You Can't Eat Art

The Construction and Deconstruction of Value with Kathy Aoki

In this episode of You Can’t Eat Art , Clara Kamunde is in conversation with multidisciplinary conceptual artist Kathy Aoki. Her work addresses gender and pop-culture issues through approachable visual formats spiked with humor. She recently received a 2025 Creative Capital Grant [https://creative-capital.org/the-2025-creative-capital-awards/] for her groundbreaking project, Koons Ruins Atlas. Kathy's work will further critique the art market — About Kathy Aoki:  Kathy Aoki is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who uses satire to critique the absurd value systems that dominate gender, pop culture, and politics. Her printmaking work can be found in major collections across the U.S. including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She received fellowships at MacDowell (NH), the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium) and other venues. Aoki has completed commissions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Her studio is located in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is a Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University. For more about Kathy Aoki visit our webpage here [https://montalvoarts.org/artist/kathy-aoki/] and Kathy's website.  Follow @ kathy_aoki_artist [https://www.instagram.com/kathy_aoki_artist/] — About Clara Kamunde: Clara Kamunde is an Oakland-based, Kenyan-born cultural worker practicing at the intersection of arts education and social justice. Her career began with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles where, as a grantee for the Artist-In-The-Community program, she collaborated with community organizations to produce and present site-integrated programming in  traditionally under-served communities throughout Greater Los Angeles.  She is a Marcus Curatorial Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center. — About the Lucas Artists Residency Program: Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo re-committed to its support of artists by opening a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary investigation of contemporary issues. The LAP is a hybrid model that supports uninterrupted time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects through public programming and partnerships. For more info about the residency, visit our website. [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/]  Follow the LAP @lucasartres  [https://www.instagram.com/montalvoarts/] Credits: “Syndrome” from the album Tide’s Arising Instrumentals (Mashibeats, 2024) used with permission of LAP 2023 CA Fellow Mark de Clive-Lowe [https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K3loJxbWoXzVycXOBKh7P?si=mcyeiGklS8WRwUAJC0MC5w&nd=1&dlsi=597c7ffeaaf24c58]; © Mark de Clive-Lowe/Mashibeats   Podcast cover art created by Olivia Esparza© Montalvo Arts Center, 2025

Chaos and Care with Beatrice Gosse

In this episode of You Can’t Eat Art , Clara Kamunde is in conversation with Beatrice Gosse an interdisciplinary artist whose practice intersects contemporary dance, film and performance. Their work dives deep into queer identity, movement, filmmaking, and the generative messiness of chaos. — About Beatrice Gosse:  Beatrice Gosse (she/they) is a director, creative director, and performance artist based in Los Angeles (the unceded land of the Tongva/Kizh/Gabrielino peoples). They examine the intersection between dance, technology, and filmmaking, —devouring and transmuting ideas of queer identity, stomping on the social architecture of Transness, and encouraging unraveling, reordering, and chaos inside the body.  As a film director, they have presented film works at SciArc: A Queer Query, NewFest, Palm Springs International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and Leeds International Film Festival, and have been featured on Nowness Asia and Dance Magazine. As a creative director with more than a decade of experience in art direction, they’ve crafted commercial, documentary, narrative, and experiential projects for brands, creative agencies, and production companies— working across strategy, development, production, and post-production. They’ve led workshops on creative development and advertising technology for PSIFF and Minorities in Film. Their dance work includes collaborations with visionary choreographers like Ryan Heffington, Nina McNeely, Jasmine Albuquerque-Croissant, Amy Gardner, Denna Thomsen, Sierra Fujita, and Jas Lin, shaping projects with artists such as Mitski, Kesha, Cassils, Enrique Agudo, Big Freedia, Disiniblud, Miss Velvet, and Tyga. Spanning commercial, film, television, stage, and underground-experimental performance, their cross-medium work harnesses movement to explore identity, challenge censorship, and create intentional spaces for expression, healing, and rage within queer and gender-expansive communities. — About Clara Kamunde: Clara Kamunde is an Oakland-based, Kenyan-born cultural worker practicing at the intersection of arts education and social justice. Her career began with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles where, as a grantee for the Artist-In-The-Community program, she collaborated with community organizations to produce and present site-integrated programming in  traditionally under-served communities throughout Greater Los Angeles.  She is a Marcus Curatorial Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center. — About the Lucas Artists Residency Program: Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo re-committed to its support of artists by opening a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary investigation of contemporary issues. The LAP is a hybrid model that supports uninterrupted time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects through public programming and partnerships. For more info about the residency, visit our website. [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/]  Follow the LAP @lucasartres  [https://www.instagram.com/montalvoarts/] Credits: “Syndrome” from the album Tide’s Arising Instrumentals (Mashibeats, 2024) used with permission of LAP 2023 CA Fellow Mark de Clive-Lowe [https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K3loJxbWoXzVycXOBKh7P?si=mcyeiGklS8WRwUAJC0MC5w&nd=1&dlsi=597c7ffeaaf24c58]; © Mark de Clive-Lowe/Mashibeats   Podcast cover art created by Olivia Esparza© Montalvo Arts Center, 2025

