Laurena Finéus

Ep.283 Taj Poscé (b. 1995, Philadelphia, PA) is based in Baltimore, MD. His work was most recently included in Fade at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the latest installment in the institution’s influential “F” exhibition series highlighting emerging artists of African and Afro-Latin descent. Last year he was awarded a residency at the Last Resort Artist Retreat (T.L.R.A.R.) founded by acclaimed artist Derrick Adams. In 2024, Poscé presented Just on the Other Side, a solo with DIMIN — his first solo exhibition in New York, which received a review in Artforum. Poscé received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts (MICA), achieving the highest merit scholarship, the Leroy Hoffberger painting program, and the Congressional Black Caucus Visual Artist Award. He holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Arts (Philadelphia) where he studied under Odili Donald Odita and received numerous awards, including the Yale Norfolk Summer Residency and a studio abroad in Rome, Italy, with Italian-American papermaker Roberto Mannino.

Ep.282 Jeanne Barral is a curator at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, in Paris, France. She has curated several exhibitions, such as Fabrice Hyber's "La Vallée" at the Fondation Cartier in 2022 and in 2025 at the PSA in Shanghai, and « The Harvest Season » in 2026 in the new building of the Fondation in Paris. Prior to that, as an artist liaison at gallery Mennour in Paris, she has organized solo shows of Ann Veronica Janssens, Huang Yong Ping, Petrit Halilaj, and Bertrand Lavier, while while fostering their artistic development.

Ep. 281 Anina Major (b. 1981, Nassau, Bahamas; lives and works in Upstate New York) holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including being a 2026 USA Fellow, finalist in the 2025 Loewe Craft Prize, winner of The Armory Show Pommery Prize 2024, The Future Perfect Prize 2024, the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and an artist residency at EKWC, the European Ceramic Workcentre. Major's work has been exhibited throughout The Bahamas, Europe, and the United States, and is on permanent display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of The Bahamas; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Carnegie Museum of Art; the RISD Museum; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and the Detroit Institute of Arts, among others. Photo by Melissa Alcena

Ep.280 Jiab Prachakul (b. 1979) is a figurative painter who lives and works in Vannes, Brittany, France. Known for her luminous autobiographical paintings, Prachakul portrays her community and surroundings in quiet scenes shaped by close observation and restraint. Prachakul was born and raised in Nakhon Phanom, a small town in northeast Thailand. She studied film and journalism at Thammasat University in Bangkok and worked as a casting coordinator for Big Blue Production, where she spent her time observing people and discovering talent. In 2007, she moved to London and taught herself to paint after seeing an exhibition of David Hockney’s work at the National Portrait Gallery. She subsequently lived in Berlin, where she met many of the figures who populate her paintings. There, she turned her focus to representing the Asian diaspora, seeking to amend a lack in the Western canon. In 2020, Prachakul won the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London. She has had solo exhibitions at The Contemporary Austin (2025), Timothy Taylor, New York (2023), and Friends Indeed Gallery, San Francisco (2023, 2021); and her work belongs in the collections of the Roberts Institute of Art, London; the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Ep.279 Kyla McMillan is the Director of The Armory Show. McMillan has a wide range of experience in the art world, having experience as an art dealer, gallerist, and consultant. In 2021, she founded Saint George Projects, an itinerant gallery and consultancy, organizing exhibitions and programming in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, Kingston, Jamaica, and Johannesburg. Prior to founding Saint George Projects, she was a director at David Zwirner, New York and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York where she focused on artist management and sales.