Watch each of the sixteen full segments from the latest season of Art21’s Peabody Award-winning Art in the Twenty-First Century series.

Season 8 artists are grouped by the unique and revealing relationships to the places where they live: Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Vancouver. The artists share universal experiences through their life stories and creative works: resistance, pleasure, mortality, and the hope for a better tomorrow.

Season 8 showcases the geography, architecture, society, culture, and heritage of each location, highlighting aspects of contemporary life that viewers everywhere experience. The season features 16 artists, each of whom actively participate in global conversations about the pressing issues of our time: from terrorism to environmental crises to the struggle for civil rights.

The new season premiered September 16, 2016 on PBS.

Watch each of the twelve full segments from Art21’s Peabody Award-winning Art in the Twenty-First Century series.

The landmark tenth season of the Peabody Award-winning Art in the Twenty-First Century television series—the longest-running television series on contemporary art—features twelve artists and one collective, charting artmaking in London, Beijing, and regions around the United States-Mexico border.

Season 10 premiered September 18, 2020 on PBS.

“My family is all I have; my family is everything to me,” says Alex Da Corte.

For artists, families can serve as inspiration, a source of feedback, and even subjects for new work. Whether drawing upon childhood experiences, creating work while simultaneously nurturing new family members, or investigating what home means to them, family and community play a vital role in the creation of contemporary art. 

Family and collaboration are at the heart of The Way of Chopsticks, an ongoing project and series of exhibitions shared by Song Dong and his wife, artist Yin Xiuzhen. Nearing the 18th anniversary of The Way of the Chopsticks, Song and Yin invited their daughter to participate in the fourth iteration of the exhibition.

Bryan Zanisnik returns to his parents’ home in Springfield, New Jersey to dig up the long-forgotten home movies he made as an adolescent. LaToya Ruby Frazier collaborates with her mother and grandmother as fellow artists, giving them agency in depictions of themselves, their family, and the broader community. 

Meriem Bennani incorporates family members into her films, “On one side, I almost feel emotionally like a monster who traps family members into this digital world. And then the other extreme is like fully loving and celebrating family.”

The artists in this playlist surround themselves with others to lend a uniquely intimate and collaborative character to their work because after all, no one creates anything alone.