THE FOCUS

Rachel Bubis: As a Lao refugee and immigrant, you describe how your experience during and post-Vietnam War continues to heavily impact your life and art. You’ve also mentioned that this experience of war shows up as visual fragments, unlike your siblings who remember specific sounds or smells. Why do you think your experience was different? Sisavanh Phouthavong: As the youngest girl of seven, I grew up with four brothers and an older sister. My siblings were always very protective of...

Rachel Bubis: Your work returns again and again to Southern identity, asking what it means to be Southern. Has the process of making your work changed or clarified that question for you in any way? And looking forward, where do you feel Southern identity is evolving or revealing itself in unexpected ways? Isaiah Kennedy: The South, as an ideological construct, is polylithic in nature, not a monolith. What being Southern means to one person is completely different than what it...

Wesley Roden: Whether by arranging drama scenes with ceramic figures and tequila umbrellas or depicting portraits of people in motion, your work conveys narrative. How do you arrange items or choose subject matter that creates parameters for imagination or a bigger story? Do you ever hint beyond the canvas or silhouette of the figure? Denise Stewart-Sanabria: The objects in paintings have to have a level of fabulousness to them. They want to pose. They want to star in something. Whoever...