Latest posts
Photographer Haydon Perrior’s Favourite Shot
I always come back to this photograph whenever I’m asked about my favourite image. Taken in the summer of 2016, before I truly understood photography, it remains a foundational image in my portfolio nearly a decade later. For me, it captures the essence of my work: moments that are joyful, spontaneous, and authentic. I have…
Cole Lu: “The Idea of Something Born From Destruction Always Gives Me Hope”
Fusing historical and literary motifs with personal experiences, Taipei-born New York-based multidisciplinary artist Cole Lu’s works tell meandering stories of dissonance and longing. Bolstered by references from ancient mythologies, Lu’s sculptures and paintings — made of burnt wood panels, linen, engraved metal, and concrete — nod to diverse cultures and temporalities. On view now and…
Sue Park’s Seoul: An Artist’s Guide to South Korea’s Capital
After earning her masters in Sculpture at London’s Royal College of Art, South Korean artist Sue Park returned to Seoul to build her multidisciplinary practice, exploring existential themes from environmental change to personal relationships — underpinned by a precarious sense of uncertainty that characterises our future. Through a mix of mediums, such as embroidery, video,…
An Intimate Portrait of Past, Present and Future South Africa
As part of T A P E’s SNAPSHOT, a year-long touring programme featuring films exploring Black girlhood, made by Black female filmmakers, MILISUTHANDO, directed, written and narrated by Milisuthando Bongela, is screening in select cinemas until March 2025. A deeply intimate portrait of past, present and future South Africa, blending poetry, film, and photography into…
Interviews
Interview: Dominic Chambers Explores the Parallels Between P...
American artist Dominic Chambers, hailing from St. Louis and currently based in New Haven, is best known for his vivid paintings that depict scenes of play and contemplation as a means to explore ideas of personal interiority. A writer himself, Chambers draws inspiration from diverse texts and movements, creating paintings dense with literary and historical…
Interview: Vivien Zhang on “Phantom Memories” and the Elemen...
London-based artist Vivien Zhang asks us to rethink the imperfect systems — linguistic, visual, and taxonomic — that shape our understandings of the world. Drawing from personal experiences and intensive research, she incorporates diverse motifs into her abstract compositions. Her canvases become spaces where elements from different cultures and contexts converge, breaking away from their…
Imran Perretta Reflects on “One of the Most Contested Patche...
London-based multidisciplinary artist Imran Perretta works across moving-image, sound, performance and poetry, probing topics from biopower and marginality to the construction and deconstruction of cultural histories through his practice. The artist’s latest commission, A Riot in Three Acts — on view now and running until 10 November 2024 at Somerset House Studios — reflects on…
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Parathas for the Autumn
Autumn brings with it so much to feast on: leaves change colours, heat gives way to piercing coldness, and time shrinks into oblivion. The colours change in the kitchen too: from deep red beets and gloriously orange squash and sweet potatoes to hearty apples, pears, and root vegetables. In all, there is a lot of…
“Spitting Is a Dubious Act” — In Conversation with Tarek Lakhrissi
Combining poetry, film, sculpture and installation, French-Moroccan artist Tarek Lakhrissi’s transdisciplinary practice centres on queer and diasporic perspectives and experiences. His installations borrow their aesthetics from literature and pop culture, often using autofiction—the interfusion of a biographical report with fictional elements—to probe socio-political narratives. Inaugurating NıCOLETTı’s new London gallery space on 91 Paul Street, Lakhrissi’s…
‘All We Imagine As Light’: A Dazzling Ode to Beauty and Its Many Spectres
All We Imagine As Light is filled with moments of beauty: moonlight filtering through cobalt saris fluttering by the open window as two women whisper in bed; a transcendent act of lovemaking suffused in golden light; a static shot of a woman reading verses of Malayalam poetry penned by a hesitant lover lit by the…
How the Internet’s Most Beloved Tastemakers Are Making Fashion Their Own
The first ‘merch’, as we know it today, is thought to have been made for fans of Elvis Presley. Colonel Parker, Elvis’s talent manager, signed a deal in July 1956 for a company to produce everything from T-shirts to sneakers and belts, all emblazoned with the rockn’roller. By December of the same year, the range…
Guides
Fado, Petiscos and Saudade. The Best Way to Experience Lisbo...
There are few emotions like saudade. This Portuguese word indicates the nostalgia and melancholy of something that is no longer there but lives on in memories. But really, it is untranslatable. Yet any person has experienced it if they have walked the streets of Lisbon. In recent years, Portugal’s capital has undergone a cultural and…
The Ultimate Weekend Guide to Montreal
There’s no better city break in North America than a weekend in Montreal – a city so full of great food that 48 hours seems not only paltry but almost cruel. I always leave wanting more, and as a result I come back, and back, and back. Probably 15 times since my first visit in…
A Local’s Guide to Street Food in Lagos
Lagos street food is vibrant and abundant: In the right neighbourhood, you can find everything from popular fried and roasted snacks like puff puff and roasted yam, to full blown meals suitable for any time of the day. In this guide, we’re focusing on Lagos mainland. Here are a few of my favourites. Ewa Agoyin…
Art in “the Belly of the Beast”: Why Pepón Osorio Is Showing Work in Classrooms and Hospitals
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, multidisciplinary artist Pepón Osorio moved to the South Bronx in 1975. Informed by his background in theatre and performance as well as his experiences as a child services case worker and professor, he has pioneered a type of artmaking prioritising social engagement. His richly textured sculptures and installations examine…
Five Brilliant Books to Read in October 2024
October is a very particular month in the publishing year, with the eyes and minds of every single publishing professional 99.9 percent geared toward the Frankfurt Book Fair (i.e. the biggest publishing trade fair in the world). Great new releases keep pouring in all the same, though. Here’s five to keep you reading as October…
What’s Inspiring Artist and Filmmaker Riar Rizaldi
Indonesian artist and filmmaker Riar Rizaldi’s work explores the relationship between science, fiction, and technology. Opened earlier this month and on view at Gasworks in London until 22 December 2024, Mirage is the artist’s first UK solo exhibition. Comprising the first and second chapter of an ambitious, ongoing, ten-year project, the exhibition centres on a…
Interview: LYZZA on “Critical Fabulation,” LimeWire and Collaborating with Gabriel Massan
One of electronic music’s most promising new voices, Berlin-based Brazilian producer and vocalist LYZZA is pushing the genre’s boundaries through rigorous experimentation — her feet firmly set in the underground. She has just released an original soundtrack for Third World: The Bottom Dimension, a fantastical game-turned-immersive-exhibition developed by her friend and collaborator, Gabriel Massan. The…
From The Archive
The Studio Museum In Harlem Director & Chief Curator Th...
Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent. Golden began her career as a Studio Museum intern in 1987. The following year, she joined the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she launched her influential curatorial practice….
Interview: Ernesto Neto On Gravity, Togetherness & The ...
Since the 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has produced an inimitable body of work that is in equal parts informed by sensuality and spirituality. Inspired by the Brazilian Conceptualists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, as well as biomorphism, Minimalism and Arte Povera, Neto’s works engage all of our senses while asserting the human body as…
SC Exclusive: Notes on a Siren — a Film Essay by Justice Jam...
Director Justice Jamal Jones joins myth with modern themes of Black queerness and trans identity in their latest film, Notes on a Siren. Presented by Something Curated, and exclusively premiering on the site, the film was shot on location at Palm Heights in Grand Cayman. Jones expands on the thinking behind their mesmerising work below….