Vashti Ali

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  picks March 15, 2022

  Khaled Sabsabi

  “A Hope” is the poignant second chapter of a major survey of Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi’s work, following “A Promise” at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2021. Implicit in the exhibition title is the notion of possibility, which reverberates throughout the show as the artist delves into the complexities of place, identity, and culture—universal questions that have particular resonance in the contemporary Australian context. The works oscillate between representations of the political and the spiritual, the mundane and the divine. The recontextualized installation Aajnya,

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  picks October 13, 2021

  Monia Ben Hamouda

  For “Night of Hinnā,” her first solo show at Chertlüdde’s Bungalow space, Italian Tunisian artist Monia Ben Hamouda draws on her hybrid background to gently subvert modes of representation in different cultural and religious contexts. Situated between figuration and abstraction but tinged with the postdigital melding of high-tech and high-touch, Ben Hamouda’s series “Aniconism as Figurative Urgency” (all works 2021) suspends three laser-cut steel sculptures from the ceiling so that they hover just above the ground. As the series’s title suggests, the works explore aniconism, which in Islamic

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  picks May 11, 2021

  Justine Neuberger

  “Firmament of Time,” Justine Neuberger’s first solo show in Italy, takes its title from a book by Loren Eiseley, a twentieth-century American anthropologist who privileged a contemplative approach in his writings about the natural world. In six small-format oil paintings (all works 2020), Neuberger recasts her own surroundings as a dreamlike realm in which perspectives morph and narratives meld. Boasting a palette dominated by yellow, blue, violet, and pink, the canvases abound with rich symbolism and references ranging from the Renaissance to vernacular art. For example, in Our Path—Darkenu,