Giuseppe Penone Captures the Breath of the World 

LONDON — In this era of climate crisis, during which it has become evident that we urgently need to reassess our relationships with the environment and other species, the art world is increasingly commissioning exhibitions themed on ecology and the more-than-human...

Leigh Bowery Was His Own Artwork 

LONDON — The very idea of encapsulating the concept of Leigh Bowery within a gallery space should not work. He was not someone who brought art objects into the world, but was instead an embodiment of ideas and acts that can no more easily be categorized as singularly...

Dana Awartani’s Gentle Reparation of Gaza

BRISTOL, England — Last year, Bristol’s Arnolfini cancelled two Bristol Palestine Film Festival events, leading to controversy and a boycott. After mediation with local groups such as Bristol Artists for Palestine, Arnolfini issued a statement apologizing for the...

Sonya Clark’s Communal Tapestry

Detail of Sonya Clark, “The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya, Sonya Clark with Chaundra King” (2014), pigment print on archival paper (all photos Liz Kim/Hyperallergic) HOUSTON — Sonya Clark might be best known for her use of human hair as medium and...

Caribbean Artists Take on the Myth of Tropical Escapism

SASKATOON, Canada — Contemporary Caribbean art exhibitions at an institutional level are all too rare. Those that reflect an understanding of the region’s intertwined histories are particularly uncommon. So I can say, as a Trini-Canadian writer and curator, that my...

At 82, Meredith Monk May Finally Get Her Due 

“She, among all of us, was the uniquely gifted one — is the uniquely gifted one.” So avers none other than Philip Glass, minimalist composer extraordinaire. The “she” in question is Meredith Monk, whose unconventional genius epitomized the creative avant-garde during...

A Photographic History of Queer Intimacy

LOS ANGELES — A circa 1848 daguerrotype featuring a nude lesbian couple engaging in foreplay meets Matías Sauter Morera’s AI-assisted fictional portrait of what he terms a “pegamacho,” a rural heterosexual Costa Rican man known to have discreet sexual encounters with...

Chinese Bronzes Blur the Line Between Original and Copy

Four thousand years ago, the Bronze Age in China began. Over the next centuries, as the region around the Yellow River became the seat of military and political power, bronze sculptures were created for graves and rituals; as weapons and money; and to emphasize the...

The Artists Who Made a “Sculpto-Pictorama” of Manhattan

With a fiscal crisis looming, subways and roadways deteriorating, and crime rates on the rise, mid-1970s New York City tangoed with turbulence. In 1975, bristling against budget cuts that threatened city workers’ jobs, a group of police officers distributed “survival...

Casa Susanna Is a Glimpse Into a Midcentury Refuge for Trans Women

Anytime the word “discover” is used without irony these days, it’s worth pausing to consider why something is being framed that way. When I visited Casa Susanna at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was noticeable there in the first sentence of the exhibition’s...

The Asian Modernists of Paris

SINGAPORE — It was the good ol’ days — années folles, the “crazy years,” a moveable feast. In good weather, amid the crowd of tables at the Dome Cafe or on the streets of Montparnasse, that stomping ground of the School of Paris, one was likely to run into...

The 21C Museum Hotel Is a 24-Hour Art Exhibition

CINCINNATI, Ohio — When art collectors and preservationists Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson decided to open a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2006, the intent was to help revitalize the city by bringing contemporary art to an unconventional context and audience....