launched where you can also find her podcast Conversations with Creatives. Or simply her website: ww.estherstanford.co.uk. 
Soon: Bonus – full length Art Etiquette episodes.

Segment: Brainstorm in a Teacup:
Come for the art, stay for the creative writing segment, where Joana reads short texts from her notebooks exposing her inner thoughts and unexpected fictional / poetic / non-fiction / flash writing.

Jingle: "Wunder", experimental poem by Joana P. R. Neves.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Support the show
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats. 
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: [email protected]
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.

We have great news! We're an Award Winning Podcast–Women Who Podcast award in the LGBTQIA+ category
Bonus Episode: Le Guin / Indigenous History / Lao Tzu / and more...
What was Ursula K. Le Guin's favourite book, and what did it uncover about the revered author's world-building and family legacy?
Did you enjoy the episode? Leave a small donation: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
When she was a guest on the podcast, art Curator Catherine Li brought in a revelation about Ursula K. Le Guin's favourite book, tied in with her family's history, which didn’t make it to the final cut. Here it is for you, as a little end of Summer bonus, while we prepare the rentrée with panache.
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This reminded our host, art curator and writer Joana P. R. Neves, about a traumatic episode in Le Guin's family and close peer circle, which reflects indigenous trauma and the hidden history of the USA that was certainly crucial for Le Guin's worldview. 
For a tiered support for less than 1£ / 1€, go to Patreon–exclusive content coming up soon: https://www.patreon.com/c/exhibitionistaspodcast/membership
With a short reading from the The Wave in the Mind, Le Guin's collection of essays about writing, reading and more, and of the Tao Te Ching / text 48, translated by Le Guin.
Become a member of Art Thinkosaurus on Substack and expand your Exhibitionistas experience with Joana's writing: https://joanaprneves.substack.com/subscribe
[Unpublished segment of Joana's conversation with art curator Catherine Li around the writer Ursula K' Le Guin's seminal text The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction with a few quick curiosities that shed a different light on the science fiction author.]
SAFE PRACTICE OF *ART WONDERMENT* GUARANTEED WITH EXHIBITIONISTAS.
LINKS:
Catherine Li's episode: 
APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/exhibitionistas-notes-on-contemporary-art-and-life/id1727615833?i=1000734364234
YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/N97yd5t3pFY?si=i5kLWV6dXO5NPRic
Award winning episode with Gemma Rolls Bentley and E-J Scott:
APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/exhibitionistas-notes-on-contemporary-art-and-life/id1727615833?i=1000719853150
YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/RQvmgEXMAlQ?si=gu3fJlVPiPRDgSCN
Jingle: "Wunder", experimental poem by Joana P. R. Neves.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Support the show
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats. 
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: [email protected]
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.

How and why do art and Summer join forces? Art, and visual arts especially, show imminent change–but so does Summer and its ideal of creative flow. How did–or did not–art speak of the climate emergency, gender policing, the war–in short, of loss? What role does this hot and luscious season play in the hubris of conquest, or the black hole of grief? Art curator and writer Joana P. R. Neves, our host, reminisces about Agnes Martin and John Cheever, and their opposing ideas of Summer and of creation, touching on two paintings by David Hockney and a poignant text by Luigi Pirandello. Joana loved a text sent to her by its author, Vittorio Zappa, on Substack, that guided the last part of the episode, leading to its denouement. 
Is Summer the season of creative flow of life and art making, full of light and sensorial stimuli? Is creativity about desire or meditative art? Or are all these myths, perpetuated by capitalist simplifications? Has art contributed to create them? Or has it always been alerting us to the cruelty of change via Art Wonderment, the art of paradox?
Did you enjoy the episode? Think about supporting Exhibitionistas by leaving a small donation: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
The painting A Bigger Splash, 1967, by David Hockney, is the epitome of hubristic summer. But it hides another painting, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with two figures), 1972, with a far more poignant story: they both tell the extremes of summer, and investigate the very special artifice telling a story of desire, change, loss and healing? 
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Joana P. R. Neves reads a text by Vittorio Zappa: https://substack.com/@vittoriozappa/p-209760240
Other references include:
The Swimmer, John Cheever, 1964, New Yorker.
The Swimmer, a film by Frank Perry, 1968.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Support the show
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats. 
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: [email protected]
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.

Writer Rachel Cusk asked: "Can a Woman who is an Artist Ever Just Be an Artist?" (NYT). Our host Joana, your favourite contemporary art writer and curator, turns this  question of gender and skill on its head: can men be (good) artists? Cusk's book "Parade" (2024) is this Art & Literature episode book of choice to tackle the issue. Can art and life be a continuous flow for female artists, as it seems to be for male ones?
Joana embarks on an art and feminism quest: is gender a prison? Or is it the forceful power of the patriarchy's creative flow? She is helped by living and fictional contemporary artists and writers, intersectional feminism, and philosophy of art via Vilem Flusser and his "theory of gestures".
Did you enjoy the episode? Think about supporting Exhibitionistas by leaving a small donation: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
Art and Feminism claim to walk hand in hand, but what if the structure of the art system itself was an inheritance of archaic patriarchal systems? The famous artist Georg Baselitz, who passed away this year, is a central figure in Cusk's book "Parade". Was he a product or an instigator of the system? And what is the patriarchal system? How and where does it manifest? And finally, where are modern men now, within this system that seems to block creative flow and artistic expression?
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Listen to the Women who Sarcast Episode" Sarcasm and Contemporary Art.
Read Cusk's article in the New York Times (07/11/ 2019).
Jingle: "Wunder", experimental poem by Joana P. R. Neves.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Support the show
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats. 
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: [email protected]
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.

Art criticism is vanishing from mainstream media, but here's the uncomfortable question: does art and culture still need critics? Our host, Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer, examines why critics are leaving big outlets without being replaced—and what this means for art criticism, artistic quality assessment, curatorial etiquette, and the future of art evaluation itself. What is art criticism actually for? And where does Joana's feminist critique of critique lead to? And who decides what's good art now? Or, rather, is “good art” the yardstick by which art experiences should be measured?

Did you enjoy the episode? Think about supporting Exhibitionistas by leaving a small donation: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
Joana explores 3 questions in this episode: What is Art Criticism? Who reads it and who or what does art criticism serve? And finally, what is her own relation with it as someone who admittedly is not fond of the genre?
Sign up for a tiered monthly support: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2624749/monetization/supporter_settings Your contribution keeps us going.
Art Etiquette Segment guest: 
Elizabeth Botten, Reference Specialist at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art 
Art question: what can we do to accommodate visitors and make their exhibition experience enjoyable while preserving art etiquette?
Soon: Bonus – full length Art Etiquette episodes.
Segment: Brainstorm in a Teacup:
Come for the art, stay for the creative writing segment, where Joana reads short texts from her notebooks exposing her inner thoughts and odd fictional flash writing.
Jingle: "Wunder", experimental poem by Joana P. R. Neves.
0:00: Intro: Where to continue your Exhibitionistas experience.
2:27: Today's question: is art criticism still valid?
4:56: Why are art critics vanishing? And how?
7:05: 3 guiding questions of the episode: what is it, who does it serve and who is reading - or not
8:46: What is art criticism? A scandal and a text.
15:35: Genius, excellence, quality: are these outdated questions?
24:35: Who is reading art criticism?
27:12: Art Etiquette with Elizabeth Botten
38:08: What does art criticism do, and what or who is it upholding?
46:44: Joana's honest reckoning with art criticism
54:14: Brainstorm in a Teacup (Creative Writing segment)
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Support the show
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats. 
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: [email protected]
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.