Shade Podcast closes out 2025 by returning to the Shade Art Review archives. This episode adapts "Oh God It's Frieze Week Again," an article I wrote in October 2023, asking: Who gets to show up in the art world? As Art Basel Miami Beach wraps the year's art fair circuit and we await next week's Turner Prize announcement, I explore the barriers disabled artists and arts workers face during heightened art world moments—from navigating packed art fairs to participating in gallery openings and museum events.

Nnena Kalu's historic Turner Prize nomination—the first learning-disabled artist shortlisted in the prize's 41-year history—raises urgent questions about who the art world has traditionally welcomed into its most prestigious spaces. I reflect on what accessibility actually means.

Featuring thoughts on our right to retreat, the pressure for disabled artists to always be visible and what deep collaboration with disabled and neurodivergent communities could actually look like. What would it look like if retreating was considered an essential part of showing up?

Read the full article at Shade Art Review here. Contact: lou@shadepodcast.co.uk | Instagram: @shade_podcast. Shade is an independent, one-person operation. If this podcast resonates, please share and subscribe.

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I'm reading "Deana Lawson's photography divides critics and I'm here for it" from the Shade Art Review archives, asking questions about critical freedom, backlash culture, and when we lost the ability to be honest about art.

This one asks: when did bland takes become the safest option? And who does this serve?

Questions I'm still asking about art criticism, fear, and the freedom to feel something.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw's essay "The Many Problems with Deana Lawson's Photographs" (Hyperallergic, May 2021): https://hyperallergic.com/the-many-problems-with-deana-lawsons-photographs/

Tina Campt on Deana Lawson (New York Times, 2021): https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/magazine/deana-lawson.html

Tina Campt's book "A Black Gaze" (MIT Press): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Gaze-Artists-Changing-How/dp/0262045877

"What happened to all the anti-racists after Black Lives Matter" (Metro, 2022):https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/13/what-happened-to-all-the-anti-racists-after-black-lives-matter-17172834/

Lou Mensah on star ratings in art criticism (Plaster Magazine, 2025): https://plastermagazine.com/features/star-rating-exhibition-reviews-art-critics/

Read the full piece and more in Shade Art Review: https://shadepodcast.substack.com/

Shade Website

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Shade Podcast is back. After months away, I'm returning to what we were at the beginning—intimate, unedited conversations, just me and you. This episode adapts an article I wrote in February 2024 for Shade Art Review, asking: Where is the Black Nan Goldin? Where is the documentary photography showing Black intimacy—real, unguarded, not staged, celebrated in major exhibitions or published by prominent publishers? 22 years after I viewed Nan Goldin's The Devil's Playground at Whitechapel Gallery, I explore why I haven't seen a Black photographer gain the same recognition for work depicting intimacy with the same unflinching honesty.

This isn't about replicating what Goldin did. It's about wondering why Black artists working in this space haven't emerged to the foreground with the same institutional support. As Black people, we move through the world with vulnerability. Our bodies have been mistreated and misrepresented throughout history. So maybe there's a reason why not all is being revealed.

This article led to an exciting collaboration I'll share more about when I can.

Read the full article at Shade Art Review: https://shadepodcast.substack.com/

Contact: lou@shadepodcast.co.uk | Instagram: @shade_podcast

Shade is an independent, one-person operation. If this resonates, please share and subscribe.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.