In Episode 3: Professor Omar Kholeif aka Doctor O's Birthday Special, Studio Visit co-creator travels solo to South-West London to visit artist Jai Chuhan in her home studio. The penetrating smell of oil paint summons them in, through, and across orbitals of feeling. In this textured world, they traverse worlds of lustrous color, elongated bodies constituting womanist worlds, via speculative cartographies pulled from Chuhan's unbounded imagination. Kholeif could have not have dreamt of a more thrilling encounter. They leave wishing that they had spent the decades sitting, looking, working, and dreaming with Jai Chuhan. Chuhan's art invites the spectator to navigate the psychological tension in her paintings, often exploring the possibilities of the female gaze. Jai Chuhan, Kholeif believes, and argues, is arguably one of Great Britain's most significant painters working today, worthy of being lauded with medals, museum solo exhibitions, and so much more!!

Jai Chuhan was born in Punjab, India and now lives and works in London. She moved to the UK as a child and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL between 1973-1977. Her work has been exhibited widely at museums and public galleries such as, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; Tate Liverpool; Barbican Art Gallery, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Tramway, Glasgow and has featured in the Liverpool Biennial and the Asia Triennial, Manchester. Her work is held in public collections including the Arts Council Collection of England and Tate, UK.

Raffaela Naldi Rossano is an internationally recognized artist primarily based in Naples and around the Mediterranean. Her creative practice is rooted in her studies in psychology—both Jungian and Gestalt Theory. Exploring the limits of desire, memory and ancestral forms of transmission, Naldi creates multimedia installations, which integrate sculpture, moving image, sound, collective action, poetry and the oratorial.

Season 1 of Studio Visit takes you behind-the-scenes and breeze block walls of artist studios in London, widely considered Europe's artist capital. In the Pilot, Levin Haegele and Omar Kholeif visit artist, Celia Hempton. In this intimate convening, the listener falls head first into Hempton's universe: in the silence, standing still; from the studio, we free-wheel down the motorway and bear witness to the sites that fire her imagination; engage her poetry; as music simmers beneath the script, we dream with her, encased Celia's distinct aesthetic language.

Celia Hempton was born in 1981 into an artistic family in Stroud, UK. She studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She is perhaps best known for her intimately scaled performative paintings that interrogate the politics of looking and being looked at

Dr. O with Hrair Sarkissian

Season 2 finale

In the finale of season 2, Dr. O convenes with long-time friend and collaborator, Hrair Sarkissian for an intimate tête-à-tête about life and art. One of the leading conceptual photographers of our time, Sarkissian, unfolds  entertaining details of his life, from growing up in his father’s photo studio in Syria and his ongoing engagement with Armenian cultural heritage. Tears and fears are relieved and released through the sounds of a past that is no longer our own.

Haroon Mirza and Dr. O aka Dr. Omar Kholeif convene to discuss frequencies of sound and experience. This free-wheeling session encompasses fervent debates about electricity, psychedelics, and memory. Careening down lanes of memory, sh$t gets emotional. While listening to Alt Bollywood soundtracks, the pair venture into the details of generative art, synth, techno music, and more. Existential listening.

In this intimate conversation, Dr. O aka Dr. Omar Kholeif sits down with the pioneering artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson. Together, they explore antecedents to contemporary avatars, Artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, speech, and the power of silence. Across the hour, they revisit the artist’s path-breaking experiments in art, film, and technology—tracing the roots of Hershman Leeson’s expressive imagination back to the artist’s childhood.

Season 2 of the artPost21 Podcast coincides with the release of Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs by Omar Kholeif, and published by Phaidon

Season 2 kicks off with a series of encounters with some of contemporary culture’s living legends. The first of these is artist, composer, and writer, Cory Arcangel, whose experiments with art, tech, and music have pioneered how people see, hear and feel the world around us. Together, Dr. O and Arcangel freewheel from Buffalo, NY to Pasadena, CA—reflecting on everything from guitar solos and Andy Warhol, through to the birth of Arcangel Surfware.

Hosted by Dr. Omar Kholeif
Produced by Moe Choucair

Season 2 coincides with the launch of Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs.

Episode 5: Godard Tribute by Peter Webber with Omar Kholeif

Longing and Belonging with Otobong Nkanga

Regarded globally as one of the most important contemporary artists of our time, Nigerian-born, Antwerp-based artist, Otobong Nkanga invites listeners into her studio after a long day's work. Here, the artist describes rarely known aspects of her artistic biography, specifically, the love and longing found in the songs she sings, and the ones she listens to. Enter into her aural sphere before the mic drops.

Summer’s almost over, but the “Art Pop” continues. In Part 2 of the aP21 summer special, Professor Sarah Perks reflects on her collaborations, including the exhibition La Movida about Spain's countercultural movement. Here, Professor Perks and Dr. O explore the contours of political correctness, alongside perceptions of race, gender, and class. It all ends with a karaoke breakdown, and the return of a summer anthem that never was!

It’s the summer, baby! Well, at least it feels like it somewhere. In Part 1 of this summer special, Dr. O meets up with Professor Sarah Perks—one of the youngest female-identifying professors and art leaders in the UK, to discuss her beginnings in a call centre, working at Cornerhouse and the life of the Manchester art scene. They close out with intellectual natter about Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century from 2016. All set a global suite of pop anthem-mania!

It all begins with an idea.

In the Pilot episode of artPost21’s flagship podcast, Kholeif invites Turner-Prize winning artist and Private Ear, Lawrence Abu Hamdan to think back to the Pre-Borat mankini days, when Spandex was still considered fashionable attire for a rock-star to be.