Exhibitionistas: Notes on Contemporary Art and Life
Your art wonderment podcast.
With Joana P. R. Neves.
Now an AWARD WINNING PODCAST, Exhibitionistas was born to expand the experience of art into wider spaces of conversation.
It pushes the boundaries of the sound and visual potential of experimental podcasting to convey deep, fascinating experiences of art from the perspective of the artist, the curator, an you, the spectator.
Prompted by a question, each episode follows a surprising path onto an urgent topic, a unique exhibition, a fantastic book, or an artist studio. It reminds you that contemporary art and life are intertwined.
Mid-journey, "Art Etiquette" offers a short break where a new guest surprises Joana with their own question about art. Between a Socratic dialogue and a boozy chinwag.
And finally, to finish the episode with aplomb, comes "Brainstorm in a Teacup" where Joana reads notes from the week's writings, which she has described as "too interesting to miss out on, but too weird to for an episode".
A warning: We don't shy away from philosophy, books in general, reading out loud, pre-history, maverick language or etymology, feelings, stories, uncertainty and art theory.
Joana P. R. Neves is an art writer and curator, co-founder and director of the art & residency space Worlding, and artistic director of Drawing Now Paris.
Check out Joana's writing:
Art Thinkosaurus (Substack)
In London? Keep up to speed with Joana's art & residency space:
Worlding (co-founded with artist Diogo Pimentão)
Craving an art gift? Visit:
Episodes
64 episodes
Exhibition Discussions | Is the Curatorial Twist of Ana Mendieta's Tate Show Anti-Feminist?
Biography enlightens the work of an artist but, in rare occasions, it can obliterate it. A polemic curatorial choice in Ana Mendieta's exhibition at Tate Modern illustrates this puzzling question. This unexpected curatorial twist may lean into ...
Paula do Prado, “Tejedora” | What Stories–and Histories–Resurface in Her Textile Art? | Contemporary Artist Interviews
What if weaving released untold stories? And how does textile art with such narrative yet abstract powers fit into contemporary art and its traditionally European systems? Joana’s conversation with contemporary artist Paula do Prado takes unexp...
Bonus Episode – The Embodied Art of Reading Aloud – Poem Delivery Service
There are pockets of creativity in our everyday life. The embodied art of READING ALOUD is an overlooked source of joy, containing so many aspects that contemporary art and artists explore in their practice... Performance, drawing, text, breath...
Ana Mendieta | Earth and Feminist Art Embodied at Tate Modern Exhibition
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 ...
Surprise Bonus Episode | The Way: What Ursula K. Le Guin's Favourite Book Uncovered | Art and Literature Edition
We have great news! We're an Award Winning Podcast–Women Who Podcast award in the LGBTQIA+ categoryBonus Episode: Le Guin / Indigenous History / Lao Tzu / and more...What was Ursula K. Le Guin's favourite book, and...
Creative Flow | The Artifice of Summer in Art and Life | Climate, Desire and Loss
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 los...
Rachel Cusk | Can Men Be (Good) Artists? | Art & Literature edition
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? Cu...
Art Criticism | Does it Still Matter? An Art Curator's Honest Reckoning
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 re...
Art Wonderment Manifesto | ft Lao Tzu, Susanna Inglada, Fernando Pessoa's Best Heteronym
AI is forcing us to define what being human is. So, did our host, an art curator and writer, dare to create a Manifesto? Awkward? Or are we not used to women proclaiming things? How can art–seemingly at the brink of commodification–bea...
Art Copies v Originals | Is Art Wonderment Possible with a Reproduction of an Art Work?
As an art curator and writer, our host is often faced with printed or digital art portfolios – does this art digital hygiene go against art etiquette? Is art appreciation valid, or even possible through a copy of an art work? Through art images...
Time for Digital Hygiene | Why Analog Art Wonderment is Required Online
Art curator, writer and host Joana P. R. Neves, asks the ultimate art question of art questions: could art appreciation be a powerful combination of the analog and the digital? Even stranger: how does it hinge on the meaning of word "wonder" an...
