At the heart of Sammy Baloji’s exhibition “K(C)ongo Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues. Subversive Classifications” were four exquisitely carved ivory oliphants, or hunting horns, from the Kingdom of Kongo. Two of these carvings belonged to Florentine banker and arts patron Cosimo I de’ Medici. Continue reading Sammy Baloji
Inaugurating her exhibition program as the newly appointed director at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST), curator Katerina Gregos’s multifaceted group show “Statecraft (and beyond)” revisited some of the themes she previously explored and even some of the same works that were featured in “The State Is Not a Work of Art” at the Tallinn Art Hall in 2018, conceived with the centennial of Estonian independence in mind. Continue reading Statecraft (and beyond)
A full century after the founding of the Soviet Union, the title of dissident Russian artist Victoria Lomasko’s first solo exhibition in Italy—presented as part of Brescia’s Peace Festival—feels particularly apt: It takes courage to call oneself “The Last Soviet Artist” nowadays. Continue reading Victoria Lomasko
“Fantasmagoriana,” the Italian curatorial duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi’s offering this year, was a very different beast than Hilde Methi’s starfish-shaped curatorial concept for LIAF’s previous iteration.
Continue reading Stranger Than Fiction
Barbara Levittoux-Świderska (1933-2019) was among the “22 Polish textile artists” whose work was shown at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of a group exhibition that toured the United States in 1977-78. Continue reading Nature’s Warp and Weft
The very name of the Autostrada Biennale holds the promise of a journey, such as a road trip along the awe-inspiring highways linking far-flung corners of the tiny landlocked state at the heart of the Balkans. Continue reading Letter from Kosovo
In her essay for the catalogue accompanying Paradise Lost, the inaugural Roma pavilion which she curated at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, Tímea Junghaus wrote: “Of course, in an ideal world, Roma artists would be able to exhibit in any of the European pavilions, but it is a fact that no artist of Roma origin has been presented at the Venice Biennale throughout its 112-years.” Continue reading Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
In the normal run of things, this would have been the art biennale preview and art tourists would be descending on the city in droves. I missed the last one, but didn’t Ralph Rugoff’s curatorial conceit hinge on a Chinese proverb, or curse, ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’? The words (and their source) now feel bitterly ironic. Continue reading Letter from Venice
This captivating group exhibition takes its cue from Antoine Lavoisier’s famous maxim: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.”
Continue reading Nothing Is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation
Conversation Pieces 