A New Interview Series, Featuring Swizz Beatz
The New York Times Style Magazine
“Dreamweavers,” a group exhibition which features work by a host of prominent contemporary black artists — including David Hammons, Deana Lawson, Kerry James Marshall and Toyin Ojih Odutola — opened at Los Angeles’s UTA Artist Space in mid-February. Now, the show serves as a home for a new interview series in which artists and collectors reflect on the themes of these artworks — among them, the struggle for visibility and the beauty that can be found in perseverance— and how these ideas have shaped their own careers. The subjects of the first episode, an excerpt from which premieres here, are the music producer and art collector Kasseem Dean, also known as Swizz Beatz, who helped organize “Dreamweavers,” and the influential entertainment manager Troy Carter. Upcoming episodes of the series, which is directed by the husband-and-wife duo Sing J. Lee and Sylvia Zakhary, will share conversations between the artist Carrie Mae Weems and the filmmaker Terence Nance, and between the artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa and the photographer Ming Smith. “We had to put these powerful creative minds together and capture what’s really happening in the world,” explained Dean in an email. “Art has the power to educate, to connect and start real conversations like these.” utaartistspace.com — OSMAN CAN YEREBAKAN
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