For a second you think you are looking at a Beyoncé video: black and brown people gaze intently at you, while lounging on the branches of a tree in white, marigold and red flounced skirts. Looking closer, your eye discerns some hanging in distinctly uncomfortable back-breaking poses. ...
Sylvia Salazar Simpson dips a spoon into a simmering pot of beans and in one continuous gesture pulls it out and lets a few drops of the liquid drip inside of her palm. She’s doing this as if she’s done it a million times because she has. ...
A young photographer called Simin emerges through double doors carved into a forbidding mountain face somewhere in the desert in southwestern U.S., climbs into her 1980s Mercedes-Benz and coasts into town to collect the townsfolk's dreams. ...
I am a Christian. My editor thinks it matters what sort, and I guess it does. The reason it might matter is that the sort of Christian I am is evangelical, and these days evangelicals are mostly known for voting for Trump (I didn’t), preaching prosperity (I haven’t), and taking mission trips to Mexico (I might’ve). They aren’t known for mysticism. ...
One of the most vivid visual memories of my first weeks in Los Angeles: Driving on the I-10 in the dirty pastel-hued sunset and catching a fleeting glimpse of ...
There is greenwashing – when companies try to make it seem as if they’re not really destroying the environment – and there is pinkwashing: pandering to sexual ...
Chinese lanterns, raised middle fingers, a surveillance camera and Chinese passport -- images of written Mandarin characters made of bamboo and silk cast shadows on the Marciano Art Foundation’s walls in the crammed lower level gallery dedicated to Ai Wei Wei’s installation Windows (2015).
What would my mother think?
Whereas I see coded messages and Ai’s subterfuge, I imagined my mother, who lived most of her adult life in Beijing -- where I was born as well, living there until I was seven before moving to Vancouver, Canada — taking these shadowed objects for exactly what they depict: lantern, hand, and texts....
In 1979, Lonnie Holley made his first sculpture. Like most of his art, it was something born out of an ugly situation.
Holley’s niece and nephew died in a house fire in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Their mother, Holley’s sister, fell into an even deeper depression when she realized she did not have enough money to buy her children tombstones.
“You can imagine me having to absorb all my family’s tears and my tears,” Holley told The Fader in 2013, “I was just wondering, what could I do?”...
Kelly green stickers papered the ground, emblazoned with philosophical quandaries in Futura all caps: “ARE THERE ANIMALS IN HEAVEN?” “WHO BUYS THE CON?” “IS THERE LIFE WITHOUT PAIN?” But this wasn’t just aimless litter underfoot; it was artist Barbara Kruger’s installation “Untitled (Questions 3),” one of the many exhibits on display at the art fair, Frieze LA.
Frieze, which bills itself as a “media and events company,” is an arts and culture magazine publisher that has grown into an international powerhouse, throwing well-attended bashes in New York and London. Over the weekend of February 16 and 17, artists, curators and celebrities descended upon Paramount Studios to see and be seen at Frieze’s inaugural LA festival....
