024: Paul Harfleet

The Radio Juxtapoz Podcast found a surprise superstar in Stavanger, Norway this year during the Nuart Festival. On a rainy day, running around the city trying to find good places for art interventions, we spent time with Paul Harfleet, the London-based artist/activist whose "Pansy Project" has been going for 15 years. The Pansy Project sees Paul "plant pansies at the site of homophobic abuse; he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy." Seeing that its impossible to get pansies in September in Norway, Paul painted pansies around the city, a new practice for him but just as powerful, or as he calls it, "gesture of quiet resistance." The Pansy Project being part of the Nuart Festival gave us a chance to sit down with Paul for episode 24 of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast. We talk not only talk about the origins of the project on the streets of Manchester, but the various ways queer art activism has grown in recent years and how he has been able to take his pansy work around the world. We talk about his now unique relationship to street art, and how perhaps him painting pansies could add another dimension to his work. The Radio Juxtapoz Podcast is hosted by Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV and Juxtapoz Editor, Evan Pricco.