Art
Capturing Optimism in Photographs of Chinatowns Around the World
From Bangkok to New York City, Cindy Trinh's documentary photography series No Boundaries captures Asian and Asian-American experiences through food, labor, and culture.
Angelica Frey
Books
How Victorian Intellectuals Idealized Japan and Its Culture
The undercurrent of the book is the link between Japonisme, aesthetics, and queer culture: Admiring Japan was, in several cases, shorthand for queerness and a dainty homoeroticism.
Books
Taking Cuteness Seriously
In The Power of Cute Simon May posits that "cute" is a modern-day iteration of the Renaissance archetype of the monstrous.
Books
Celebrating the Male Physique in Gay-Adjacent Magazines
Buying Gay is a thorough, and extremely entertaining read that delights in several ways, and especially in terms of David K. Johnson's analysis of the tropes of physique magazines.
Books
Picturing the Body Through the Camera's Eye
Body: The Photography Book reflects on the possibilities photography opened up for representing human anatomy.
Film
A Film Made to Be Watched on Instagram Exposes the Tricks of Influencer Culture
The documentary #followme peels back the artifice of social media's popularity economy.
Performance
When Artists Recreate Lost Children for Mourning Mothers
While entertaining at first, Reborning, which deals with the phenomenon of hyperrealistic "reborn dolls," progressively unveils what it means to be an artist in the 21st century.
Books
The Layered Nature of Artifice in a Book About a 16th-Century Naturalist
Insect Artifice is divided into two parts: one consisting of an intellectual biography of Joris Hoefnagel, and another, which analyzes Hoefnagel’s seminal work Four Elements, a compendium of the known animal world.
Art
Choosing One's Own Adventure at the Greenpoint Open Studios
The event was rife with artists treading the line between childlike, creepy, abstract, and surrealist art, which catered to my undying penchant for nostalgia.
Film
Surveying Queer Art and Literature from Before the Term “Homosexuality” Was Invented
The documentary Before Homosexuals seeks to educate those whose knowledge of queer history doesn't go further back than the 20th century.
Art
How Ancient Greek Art Inspired the Ballet Russes
The Ballets Russes had a longtime dalliance with Ancient Greek traditions especially in the ballet’s most innocent, primitive, and erotic aspects.
Film
A Choreographer's Struggle to Restage Merce Cunningham
The documentary If the Dancer Dances follows the Stephen Petronio Company as they put their own spin on one of Cunningham's most celebrated works.