CoBo has just published my interview with British/Indonesian artist Sinta Tantra, who I visited at her studio at the British School in Rome, where she is doing a residency. As always, every interview is a chance to learn something and often times the words of artists resonate powerfully with my own life.
Here is the link to the interview
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D_Railed Magazine has just published my review of Art Stage Singapore 2017. In this piece I engage in a different set of reflection compared to the ones I explored in my previous article for CoBo, where I specifically looked at the decreased participation of foreign galleries to the fair this year. The final observation is the same though: Art Stage, just like many other art fairs all over the world, is becoming more and more region-based.
Here’s the link to the article
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Asian webmagazine and collectors’ platform CoBo has just published my report from Art Stage Singapore 2017 titled “Why Having Less International Galleries at Art Stage Singapore 2017 was Actually a Good Thing”.
As the title suggests, I see the tendency to develop a “glocality” in the art market as generally positive – giving character to art fairs which would otherwise be all lookalikes. The regional features of Art Stage 2017 are far from being a directed by the organizer of Art Stage; it all depended from a series of circumstances that modified the Asian art ecosystem.
I spoke with the present and absent galleries to explain what happened.
Here’s the link to the article
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My essay on the work of Uzbek artist Alexander Barkovsky has just been published by ENECAA, an online platform for researching, collecting and advising about Central Asian art.
I feel the work of Alexandr Barkovskiy is a great visual paradigm for whoever seeks to understand the contemporary cultural scene in Uzbekistan and Central Asia at large. Having recently exhibited at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and Gallery Andakulovoy in Dubai, this 37-year-old artist encapsulates the key cultural transformations Uzbekistan has been undergoing in recent years.
Here is the link to the article
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Learning about new artists, new countries, different ways of seeing the world and conceiving life is the reason why being an arts writer is such an amazing job. With ENECAA, an online platform for researching, collecting and advising about Central Asian art, I had the chance to explore a bit Uzbekistan through the work of one of its most appreciated artist, Timur Akhmedov.
Here is the link to the article
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I have just started a new series for the webmagazine CoBo about Indonesian contemporary painters. The first installment is Murni, recently celebrated in the show Merayakan Murni at Ketemu Project Space and Sudakara Art Space in Bali.
Here is the link to the article
Since I have started writing about contemporary art for magazine – around 2007 – I have collected a number of interviews. Some have been published straight away, others have been used later on as sources for articles or in books. Then there are all the others that have never been published, and are part of my personal archive, informing every word I write.
Every now and then, I decide to pull an interview out of the archive, like this one with Richard Streitmatter-Tran, who I have met and interviewed first in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo, then in Rome, where he was attending a sculpture workshop. The new art magazine I’m collaborating with, D/Railed by Deianira Tolema, was the perfect home for the piece.
Here’s the link to the interview
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Italian webmagazine Art a Part of Culture has just published an article on Laslo Iera’s open studio, with the title “Surrealism on the Prenestina” (that’s the street of Rome where Laslo’s studio is located).
When you write about your dear redhead friend, you must force yourself to step back from a work that you saw in its evolution, and look at things more objectively. My strategy in arts writing is going personal with artists you don’t know, and being more detached with artists you know way to well.
I feel it balances things; with my articles I want to give information about the work but also give an peek into the personality of artists, and what brought them to realize a certain work. Laslo’s ideas are powerful and his aesthetic is polarizing: you either love it or hate it – just like the artists who created it.
Here’s the link to the article
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Hong-Kong based magazine Cobo has just published my new article on the way Singaporean artists work with the topic of nature. This is an ideal second episode of a series on artists and nature which started with this piece on Indonesian artists and nature. In the book I’m currently working on, focused on Singaporean contemporary art, I have an entire chapter out of four dedicated to the dichotomy nature/urban through the eyes of artists, and the specific form it takes in the Lion City.
Here is the link to the article
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The webmagazine/platform Cobo has just published my piece entitled “Three Indonesian Artists Between National History and Personal Memories”, featuring work by FX Harsono, Jompet Kuswidananto and Boedi Widjaja, plus a mention to an iconic piece by Dita Gambiro and Rifqi Sukma. As always, I have decided to mix artists that are staples of Indonesian contemporary art (such as Harsono and Jompet) with others that might not be household names yet!
For the rest, I’m in a blessed phase of working (almost) uninterruptedly on the third draft of my book on contemporary art in Singapore. When you concentrate on one single thing, ideas are connecting and synapses are snapping like never before! Writing this book is a great learning process for me and gives me the chance to expand on ideas I explored in my book on Indonesian art, seeing how these have evolved over time, with my experiences and chats with artists. But I’m digressing; below the link to the article on Indonesian artists and memory!
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My new piece “Five Indonesian artists that help us rethink nature” has just been published on Cobo. In recent years I came to feel very strongly about environmental issues and I’m a big believer that art can really help people connect with our planet on a deep level. Channelling the spirit of the times, contemporary Indonesian artists are tackling the theme of nature in a unique way.
ps: Cobo has new flashin’ fb page, check it out!
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Times of Malta’s Sunday magazine Escape has just published my selection of the top four pavilions at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. While in a previous piece on Cobo I focused on the Asian Pavilions, here I take a look at the European Pavilions in the Giardini section of the Biennale. What I have found are a lot of interesting ideas, a few which is possible to implement, others to add to our toolkit for a better understanding of the world we live in.
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
