Helga

I knew that there was a power I had when I stripped off my shirt and looked you in the eye as I moved my hips. But I also knew the other side of that attraction to me was the impulse to kill me.

Lege…

Once I could feel grounded in an East African context and value who I am in an American context - suddenly it was so apparent that music was where I was supposed to be.

The dynamic, ascendant jazz si…

Even with his surging popularity in indie and rock scenes, Bartees Strange strives to bring his music to unexpected audiences and to tease apart the racial boundaries between them. He reckons with th…

Usually the things that are the farthest out — that look the least like art to me — are the things that become the most important.

American painter Glenn Ligon is one of the most recognizable figur…

There are times in life when you need to be able to live in the vision, where you are making a leap of faith into something unknowable.

Claudia Rankine is a professor of the Creative Writing Program …

'Safe' also has another connotation of being not willing to take risks or to push a boundary.

Michael R. Jackson is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Strange Loop, a play into which he poured al…

Artist, performer, and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga, where she talks about the intimate lives of creative people as they share the steps they’ve…

"We’re struggling. Our generation is trying to cope. Life is crazy."

On this final episode of Helga: The Armory Conversations, I look to this next generation of artists. Three participants in Park Av…

"I want to push those limitations. Push them."

Researcher, writer and critic K. Anthony Jones discusses what it means to make your own way and how to carve a path where one does not exist. 

K. Anthon…

“There’s a real potential in art making to have someone reassess everything that they had thought about a history.”

Curator, critic and writer, Antwaun Sargent engages Helga in a discussion around th…

“It was so important to be apart of community. To find strength in each other. To know that on the days when I can’t move forward, someone is going to take up the baton and move forward for me. “

Pro…

“That's been one of the hardest things to really heal from. Has been the grief of knowing that my choices and the way that I live my life, which I love means that I am isolated from my community.”

Li…

"The positioning of being kind of on the edge of the room looking in? That's the position of a journalist."

Jad Abumrad, co-Host and creator of Radiolab, joined Helga to talk about the beginnings of …

"It split me. In one instance it split me in two. Because I had never thought of using my different voices to do different things."

Opera singer Davóne Tines joined Helga to talk about his path towar…

"I love to hear humans just gathering and talking and being and making lots of noise. I like to do that too...just being, and making yourself known and present."

Author and performing artist Karen Fi…

“Everything I know about gender politics or gender identity as it's changed and continues to change and shift and be named in all these glorious and intricate ways, have come from 16 year-olds. Thank…

"How exactly do we listen to images? We listen by feeling. We listen by attending to what I call 'felt sound'."

Helga Davis invites Scholar and Author Tina Campt to explore her relationship to her pr…

"I’m curious about how we work. Why we’re here. What we’re doing to each other, with each other. And I know on a fundamental level that I am so much more capable than I can imagine."

Actress & Disabi…

"When I look outside, when I go to the front door. That is my new canvas. Today. It's not really what happens in the studio. It's what happens outside of the studio."

Visual Artist Nick Cave joins He…

Artist, performer and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga: The Armory Conversations. This season, in partnership with Park Avenue Armory, she continues…