Host Pier Carlo Talenti interviews artists who – whatever they make, wherever they work – are shaking up the status quo in their fields and their communities. Art Restart is produced by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts.
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The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Rebuilding Ballet on New Terms: Choreographer Ja’ Malik
Ja’ Malik is just wrapping up his fourth year as the artistic director of Madison Ballet in Madison, WI, but his path to leadership has been shaped by decades inside the field. A former professional dancer with a 25-year performing career, Malik danced with companies including Cleveland Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, BalletX and Ballet Hispánico, performing a wide range of classical, neoclassical and contemporary repertory. Trained at the Joffrey Ballet School and holding a BFA from The New School, his artistic voice draws equally on rigorous classical technique and socially engaged contemporary practice. He also continues to serve as the artistic director of Ballet Boy Productions (https://www.balletboyproductions.com/), an organization he founded in 2007 that provides young men of color access to classical and contemporary ballet performing opportunities and that also offers training and mentoring.
Since arriving in Madison, Ja’ has led a period of significant artistic and organizational change, and the results are more than encouraging. At a moment when many ballet companies nationwide are grappling with shrinking audiences, Madison Ballet is growing its own, responding to programming that places contemporary work alongside the classics and reflects the community it serves. Six months into his tenure, Malik also stepped into the additional role of interim executive director, guiding the organization through a demanding transition with a small staff and limited resources.
In this interview, Ja’ reflects on the risks involved in reshaping a regional ballet company, from extending dancer contracts to rethinking programming and institutional structure. He also speaks candidly about leadership during the in-between phase of change and the emotional, physical and ethical demands placed on artists and arts leaders alike.
https://www.madisonballet.org/about/staff/ja-malik (https://www.madisonballet.org/about/staff/ja-malik)
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22 Jan 2026
Indigenous Americas, Indigenous Lens: Brian Adams and Sarah Stacke
For over 150 years, photography has played a powerful role in shaping how Indigenous peoples of the Americas are seen and too often misunderstood. Images made about Indigenous communities rather than by them have circulated widely in museums, textbooks and popular culture, reinforcing narratives of disappearance, distance or anthropological extraction. “In Light and Shadow,” (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-adams/in-light-and-shadow/9780762482467/?lens=black-dog-leventhal) the ambitious new book by photographers Brian Adams and Sarah Stacke, directly challenges that legacy, not by rejecting photography’s past but by radically re-centering who controls the archive, who tells the story and who the work is for.
Adams, an Iñupiaq photographer based in Anchorage, and Stacke, a Brooklyn-based photographer, writer and archival researcher, approach photography less as image-making than as long-term relationship-building and storytelling. Their collaboration grew out of “The 400 Years Project,” an expansive initiative marking the anniversary of the Mayflower by foregrounding Indigenous photographers across generations, geographies and the full range of photographic practice — from 19th-century studio portraits to contemporary conceptual work.
In this interview, Adams and Stacke discuss the ethical and logistical choices behind “In Light and Shadow,” the politics of archives and representation and what it means to be storytellers accountable to the people whose lives and histories they photograph.
https://brianadams.photoshelter.com/index (https://brianadams.photoshelter.com/index)
https://sarahstacke.com/ (https://sarahstacke.com/)
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7 Jan 2026
Free Art, Real Value: The Zero Art Fair Story
For more than a decade, conceptual artists Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida have collaborated on sharp, often darkly funny critiques of the art world’s economic and political machinery. One of their earliest projects together, a satirical telethon staged during the Great Recession, planted a seed they later returned to: What would happen if you ran an art fair where every work of art was free? That question eventually evolved into Zero Art Fair, a real, fully functioning event that uses a radically different contract to redistribute both artworks and power within the art market.
Zero Art Fair invites participating artists to place selected works into a five-year “store-to-own” agreement with collectors who take the work home at no cost. During those five years, ownership vests gradually; if a collector later decides to sell the work, the artist receives half of the sale price as well as a 10 percent resale royalty. The result is a system that clears storage, builds new relationships across class lines, and asserts one of the Fair’s core beliefs, namely that price does not equal value. So far, Dalton and Powhida have staged two editions — the first in a barn in the Hudson Valley as part of Upstate Art Weekend, the second this fall at the FLAG Art Foundation in Manhattan — together seeding more than 400 works of contemporary art into new homes.
In this interview, Dalton and Powhida explain how the Fair’s unconventional contract works, why prioritizing access for people who “need help to live with art” reshaped their second New York edition, and what kinds of unexpected relationships and ripple effects have emerged along the way.
https://www.zeroartfair.com/ (https://www.zeroartfair.com/)
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Who has been a guest on Art Restart
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Alfonso Cervera
Irvin Gonzalez
Joshua Roman
Johnny Gandelsman
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
14 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 63 / 100
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Quality
96
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
77
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