Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Bodies that Matter
Protests and performance at the 55th Venice Biennale
June 2013 VENICE
ON A DAZZLING SATURDAY AFTERNOON, splashed with resplendent sunshine after too many cool gray days of rain, I slowly picked my way through the hordes of tourists, whether drawn by warmth or light, who had turned out suddenly and in droves to… READ ON
DIARY
Eric Baudelaire
June 2013
The aftereffects of political violence, financial ruin, and other disasters (both natural and manmade) have been the subject of French artist Eric Baudelaire’s films, videos, and photographs for more than a decade. Yet none of his work is… READ ON
IN PRINT Summer 2013 [TOC]
Public Relations
“Public Capital” in Istanbul
May 2013 ISTANBUL
WHEN THE ISTANBUL FOUNDATION FOR CULTURE AND ARTS (IKSV) struck a sponsorship deal with Koç Holding to support five editions of the Istanbul Biennial over ten years, from 2006 through 2016, one can reasonably assume that everyone involved … READ ON
DIARY
Gimme Shelter
The 2nd Project Biennial of Contemporary Art in Konjic
May 2013 KONJIC, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
THE BALKAN WARS OF THE 1990S burned through the state once known as Yugoslavia as one terrible explosion after another rocked the hills and cities of Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. The conflagration left a devastating legacy of war crimes, … READ ON
DIARY
“She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World”
May 2013
Curated by Kristen Gresh Taking its title from the young photographers’ collective Rawiya, whose name means “she who tells a story” in Arabic, this exhibition features one hundred images by a dozen artists, all of them women, who cover… READ ON
PREVIEWS
Huguette Caland
May 2013
The Lebanese-born, California-based artist Huguette Caland has burned through numerous styles, moods, and media in the five decades since she made her first painting, a monochrome titled Red Sun, to mark the death of her father in 1964. At … READ ON
IN PRINT May 2013 [TOC]
Cyprien Gaillard
April 2013
The bold beating heart of “The Crystal World,” Cyprien Gaillard’s first solo exhibition at a museum in New York, was a work that viewers could hear before they could see it. A snatch of an old David Gray song, endlessly repeating the … READ ON
IN PRINT April 2013 [TOC]
Zarina Hashmi
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
March 2013
The lines of Zarina Hashmi’s woodcut-printed and paper-woven maps evoke territorial borders, historical ruptures, and communal scars with a visual language that looks like Minimalism and moves like poetry. Long overdue, Hashmi’s first … READ ON
PICKS
Spring Break
The opening of the 11th Sharjah Biennial
March 2013 SHARJAH
THEY WEREN’T TOGETHER LONG, and they were arguably mismatched from the start. She was older, more serious, sober, and down to earth. By all outward appearances, she was also indifferent to the business of buying and selling art. She flirted… READ ON
DIARY
Amal Kenawy (1974–2012)
February 2013
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY three years ago, the writer Nikki Columbus emailed me a photograph she’d taken a few weeks earlier of an explosive street performance in Cairo by the Egyptian artist Amal Kenawy. Columbus had curated a rumbling show on… READ ON