On the occasion of the publication of Trap Door, the New Museum convened a panel to discuss the realities of transgender artists and cultural workers and their lives in the so-called mainstream.
AX Mina
Artist An Xiao (aka An Xiao Mina) photographs, films, installs, performs and tweets and has shown her work in publications and galleries internationally. Find her online at @anxiaostudio and anxiaostudio.com.
Posted inArt
Celebrating Intersectionality in the Futuristic Netflix Series ‘Sense8’
As anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and isolationist policies sweep a growing number of nations, Sense8 takes us into a microcosm of a world these policies react against.
Posted inArt
In ‘Transparent,’ the Dangers of Apathy in Weimar Germany’s Queer Culture
They’re on top of the world: partying, popular, queer kids with everything going for them. This is not 1960s San Francisco or 1980s New York or today’s internet communities: it’s 1933 in Weimar Berlin.
Posted inArt
Seeing Fractured Explosions in Fragmented Mirrors
SAN FRANCISCO — The past year has seen many powerful, violent images.
Posted inArt
An Iranian-American Artist Revisits Images from the 1979 Revolution
SAN FRANCISCO — Follow a major social movement today, and unless you can afford to travel onsite, you’re likely to experience it through photos, hashtags, and video uploads. But a movement’s record has always had global resonance, distributed through a mix of broadcast and pre-internet forms of citizen media like pamphlets, posters, and zines.
Posted inArt
Architecture for Humanity at the New Aspen Art Museum
ASPEN, Colorado — Despite its reputation as a resort town for the 1%, the heart of Aspen looks much like a classic Western American town. The new Aspen Art Museum, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban, stands out in this context in both height and design.
Posted inArt
Behind the Scenes with a Beloved Children’s Book Illustrator
SAN FRANCISCO — Anyone who’s read Arnold Lobel’s iconic Frog and Toad series may wonder: why pick a frog and a toad? And what’s the difference between a frog and a toad anyway?
Posted inOpinion
Surreal Puppets Retell the Jabberwocky
SAN FRANCISCO — At San Francisco’s annual Dickens Fair, I learned about the work of Darren Way, whose Dangerous Puppets creations feature fanciful characters and bizarre imagery bordering on the fantastical and grotesque.
Posted inArt
Remembering the West Coast Mail Art Scene
SAN FRANCISCO — While we tumble, tweet, and post our remixes of media online in a daily creative dialogue, it helps to remember that the history of creative correspondence extends to well before the internet.
Posted inOpinion
Why Do Short Messaging Platforms Matter?
SAN FRANCISCO — The day before the WhatsApp acquisition was announced, I was just using the app. It’s one of many mobile messaging platforms I use, along with Viber, Line, and WeChat. I used WhatsApp to chat with friends as far away and diverse as Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Western Europe, and with all the other short-messaging apps, I’m regularly chatting with a good chunk of the world.
Posted inFilm
Capturing Slow Portraits of People and Landscapes
Koyanisqaatsi, a debut collaboration between filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass, broke ground in so many ways in the 1980’s for exploring film as a poetic, rather than narrative or theatrical expression. Over ten years later, Reggio and Glass have come together to produce Visitors, another moving poem, at once visual and musical, without words or a clear narrative.
Posted inArt
An Online Community for Young Poets
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry,” Emily Dickinson once wrote.