![Image part of Randa Mirza parallel Universes series [Randa Mirza]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Randa-Mirza-parallel-universes-untitled4-scaled-e1726676386175.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
Over two decades, Mirza has built a body of work that spans different mediums, although photography is her chosen tool for chronicling the ever-shifting landscape of Beirut. Her home city, with its complex post-war realities and the resilience of its people, is at the core of her most recent exhibition “BEIRUTOPIA” at the Rencontre D’Arles festival.
I spoke with the artist in Marseille for Middle East Monitor.
Here is the link to the interview
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Women artists are gaining more and more relevance and traction in the contemporary art scene in Oman. Although the history of Omani women in art is fairly recent, their work conveys their singular experience and perspective within a continuously evolving culture.
Their artworks are also truly innovative in terms of the use of new technologies and their aesthetics; they’re aligned with the latest trends in contemporary art, yet steeped in historical research. I wrote the story for Middle East Monitor
Here is the link to the article
CoBo has just published one of my favourite interview from my reportage in Thailand, the one to Bangkok-based artist Ruangsak Anuwatwimon.
Ruangsak feels compelled to fight for environmental awareness. His poetic installations take on this cause, revealing the brutality of humans towards the Earth, buried under a beautiful surface.
Here is the link to the interview
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For my first article for the webmagazine Middle East Eye I have realized an interview to Syrian artist and graphic novelist Hamid Sulaiman. It was a great chat about his work “Freedom Hospital” and his future projects going forward.
Here is the link to the interview
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Donna Ong
Part of the charm of the forest is that it is supposed to be dangerous and mysterious. In this way you can still appreciate it but in a safe way. It’s an interesting metaphor about what is happening in Singapore. In the first chapter we have already talked about the work of Donna Ong in respect to the idea of tropical nature. We looked at “The Forest Speaks Back” which explored the idea of the tropics, by conveying two different points of view: that of the colonisers, and those of natives. Donna is interested in how the narrative for nature in Singapore has changed and evolved: “I think previously there was a lot of emphasis on the Garden City, so we had tropical nature but made it into a garden. A tamed tropical garden rather than a forest.”
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Here is a new article from my reportage in Thailand. I’m particularly fond of this interview with one of the most gentle and strong soul I have encountered in my trip. The piece has been just published by CoBo Social.
Here is the link to the interview
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Shubigi Rao
When it comes to the power of imagination, Shubigi Rao is an artist that masters it. Shubigi has the capacity of completely drawing you into her world and work, which is complex, multidisciplinary and deeply entrenching. However, she also touched upon the other polarity of this chapter: the bureaucratic aspect of life. Indeed, in her critically-acclaimed 2016 book called “Pulp: A Short Biography Of The Banished Book, Vol I” , she addressed censorship, book destruction and other forms of repression, as well as looking at books as a symbols of resistance. The project is being developed over 10 years, in which time the artist is investigating the destruction of books and libraries around the world, collecting video testimonials from people involved in saving or destroying books, such as firefighters who tried to save the burning national library of Sarajevo during the civil unrest in the 1990s, or others who smuggled books and paintings to safety during times of cultural unrest.
A few weeks ago, while I was trotting around Thailand for my new reportage on the local art scene, CoBo published my interview with Cambodian artist Leang Seckon. His work is incredible, multilayered and really a mirror of contemporary Cambodia.
I interviewed him last year as a part of my reportage on contemporary art in Cambodia, visited his studio and find him to be a generous soul and a humble and complex personality.
Here is the link to the interview
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“In the Forest of Fontainebleau, Natee remarried the world. He stepped away for a while from the human drama that is inherent in every social interaction and accessed a much slower, much quieter world, where he was not continuously bombarded by images and input from contemporary society. This allowed Natee to focus on the smaller folds of reality. It is similar to when you concentrate on subtle variations in your breathing while meditating. If you get to apply that same heightened attention to reality, everything around you transforms and takes the form of childlike wonder at the simplest things, like the sky, a sprinkle of light and the color of moss.”
In my new piece for CoBo, I have a conversation with Thai artist Natee Utarit about his new work for his show “Untitled Poems of Théodore Rousseau” at Tang Contemporary in Bangkok.
Here is the link to the interview
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The webmagazine and collector’s platform CoBo has just published my interview with artist Umibaizurah Mahir Ismail, who is known to pushing the boundaries of ceramic work in Malaysia.
Here is the link to the interview
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Carving out time to work on creative projects doesn’t require an artist’s residency. A staycation is cheaper, simpler and focuses attention where you need it. My new piece “Take a creative staycation” looks at this fascinating trend and has just been published Australian/Uk webmagazine ArtsHub.
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When I chose to become a freelance journalist, the possibility of working from everywhere was extremely luring. And I experimented a little with it, especially that couple of years that I was based first in Melbourne, Australia, and then going back and forth between Rome and Sorrento every two weeks. I quickly found out that what I pictured as total freedom, actually required an unusual amount of discipline.
In this piece for ArtsHub I interviewed absolute experts on location independency: writers Shannon O’Donnel of A Little Adrift, Jeannie Mark of Nomadic Chick and artist Veronica Kent. In this sense writing for ArtsHub is fantastic because it gives me the chance to go around and ask questions on matters that I feel pressing. And being a full-time digital nomad is still something I give a lot of thought to.
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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
