Just in time before the end of the month and the official start of summer, here are five books—mostly UK debuts, a couple somewhat farther afield—that will keep you reading while waiting for good weather. GUNK, Saba Sams Bloomsbury Circus, pp. 240 Set mostly around a grimy student club in Brighton—Gunk, the debut novel by…
January is the moment of New Year resolutions. “I will hit the gym and scroll less, I will stop binge TV shows and read more,” I tell myself … Let’s see, I suppose. We can but try. With that, here’s a quite eclectic selection of the best books published in the last month to help…
Compared to the wealth of literature dealing with modern art in the West, the scholarly and literary contributions to modern Arab art are scarce. Despite the lack of historical perspectives and accounts, the field is developing thanks to a number of active researchers and scholars and an increasing institutional support from regional and international organisations….
In late 2019, just a few months before the pandemic and national lockdowns commenced, curator Eva Langret was appointed as the new Artistic Director of Frieze London, leading the strategic development and artistic programme of the art fair. With Langret at the helm, the 2020 edition of the fair brought together a diverse roster of…
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….
The work of Bangladesh-born London-based visual artist Rana Begum distils spatial and visual experience into ordered form. Through her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, Begum blurs the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture. Her recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Mumbai’s Jhaveri Contemporary and Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne. The artist shares with Something Curated, “I…
Regarded as one of the central theorists of participation in visual art and performance, Claire Bishop is a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York. Her 2004 essay entitled “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” which was published by MIT Press, remains a seminal and highly referenced critique,…
1-54 is the first international art fair dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Founded by Touria El Glaoui, the fair has held annual editions in London since 2013, New York since 2015 and Marrakech since 2018. Drawing reference to the fifty-four countries that constitute the African continent, the fair is a sustainable…
In 2019, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town, appointed Cameroonian-born curator Koyo Kouoh as Executive Director and Chief Curator. Prior to her role at the institution, as the founding Artistic Director of the RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, she developed numerous art programmes…