First signs of my research here in Singapore. Australian webmagazine ArtsHub has just published my article on the National Gallery of Singapore, which will open to public on the 24th of November.
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Hello from Singapore! Before leaving for the Lion City (I’m conducting interviews for my upcoming reportage), I was spurred by a comment by artist Grace Siregar to look at gender gap in the arts in South East Asia. I talked about it with a few people and wrote a piece on the subject for ArtsHub.
Here’s the link to the article
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When we turn our thoughts to contemporary art from Egypt, the first images that come to mind are political graffiti and militant posters. Our idea of Egyptian art is attached strongly to concepts such as uprising, revolution and the Arab Spring. In this piece for the webmagazine Middle East Monitor I look at how the upcoming Something Else Off Biennale Cairo is changing those labels and refreshing the Cairo art scene.
Here’s the link to the article
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Australian/Uk webmagazine ArtsHub has published my piece “Four ways arts workers can win in the new economy”. I have been interested in the sharing economy and the opportunities it provides to artists and art workers from a long time. By researching and writing this piece I got excited about the future – we tend to perceive our time as less revolutionary compared to the past decades, but actually there is so much going on, thanks to new technologies and the internet. In the piece I talk about three platforms that are contributing to reinventing the economy.
Here’s the link to the article
Here’s a pdf version of the piece
“I never decide in advance why I want to talk about a subject; it just arises from the context. The wall in particular is a symbol that speaks to me strongly,” says Tunisian-Russian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke, to explain her new work at Dallas Contemporary gallery. “For me, walls mean separation. But walls are also skins that say something about a city and the people who live there in hidden ways,” she observes. “I have always been interested in revealing the invisible.”
Nadia Kaabi-Linke was born in Tunis in 1978 to a Russian mother and Tunisian father, she studied at the University of Fine Arts in Tunis before receiving a PhD from La Sorbonne in Paris. Her installations, objects and pictorial works are embedded in urban contexts, intertwined with memory and geographically and politically constructed identities. She currently has a solo show, called “Walk the Line”, at Dallas Contemporary in Texas, USA, from September 20 until December 21. I have interviewed Nadia for Middle East Monitor , asking her about her personal path through art, the Tunisian contemporary art scene and the theme of migration in her work.
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At the beginning of August I was invited to Tuscany for Teatro Nel Bicchiere – a three days festival matching theater and wine tasting in the small town renown for his Morellino di Scansano. While I had to pass on the wine tasting – I notoriously don’t drink – the theater part was very engaging.
Among the experimental shows, what struck me the most was Coppelia Theater, a mesmerizing marionette company. When I came to know the story of Coppelia, the gal behind the company, I had no doubts – I had to interview her for Times of Malta’s new Sunday magazine, Escape. So here’s Coppelia’s tale, involving Siberian cybernetics engineer, Mexican painters and Tuscany of course!
Here’s the link to the interview
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UK/Australian webmagazine ArtsHub has just published my new piece: “The slow truth behind overnight success”. For artists, the fairy tale of a big break is usually only half the story. Years of preparation is often behind an ‘overnight success’.
I’m back at my desk (figuratively) after a few days hiatus. I didn’t go far really. I’m spending summer in my hometown Sorrento and I have been exploring the beautiful surroundings – Positano, Amalfi, Capri, Ieranto and so on – with my partner in crime, curator Roberto D’Onorio. (Here and here our visual diary where we shamelessly glamourize ourselves.)
Back to my beloved work, it was great to see that Global Comment published my interview with Iranian/American/London-based artist Koushna Navabi. I visited her studio one year ago, and I was fascinated by the delicate dark beauty of her art. Koushna left Iran at sixteen and flew to America. In her teen years, she discovered art, and felt in love with Europe. She therefore moved to London to attend the Goldsmith college, in the beginning of the Young British Artists movement.
Today Koushna is a successful artist living in London. Her work addresses the relationship between West and Middle East, Iranian identity and women issues. It is based both on memories and personal experience, but also discusses past and present politics of her native country. She considers art therapeutic for both the artist and the viewer. In this interview we talk taxidermy, orientalism in art, Koushna’s artistic process, her struggles to accept her Iranian identity and her final decision to embrace it.
Here’s the link to the interview
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Here is my take on Hermann Nitsch’s highly controversial exhibition “Das Orgien Mysterien Theater” at the Cantieri culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Sicily. A petition by animal rights activists tried to boycott the show by the Wiener Aktionismus and Body Art pioneer. I look into the reasons behind the petition, and question the idea of sanitized art and censorship. The piece has been published on the Sunday edition of The Times of Malta with the title “On disturbing the comfortable”.
Here’s the link to the article
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The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of the exhibition “Sintattica”, featuring artists Luigi Battisti, claudioadami e Pasquale Polidori. The show was curated by Francesca Gallo at Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen.
Here is the link to the review
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I generally don’t like snarky – you’d rather build something than destroy something, right? At the same time, when I’m in the snarky mood, I go full on. And of course, when that happen, I really enjoy the bravado. Otherwise how would I earn the title of contemporary art super-villain? Like in this piece for the Sunday Times of Malta, for which I love to put a desecrator of contemporary art attitude. You might say, making fun of contemporary art is way too easy, but I can’t help it; sometimes you just walk in an exhibition and you start rubbing your hands!
Published! Graphic Journalism and Migration on Global Comment
My piece “How A New Generation of Graphic Novels Are Portraying Migration” has just been published on the webmagazine Global Comment. For this piece I spoke with graphic journalist Gianluca Costantini, comic book artist and illustrator Matt Huynh and SBS producer Kylie Boltin.
Here’s the link to the article
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