Narrative Intervention with Jalena Keane-Lee

Episode 10:  Narrative Intervention with Jalena Keane-Lee In this episode of You Can’t Eat Art , Clara Kamunde is in conversation with Jalena Keane-Lee an award-winning documentary film maker. Her short films have screened at over 40 film festivals, won best short documentary at the 2020 LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, the 2024 San Diego Asian Film Festival, the Sundance Jury Award in 2023, streamed on the Criterion Collection, Nowness Asia and broadcast nationally on POV.  ___ About Jalena Keane-Lee:   Jalena’s filmmaking explores intergenerational trauma and healing through an intersectional lens. Jalena, named one of DOC NYC’s 2024 40 Under 40 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch and one of Adobe x Sundance’s 2023 Women to Watch, is currently touring her first feature length documentary, Standing Above the Clouds which follows Native Hawaiian mother daughter activists. The film premiered at HotDocs in 2024 where it won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Doc. It has played at over 15 film festivals and won Special Mention for Best International Director at DocEdge 2024, Best International Cinematography at Film Ambiente, Best Feature Documentary at the 2024 San Diego Asian Film Festival and Best Made in Hawaiʻi Feature Film at the 2024 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival. Jalena won Tribeca Through Her Lens 2020 and DocLands 2022. She co-founded Breaktide Productions, an all women of color production company. She has produced commercial series for clients like Nike, Facebook, and LinkedIn and worked with non-profit organizations like The Center for Cultural Power, The Teaching Well, and Bright Pink to create engaging video campaigns. For more about Jalena Keane-Lees visit our webpage here [https://montalvoarts.org/artist/jalena-keane-lee/]and Jalena’s website. [https://www.jalenakeanelee.com/]  Follow @jalena.kl [https://www.instagram.com/jalena.kl/] — About Clara Kamunde: Clara Kamunde is an Oakland-based, Kenyan-born cultural worker practicing at the intersection of arts education and social justice. Her career began with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles where, as a grantee for the Artist-In-The-Community program, she collaborated with community organizations to produce and present site-integrated programming in  traditionally under-served communities throughout Greater Los Angeles.  She is a Marcus Curatorial Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center. — About the Lucas Artists Residency Program: Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo re-committed to its support of artists by opening a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary investigation of contemporary issues. The LAP is a hybrid model that supports uninterrupted time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects through public programming and partnerships. For more info about the residency, visit our website. [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/]  Follow the LAP @lucasartres  [https://www.instagram.com/lucasartres/] Credits: “Syndrome” from the album Tide’s Arising Instrumentals (Mashibeats, 2024) used with permission of LAP 2023 CA Fellow Mark de Clive-Lowe [https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K3loJxbWoXzVycXOBKh7P?si=mcyeiGklS8WRwUAJC0MC5w&nd=1&dlsi=597c7ffeaaf24c58]; © Mark de Clive-Lowe/Mashibeats   Podcast cover art created by Olivia Esparza© Montalvo Arts Center, 2025

