Friday 18 July
22°C and Few Clouds
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Artist Jega Delisca talks with Qanita Lilla about his portraiture practice and how he makes his sitters feel seen by empathizing with their vulnerability. He talks about the importance of building rapport and trust but also of activating a balanced understanding of Black masculinity. Jega’s artistic practice challenges male emotional blindness and he talks about how he moved from painting portraits of others to opening his apartment as a gallery and becoming vulnerable himself.
It takes an incredible amount of love and attention to get other artist’s to start producing art. It also takes so much energy and so much effort. And when I started really sitting with that and thinking about it, I realised, wow, art really is a communal affair…
Jega Delisca (b. 1998, West Palm Beach, Florida) is a portrait artist based in Montreal, Canada, where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University, specializing in Studio Arts. The youngest of six brothers and the son of Haitian immigrants, his identity as a queer Black man and Floridian transplant to Toronto shapes his work. Arriving in Scarborough from West Palm Beach at nine, his experiences inform the questions he explores as a painter. Delisca’s work, rooted in depicting Black masculine subjectivity, navigates the tension between inner selfhood and cultural scripts, drawing on intimate relationships to challenge conceptions of Black masculinity and male intimacy.
Moving into season three of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast, we asked our guests to share 1-3 songs that they are listening to and/or that have inspired them. Listen on Spotify.
With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.
Hosted by Qanita Lilla
Produced by Danuta Sierhuis
Episodes are edited and mixed by Chancelor Maracle, CFRC 101.9 FM
Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021
The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez
Recorded at Agnes Etherington Art Centre and distributed by CFRC 101.9 FM, Queen’s University
Season three of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts; the Ontario Arts Council; the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; and the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund.