Chris Kraus | Creative Freedom and Visual Art in “I Love Dick” | Art & Literature Edition
Miniseries–Does obscurity lead to creative freedom? Why do I ask? Because of one sentence in American writer Chris Kraus' "I Love Dick" saying that once we accept obscurity, we can do what we want. Could this be the most darin...
Marcel Proust | The Art Anxiety of Missing Artistic Quality with "La Berma" | Art & Literature Edition
Miniseries–There is a little discussed sub-plot in Proust's books: the narrator growing into art wonderment. Joana unfolds this storyline about art and life: How can you spot artistic talent? To what extent the narrator's art anx...
Adolfo Bioy Casares | Dark Side of Creativity in "The Invention of Morel" | Art & Literature Edition
Miniseries–Is there a dark side to creativity? Can the intersection of art and literature reveal it? Host Joana P. R. Neves, an art curator and writer, steps back from her job, and into the art questions it stimulates by digging into h...
Virginia Woolf | Creative Flow and the Missing Paragraph | Art & Literature Edition
Miniseries–Your host, writer and curator Joana P. R. Neves, invites you to read "The Mark on the Wall", a short and strange essay by the British writer Virginia Woolf. What prompts a meditative exploration, and how does it lead to art ...
Digital and Analog | Why Art Speaking (podcasts) and Art Writing (text) Are Both Important
What if writing and talking about contemporary art and life, art and literature, were two completely different things - but complementary? Instead of pitching them against each other, have we thought about articulating their qualities? Our host...
1 Artist 1 Book | Laisul Hoque | "Babu Bangladesh!" by N. Atif Choudhury
How can a work of fiction influence the work of an artist? Can a visual arts practice be illuminated by storytelling? Are there art questions at the intersection between art and literature? Our host, art curator and writer Joana P. R. Neves, in...
Curator Sarah Carrington | Encounters Along "The Line" Art Trail
You're bound to get an art education with our guest, curator Sarah Carrington! Our art talk with her explores her work as director of the Public Art Trail in East London The Line, as well as the joys of producing visual arts projects and...
Colour in Art | Can the Politics of Colour Surpass its Subjective Stigma?
How do you overcome the extreme subjectivity of colour as a topic in art? María Castro Jímenez, pigment specialist and art historian, offers surprising new histories of colour. Can the study of colour reveal hidden pplitics of the past, present...
Ana Maria Caballero - Alexandra Jabre | Visual Artist Studio Secrets: Blockchain Poetry and Spirituality in Contemporary Art
What if a visual artist’s favourite tool revealed their creative process and philosophies? Even to themselves? This dual artist series inquires about contemporary artists’ studio practices. What are really artists working with today? What mater...
New Technologies & Art | The Other Side of The Mirror: Art Spaces in the Age of Online Life
A part of our work and leisure is spent online and so is our art. Posted on social media and even made with the help of AI, LLMs, and more, creative initiatives and art objects may now also live in online art spaces. Is an art podcast to be con...
Roni Horn | Sculpting Water: Have you Ever Been Under the Spell of a Work of Art?
Have you ever been under the irresistible spell of an art work? Art Story is a shorter episode exploring an art work, an artist, an exhibition or even a concept through a proudly subjective narrat...
Emily Kame Kngwarreye | Indigenous Knowledge – Painting as Mapping and Archive Tate Modern
What can you paint at the end of your life? How does painting feature in a Aboriginal culture? Does contemporary art culture intersect with Aboriginal art – should we even look for this kind of connection? How did exhibitions of the grea...
Curator Catherine Li | How The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin Intersects with Curatorial Ethos
Le Guin demonstrates how we can totally change the STORY.But... how does this apply to curating?Hosted by Joana P. R. Neves.
Anouk Mercier – Marina Roca Díe | Artist Studio Secrets and a Career in Contemporary Art
In My Art Tools (new segment) we look into 2 artists' tool box: what is their fetish instrument? Artists think with their hands. Let's get technical! The artist's hand will guide you through the passion of following one’s vision, the ple...