A Point of Departure: New Narratives From an Ancient Heritage with Pantea Karimi

Episode 9 In this episode of You Can’t Eat Art, Clara Kamunde is in conversation with Pantea Karimi a multidisciplinary artist whose  practice blends  printmaking, animation, video, sculpture. Pantea blends these disciplines in an innovative visual vocabulary that borrows from classical Persian painting, medieval science diagrams, botany philosophy, archives, and print culture to explore harmony and tension in narratives that foreground female agency. __ About Pantea Karimi:   Pantea Karimi is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Jose, California. She holds a Master’s Degrees in Graphic Design and in Fine Arts and studied in Iran and the UK before settling in the U.S. in 2005. Her works have been exhibited in solo, group, and traveling exhibitions in Iran, Algeria, Germany, Croatia, Mexico, the UK, and the United States. Karimi is a 2024 City of San Jose Creative Ambassador, a 2023 Kala Art Institute Honoree, and a 2019 Silicon Valley Artist Laureate. She is the recipient of Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant (2022), City of San Jose Arts and Cultural Exchange Grant (2019) and Artist Residencies at MASS MoCA (2022 and 2024), Santa Fe Art Institute (2024), Montalvo Art Center’s Lucas Artist Program (2024-2026), University of California San Francisco Library (2021-2022) and Kala Art Institute Fellowship (2017). For more about Pantea Karimi visit our webpage here [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/artists/] and Pantea’s [https://panteakarimi.com/about/] website. Follow @karimipantea [https://www.instagram.com/karimipantea/?hl=en] — About Clara Kamunde: Clara Kamunde is an Oakland-based, Kenyan-born cultural worker practicing at the intersection of arts education and social justice. Her career began with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles where, as a grantee for the Artist-In-The-Community program, she collaborated with community organizations to produce and present site-integrated programming in  traditionally under-served communities throughout Greater Los Angeles.  She is a Marcus Curatorial Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center. — About the Lucas Artists Residency Program: Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo re-committed to its support of artists by opening a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary investigation of contemporary issues. The LAP is a hybrid model that supports uninterrupted time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects through public programming and partnerships. For more info about the residency, visit our website. [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/]  Follow the LAP @lucasartres [https://www.instagram.com/montalvoarts/]   Credits: “Syndrome” from the album Tide’s Arising Instrumentals (Mashibeats, 2024) used with permission of LAP 2023 CA Fellow Mark de Clive-Lowe [https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K3loJxbWoXzVycXOBKh7P?si=mcyeiGklS8WRwUAJC0MC5w&nd=1&dlsi=597c7ffeaaf24c58]; © Mark de Clive-Lowe/Mashibeats   Podcast cover art created by Olivia Esparza© Montalvo Arts Center, 2025

The Impulse to Create with Francisco Graciano

You Can’t Eat Art Episode 8 - The Impulse To Create In this episode of You Can’t Eat Art, Clara Kamunde is in conversation with multi-disciplinary artist Francisco Graciano, a primarily self-taught artist who’s impulse to observe and create manifested in early childhood. Fransisco has been creating art in San Jose as long as he can remember and his practices include sculpture, public art, ceramics, painting, woodworking and watercolor  tattoo. — About Francisco Graciano:  Francisco Graciano, a primarily self-taught artist, earned his BFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has held his arts practice for over 35 years and his multi-disciplinary practices include sculpture, ceramics, painting, woodworking and watercolor  tattoo. Working primarily in sculpture, Graciano has spent the last 25 years working with wire and metal, and his work centers on themes of the human experience, the natural world and evolution. His unique style forgoes the use of tools creating hand-forged 3-dimensional works of art bent, twisted wrapped and pulled in a continuous unbroken line, thus extending the line connecting artist and viewer. Graciano lives and works in San Jose, California. For more about Francisco Graciano, visit our webpage here [https://montalvoarts.org/artist/francisco-graciano/].  Follow @francisco.graciano [https://www.instagram.com/francisco.graciano/] — About Clara Kamunde: Clara Kamunde is an Oakland-based, Kenyan-born cultural worker practicing at the intersection of arts education and social justice. Her career began with the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles where, as a grantee for the Artist-In-The-Community program, she collaborated with community organizations to produce and present site-integrated programming in urban parks, recreation areas, historic sites, and schools located in communities throughout Greater Los Angeles. A former fellow at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State University Clara is an inaugural curatorial fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center's Lucas Artists Residency program. — About the Lucas Artists Residency Program: Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo re-committed to its support of artists by opening a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary investigation of contemporary issues. The LAP is a hybrid model that supports uninterrupted time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects through public programming and partnerships. For more info about the residency, visit our website. [https://montalvoarts.org/experience/lucas-artists-residency-program/]  Follow the LAP @lucasartres  [https://www.instagram.com/lucasartres/] Credits: “Syndrome” from the album Tide’s Arising Instrumentals (Mashibeats, 2024) used with permission of LAP 2023 CA Fellow Mark de Clive-Lowe [https://open.spotify.com/artist/6K3loJxbWoXzVycXOBKh7P?si=mcyeiGklS8WRwUAJC0MC5w&nd=1&dlsi=597c7ffeaaf24c58]; © Mark de Clive-Lowe/Mashibeats   Podcast cover art created by Olivia Esparza© Montalvo Arts Center, 2025