Taking its title, But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, from a painting in the exhibition by the exiled Iranian artist Rokni Haeirzadeh, the third edition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative focuses on contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa.
Bansie Vasvani
Bansie Vasvani is an independent art critic with a focus on Asian and other non-Western art practices. She lives in New York City.
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An Indian Modernist’s Abstractions of Famine and War
In Rabin Mondal’s most iconic paintings, amphibious characters resembling frogs stare out of the canvas.
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Abstract Paintings that Evoke Persian Gardens and a Bloody Coup
Due to the impenetrable, illusory quality of these paintings, one doesn’t immediately associate them with covert operations, skullduggery, and violence.
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From Ancient Forms, an Artist Shapes a New Lexicon
SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates — Simone Fattal’s ancient-looking artifacts beckon from afar.
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An Iranian Artist Who Found a Form of Resistance in Nature
SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates — For the renegade Iranian artist Farideh Lashai, landscape painting became a reflexive gesture to experiment with new forms and animated methods.
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Uncanny Films About the Traumas of War
Omer Fast’s unsettling videos about the trauma of combat linger in one’s mind.
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The Spectacle of the “Other” in a Grotesque Zoo
SAVANNAH, Georgia — Contrary to his gentle voice and friendly manner, Lavar Munroe’s first U.S. museum exhibition is filled with grotesque half-animal, half-human figures wielding hostile gloves and knives like predators.
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Retrieving the History of Indonesia’s Massacred Chinese Community
For FX Harsono, art is activism.
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At the Marrakech Biennale, a Conversation Between Postcolonial Identities
MARRAKESH — Set outside the institutional white cube, in restored ancient sites and the ruins of a 16th-century palace, the sixth edition of the Marrakech Biennale, Not New Now, arrives like a breath of fresh air.
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A Chronicler of Poverty in Post-Independence India Who Found Dignity in the Details
The late theorist and photographer Bhupendra Karia’s lifelong mission may best be summed up as a quest for objectivity.
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Talismanic and Tenacious Goddesses that Resist Femininity
Rekha Rodwittiya’s iconic female figures loom large.
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A Filipino Artist’s Divine Deluges of Paint
Jigger Cruz is one of several young Filipino artists experimenting with new methods of painting, and his attempt to break with traditional representation has yielded a new form of automatism.