CoBo Social has just published my new article where I discuss the show DIASPORA Exit, Exile, Exodus at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai with the curator Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, as well as the importance of tackling geopolitical change in Southeast Asia from a variety of angles.
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For the Hong Kong webmagazine and collectors’ platform CoBo I usually write about Indonesian and Singaporean artists, and the dynamics of their art systems. It goes without saying that the two art environments are highly connected. Sometimes an event or a show happens which remixes the way the two art systems interact, and that’s precisely what happened with the Super/Natural show in Yogyakarta, by Gajah Gallery.
In this piece I look at this pioneering operation, talking with the gallerist Jasdeep Sandhu and the two curators, trying to ponder what this show meant, and if it can have a legacy for the evolution of both the Singaporean and the Indonesian art systems.
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Here is my piece for CoBo on the Southeast Asian Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. This piece wasn’t easy to write and I have been quite critical – something I don’t usually like to be. But this Biennale really called for criticism, the way I see it.
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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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My series on studio visits is finally back! During my reportage in Singapore I had the chance to snoop around the working and sometimes also living space of local artists. First up is a wonderful Italian artist who now calls the Lion City home: Giada Tagliamonte aka Zada Tagli. Her work is delicate and poetic, and although she’s inspired by eminent figures of Italian culture, such as Giotto and Umberto Eco, the imaginary she evokes is really universal. You will soon read my interview to her, which I realized in November – but for now I’ll let the images speak for themselves.
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
