Ai Weiwei Wrote the Book on Censorship
Plus, inside a Black Panther family album, predatory art-world relationships, and the unknown Qing Dynasty trade portraitists.
“How long can you silence the very thing that makes you human?” asks our Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara in his review of Ai Weiwei’s new book On Censorship. The dissident Chinese artist’s “small but mighty” book draws on a lifetime of fighting state control and packs in ever timely reflections on the harms of censorship — not just in authoritarian regimes, but also in the so-called enlightened West.
Also in this edition: a sojourn inside a Black Panther family album, a peek into the lives of the now-anonymous painters in the Qing dynasty Canton trade system, and a semi-autobiographical novel about a predatory art teacher.
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
Inside a Black Panther Family Album
Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver’s family album depicts aspirational homemaking in diaspora, capturing the tension between rest and motion as they navigated exile with their children. | Leigh Raiford
From Our Critics
Ai Weiwei and the Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut
On Censorship offers timely reflections from the dissident artist, whose entire life and career have been marked by state persecution. | Hakim Bishara
On Censorship (2026) by Ai Weiwei
The Unnameable Artists of the Canton Trade System
In a book on Qing-era trade portraitists whose names are lost to history, Winnie Wong shows us how our restless pursuits of authenticity guide us into pitfalls of our own making. | Nanase Shirokawa
The Many Names of Anonymity: Portraitists of the Canton Trade (2026) by Winnie Wong
In Discipline, Larissa Pham Explores Predatory Art-World Mentorship
The art critic and former painter reinvents the genre’s well-trod territory in her debut novel, which makes heartbreakingly acute the consequences of teacher-student relationships. | Claudia Ross
Discipline: A Novel (2026) by Larissa Pham
From the Archive
Documenting the Black History Not Taught in Classrooms
The photographs in Renata Cherlise’s Black Archives capture Black people experiencing moments of love, joy, rest, leisure, and everyday life. | Briana Ellis-Gibbs
