Justin French

Aug 16, 2024 | nytimes.com | Sasha Weiss |Justin French

AFTER HER FIRST son was born in 2018, the painter, sculptor and conceptual artist Camille Henrot returned to the studio, eager to make work about anything other than birth. But to her surprise, sheets of blank white paper had become unbearable, and she soon found herself painting them a deep red, a color she'd never been drawn to before. "The whole studio looked like a blood factory," she said, laughing. One day she went out to walk her dog, and a stranger asked if she was OK.

Nov 10, 2023 | nyti.ms | Adam Bradley |Justin French

TRAY WELLINGTON KNOWS that many will take the title of his 2022 album, “Black Banjo,” as an oxymoron. The banjo, and with it an entire body of folk-based music, is now so thoroughly associated with whiteness as to obscure its origins in Black musical tradition. “One of the first things I heard when I started playing banjo was, ‘You’re not supposed to be doing this,’” says Wellington, 24, whose father is Black and mother is white. But for him, playing the banjo has become an act of reclamation.