Momus: The Podcast

This episode features M. Neelika Jayawardane, a writer and scholar  whose work is informed by Southern Africa’s history, and by contemporary artists and their visual worlds. Jayawardane speaks to Sky Goodden about her recent Momus feature on artist Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy (2015–ongoing), a work of collective mourning that became newly resonant amid the attempts to silence it that played out at this year's Venice Biennale.

Their conversation asks what it means to continue when neither justice nor resolution can be taken for granted. Jayawardane reflects on writing as a form of responsibility—to artists, to readers, and to one's own experience—and on why some stories demand that the writer step fully into the frame.

Together, Jayawardane and Goodden discuss the unfinished work of repair, the obligations and pleasures of being read, and the unexpected role that lap swimming plays in the writing process. Jayawardane talks about using her voice to survive, and finding language for what cannot be neatly resolved.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, PHI, for supporting our work.

This episode features Abbas Akhavan, a Tehran-born artist based between Montreal and Berlin, who is representing Canada at this year’s Venice Biennale. In a conversation recorded a few days before the opening, Akhavan discusses art as an ethics of encounter, the limits of language and representation, and the challenge of engaging non-human life without collapsing it into symbol or metaphor. Reflecting on institutional pressure, artistic refusal, and the importance of maintaining balance within one’s practice, he describes art as “a rehearsal, not re-enactment.” Framed by a reading from Charles Siebert’s 2016 New York Times Magazine feature “What Does a Parrot Know About PTSD?,” the conversation explores trauma, presence, and the possibility of holding intimacy without possession. Host Sky Goodden also reflects on attending a strike organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance during the Biennale’s preview week, during which the Canadian Pavilion was one of many that closed in solidarity. 

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Coach House Books and Esker Foundation, for supporting our work.

This episode features Camille Bacon, a Chicago-based writer, editor, and the co-founder of Jupiter Magazine. In a far-ranging conversation with Sky Goodden, Bacon discusses the potential and power of a “criticism in the commons,” the Black feminist constellations she’s participating in more broadly, and, as a publisher, her metrics for success. “ For me, success would be someone coming through the doors of our publication coming out the other side and being more audacious about what they demand.”

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

In this episode of Momus: The Podcast, Lauren Wetmore speaks with Line Ajan, a Franco-Syrian curator and translator and member of the editorial, artistic, and curatorial collective Qalqalah. The conversation unfolds through a reading of Iranian artist Ashkan Sepahvand’s text “Showing Without Revealing,” written for the 2017 exhibition he curated at Berlin’s Schwules Museum, which presented a decolonial perspective on institutional histories of homosexuality. Ajan discusses translating Sepahvand’s text into French with Qalqalah, whose members work across English, French, and Arabic. Reflecting on the process, she considers translation as a collaborative and situated practice and speaks about her own work across languages shaped by different colonial histories. She also brings forward the intimacy of translation as a form of reading, and the influence of writers including Sarah Rifky, Karim Kattan, Etel Adnan, and Gayatri Spivak.
Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.
Thanks to Line Ajan for her contribution to this season.

Jeneen Frei Njootli joins this episode of Momus: The Podcast from their ancestral homelands in Old Crow, Yukon, a Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation community north of the Arctic Circle. Frei Njootli reflects on how life in Old Crow has shaped their artistic practice, which is deeply intertwined with community, land, and language—including the Gwich’in language, Dinjii Zhuh k’yuu.
Frei Njootli shares an excerpt from fellow community member Brandon Kyikavichik’s forthcoming book, Gijiint’aii: Try Your Best, reflecting on Elder Erwin Linklater’s teachings about the generational significance of the night sky and constellations in Gwitchin life and culture. Frei Njootli describes “witnessing and being witnessed by the stars,” illustrating the intimate relationship between sky, land, and cultural knowledge in their practice. They also speak about writing as inseparable from making: a constant consideration of language that informs both thought and form, “It’s something that I don’t know how to not do.”
Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.
Thanks to Jeneen Frei Njootli for their contribution to this season.