What does it mean to make the invisible visible, to give form to the things we feel but cannot always articulate? The memories we carry, the rituals that sustain us, and the unspoken bonds that draw us to one another.

For artist Kwamé Azure Gomez, painting is a means of exploring these questions. Working across abstraction, video, and assemblage, Gomez creates richly layered compositions that draw upon the sensory and spiritual dimensions of life. Her practice is rooted in “the radical possibilities of movement” and an understanding of artmaking as an act of both discovery and devotion.

Raised in Ohio, Gomez grew up immersed in the traditions of the Black church, traveling across the Midwest as a member of a liturgical dance group. The rhythms, gestures, and collective expressions of worship that shaped her childhood would later find an unexpected parallel in the rituals of queer nightlife and ballroom culture. These seemingly disparate spaces share a profound capacity for transformation, offering opportunities for communion, self-expression, and transcendence.

When I visited Kwamé in her studio, the floor was covered in paint. We were surrounded by canvases that drew me in with their radiance. At the heart of Gomez’s work is a belief in the transformative power of paying attention—to ourselves, one another, and the worlds we inhabit.

A conversation about the tension between control and freedom, the importance of trusting one’s intuition, and the faith required to pursue a creative life.

03:02 – The origins of Kwamé’s practice

05:53 – Navigating life after graduate school

10:04 – The role of family and community

12:53 – Spirituality, dance, and queerness

17:17 – Kwamé’s process

22:04 – Kwamé’s evolution as an artist

35:26 – Kwamé on her artistic influences

Kwamé Azure Gomez is an artist from Akron, Ohio. Gomez has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Her work has been featured at James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY; New Image Art Gallery, West Hollywood, CA; SoLA Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA; Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago, IL; Anthony Gallery Chicago, IL; and Dada Gallery, London, UK, among others. Gomez recently completed the prestigious NXTHVN artist residency in New Haven, CT. In 2022, she received the Emerging Artist grant from New American Paintings; the following year, her work was featured in New American Paintings MFA Issue 165. Gomez earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Akron; she lives and works in New Haven, CT.

For more, follow the show on Instagram @permanentdaydream.

Virginia Chihota’s deeply introspective practice unfolds as a search for self, belonging, and spiritual transformation. Working across screen-printing, drawing, and painting, she creates layered, dreamlike compositions in which figures emerge, dissolve, and reappear through fields of color, texture, and gesture.

Guided by intuition and what she describes as “a sustained act of listening,” Virginia’s works meditate on intimacy, kinship, faith, bereavement, motherhood, and the shifting emotional landscapes that shape the human experience.

Repetition plays a central role in Virginia’s practice; the act of revisiting the same image or gesture is a devotional process through which questions are carried, transformed, and answered. Her works often feel like layered rooms where dreams, memories, and fragments of life converge across the past, present, and future.

In this episode, Elodie sits down with Virginia to discuss her journey of becoming an artist, why art is, for her, about “a continuous search for self,” and the true value of art.

A conversation about intuition, creation as a spiritual act, and the role identity, place and transformation play in one’s work.

2:30 - Virginia’s first meaningful art experience and journey of becoming an artist

7:58 - Discovering printmaking

11:45 - What drives Virginia’s practice

14:16 - Finding inspiration from other women

18:18 - Virginia’s process

24:52 - On Virginia’s exhibition Kupinduka

28:52 - On surrender and resistance

31:40 - Art, value, and the market

34:40 - Working with Lotte de Beer on her adaptation of Aida

38:39 - Virginia’s relationship to the viewer

Virginia Chihota is a multi-disciplinary artist. She graduated with a certificate in Fine Art from the National Gallery B.A.T Visual Art Studios in 2004, followed by a diploma in Fine Art from Harare Polytechnic in 2006. She represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and was awarded the Prix Canson the same year. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in collections such as the Centre Pompidou, Tate, and the Astrup Fearnley Collection.

For more, follow the show on Instagram @permanentdaydream.

Artist Patrick Eugène’s practice explores ancestry, migration, and memory. Working across painting and sculpture, his work is rooted in an ongoing dialogue between past and present.

Patrick started painting at 27 after experiencing burnout while working as a banker. What began as a reprieve soon blossomed into a new career. His early experiments with figuration gave way to a decade of abstraction, during which he experimented with materials like liquid rubber and latex, finding inspiration from artists such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.

Patrick returned to figuration during the pandemic, bringing the fluidity and emotional resonance of his abstract works to his portraits. The figures in his large-scale compositions are caught in moments of quietude and contemplation. Underlying Patrick’s practice is an understanding of art as a form of inheritance. His work asks what survives migration, what one generation leaves for another, and how one honors the past while simultaneously making way for the future.

In this episode, Elodie sits down with Patrick to discuss his unconventional path from finance to art, the role of family and community in shaping his practice, his collaboration with Dior for the Lady Dior Art Project, and more.

A conversation on ancestral memory, inheritance, and home as space of refuge.

05:03 — Patrick's relationship to Haiti

17:16 — How burnout led to a new career

29:11 — On abstraction, figuration and following creative instincts

36:05 — On navigating the art world

39:23 — Patrick's collaboration with Dior

Patrick Eugène is a painter and sculptor. His work has been featured in exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally. He is among the first inductees into the Qatar Airways Creative 100 and is a board member of the non-profit Bati School, an initiative committed to sustainability growing Ayiti’s future through farm-funded education. His work is held in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum, The Dean Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

For more, follow the show on Instagram @permanentdaydream.