BOMB Magazine

Conversations with Artists, Writers, Actors, Directors, Musicians — Since 1981 — BOMBmagazine.org   var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-26308402-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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"I love to be entertained and titillated. I also have a brain and it’s hard to stop thinking and fully enjoy problematic things." Roxane Gay, BOMB 128

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Victor Ehikhamenor, I am Ogiso, the King from Heaven, 2017. Rosary beads on lace textile. 262 x 177 x 10 cm. Copyright the artist. Courtesy Tyburn Gallery.

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There are actually two recordings here, made many months apart and then superimposed on one another. For me, each would qualify as play—as both scenarios only involved turning on a recorder in a particular space, without any intention of producing a proper piece. More than anything, each was straight documentation.

--Byron Westbrook, in a piece commissioned for BOMB. 

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We visited Nina Chanel Abney’s studio ahead of her two must-see shows at Mary Boone Gallery & Jack Shainman.

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People in power probably assumed that because I was writing about poor black southerners, no one would want to read about them. It feels good to get this kind of recognition now and to know that many will read about the kind of people I’m talking about and find the stories universal in some way.

Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing

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I would maintain that an individual body cannot be really understood or described if you treat it as bounded by its skin.

Anthony McCall, BOMB 97

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This work by Jonathan Horowitz was produced as a poster for the Jewish Museum exhibition Take Me (I'm Yours).

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Halloween costume challenge: Asger Carlsen’s HESTER. (See more in his portfolio for BOMB.)

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Happy halloween! If we could figure out the costume we’d definitely go as Dana Schutz’s Face Eater.

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Dianna Frid, NYT. APRIL 24, 2014, RICHARD H. HOGGART, embroidery floss and graphite mounted on canvas.

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Sarah Oppenheimer, S-399390, glass, metal, wood, and architecture, dimensions variable.

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Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Something Split and New, acrylic, charcoal, pastel, colored pencil, collage, and transfers on paper.

From her conversation in BOMB 137: “Chinua Achebe says that the English language, when altered, can be used to bear the burden of his African experience. I extrapolate from that and try to put it into painting.”

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If your character is a macho, then let him be as macho as macho can be. Just recognize that if everything in your book is macho and you don't realize it because that's how you see the world, it's a blindspot.

Laia Jufresa, author of Umami, from her conversation with Valeria Luiselli in BOMB 137.

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I felt a great deal of hesitation and fear, and I assumed that I would never publish anything—it doesn't make sense to me now, and, at this point, it's hard to go back into that kind of mental territory. My life was a struggle. I don't want to go into detail about what kind of struggle, but, you know, I struggled, and I was always having these little epiphanies where I would think, Oh my God, I'm thirty-one and I've finally figured it out. Oh, I'm thirty-six, forty-two, or forty-nine. I constantly felt I was always just finally getting life right. I was never out of my mind, or maybe I should say I was out of my mind in a very sane way, where I was just sitting down and thinking hard about everything I could figure out about life and then drawing conclusions.

Nell Zink (Mislaid, Nicotine) from her conversation in BOMB 137

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Choreographer, dancer and writer Okwui Okpokwasili in Bronx Gothic, Danspace Project, New York.

From her conversation in BOMB 137: “The spectacle of brown and black bodies in pain is a deep tradition in this country. I'm not interested in transcending it; I'm living in it.”

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It’s really important for the art world to bring in more people, and not just this isolated art crowd. That kills art.

Jeffrey Vallance

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What expression isn’t a negotiation of some sort?

Maggie Nelson