Latest posts
An Exceptionally Elegant Scallop With White Asparagus and Bottarga
This week two dishes emerge from a scallop shell. Both fork from an iconic scallop dish from Beijing. Reminiscent of the birth of Venus, a single scallop sits in shell adorned with a flowing mane of glass vermicelli. On a Marco-Polo tip, the dish is given the Botticelli treatment via the addition of every Italian’s…
SC Exclusive: Archipelago Intuition — A Photo Story by Jawara Alleyne, Labō Young and Igor Furtado
The paths of Jawara Alleyne, Labō Young and Igor Furtado crossed during their time at Grand Cayman estate, Palm Heights — while the three were participating in the Open Palm artist residency programme. Caymanian-Jamaican designer and artist Alleyne, whose multidisciplinary practice explores Caribbean mythologies, normally lives and works in London. Hailing from Brazil, Young creates…
Music, Clubbing and Food: The Ultimate Weekend Guide to Bologna, Italy
Bologna, affectionately known as “la ghiotta” (“the glutton”) because of its excellent food scene and culinary tradition, titillates tourists with its tagliatelle al ragu, tortellini in brodo, and its luxurious charcuteries and cheese boards served with crescentine (deep fried dough pockets) and tigelle. But this city is more than just good gastronomy. Beyond the table,…
Cumbrian Sheep Farmers Turned Outlaws, Chilling Australian True Crime, and the Latest from Annie Ernaux: What to Read This Month
Welcome back to the second instalment of Something Curated’s monthly book review. We hope you enjoyed the inaugural issue, back in March. Now, I will admit some of the books in this, the April round-up, are not for the faint-hearted, but when it comes to art there is nothing quite like being shaken to the…
Interviews
At Centro Botín, Shilpa Gupta Gives Voice to Those Silenced ...
Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta’s latest exhibition takes place at Centro Botín, a Renzo Piano-designed art centre situated on the Cantabrian Coast of northern Spain. Seeking to amplify stifled voices, the show takes its title from the artist’s ongoing work, I live under your sky too. Gupta has long been concerned with the idea of silence,…
Zhang Enli: “An Artist Should Be Able to Manifest and Define...
Hailing from China’s Jilin province, and presently based in Shanghai, artist Zhang Enli has interrogated the concept of portraiture for over three decades. Early in his career, during the 1990s, he created a vast series of paintings depicting the people of Shanghai. Later, themes spanning the interior and natural world found their way into his…
Interview: Artist Prem Sahib Finds Resistance in Pluralism
London-based artist Prem Sahib’s sculptures, installations, and performances evoke emotional reactions through a highly choreographed and honed language of minimalism. Often erotically charged, the artist’s works draw on personal and communal histories, eloquently dissecting the architecture of public and private spaces. Sahib is set to premiere their new work, Alleus, at Somerset House Studios’ experimental…
Meet Tesfaye Urgessa, the Artist Behind the First-Ever Ethiopia Pavilion in Venice
Hailing from Addis Ababa, artist Tesfaye Urgessa is representing Ethiopia at the 60th Venice Biennale — marking the country’s inaugural participation in the International Art Exhibition. Urgessa’s artistic journey began at the Ale School of Art and Design at Addis Ababa University under the guidance of modern master Tadesse Mesfin. His painterly language connects Ethiopian…
The World’s Best Pizza City
Who could ever forget the headline: “Is New York’s Best Pizza in New Jersey?” An inflammatory rhetorical question if there ever was one, this is what crowned New York Times dining critic Pete Wells’ 2017 review of the pizzeria Razza in Jersey City – just across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. In a city full of…
Koo Jeong A Invites Us to Explore the Korean Peninsula Through Scent
Upon entering the Korean pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, the space appears mostly empty but breathe in, and a warm and complex scent reveals itself. Hailing from Seoul, South Korea, artist Koo Jeong A’s multidisciplinary practice — which nods to histories of Performance and Conceptual art — spans over two decades. When examined closer,…
Behind the Biennale: How Manal AlDowayan Is Amplifying the Voices of Saudi Women
On the occasion of the 60th Venice Biennale — open to the public from 20 April 2024 — Something Curated continues its series, Behind the Biennale. Comprising a collection of essays from the curators of select national pavilions, the series offers first-hand perspectives on some of this year’s most anticipated presentations. Following Australian curator Ellie…
Guides
Something for the Week, Issue 7
Welcome back to Something for the Week — your weekly selection of things to look at, read, listen to, and experience across the arts. If you like what you see, consider subscribing to the Something Curated newsletter. Richard Serra: Six Large Drawings at David Zwirner, London Dubbed the “poet of iron,” American artist Richard Serra…
The Best Dishes to Eat in New York City, Spring 2024
This is neither a guide nor a series of restaurant reviews; instead it is a highly biased, very personal diner’s diary or a glutton’s journal chronicling the highlights of two and a bit days eating through New York and New Jersey. It takes in NYC new and old, and includes diner sandwiches, Trinidadian doubles, a Thai…
An Expert’s Guide to Coffee in Paris
Unpacking the differences between London and Paris is by now akin to pretending to your child that the Channel Tunnel has glass walls to see the fish: boring and quite sad. The differences between London and Parisian coffee culture, however, track with the factors that make Paris’s greatest restaurants great. Its most exciting cafés, like…
Documentary Photographer Yvonne Maxwell’s Best Shot
Since welcoming my daughter into the world in early 2020, I have embarked on an introspective exploration into the theory and practice of motherhood; an unravelling of the tapestry of motherhood within the Black familial structure that birthed an ongoing project called ‘HEREDITARY’. Pondering the influence of societal labels on our perceptions of self as…
Something for the Week, Issue 8
Welcome back to Something for the Week — your weekly selection of things to look at, read, listen to, and experience across the arts. From the buzz of the 60th Venice Biennale’s inauguration to a film festival exploring queer Southeast Asian narratives, April promises to be an entertaining month. If you like what you see,…
Two Ways With Lotus Root, My Spirit Vegetable
Lotus root is my spirit vegetable. Its little holes look like portals into eternal happiness. We all watched in awe at that episode of Chef’s Table when zen chef Jeong Kwan tinted the holy discs while in a deep meditative state, with natural hues of turmeric and beetroot, laying them out in little bowls for…
After Making History at Cannes Film Festival, Mongolian Director Zoljargal Purevdash Looks Ahead
Zoljargal Purevdash’s feature debut, If Only I Could Hibernate, tenderly depicts the experiences of a family facing adverse living conditions in Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar district. The film launched to great acclaim at Cannes Film Festival last year, making history as the first ever Mongolian film in the Official Selection. Emphasising the transformative power of education, through the lens of…
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….