Art
Cosmos and Earth Collide in Pier Paolo Calzolari's Alchemical Art
In Calzolari's recent paintings, organic and metaphysical forces are one: vapors are rudimentary atmospheric gas particles, but they also signify wonder and bliss.
Ela Bittencourt
Ela Bittencourt is a critic and cultural journalist, currently based in Berlin. She writes on art, film and literature, often in the context of social issues and politics.
Art
Marina Abramović Is Suspended Between Self-Sacrifice and Spectacle
Abramović’s art embodies a dark, personal truth: one overcomes punishment through self-sacrifice, denial, turning the hurt into a weapon of liberation, at times literally bought in blood.
Art
Betsy Kaufman Puts Pressure on Geometric Abstraction
Kaufman's sculptures can go from orderly to helter-skelter, making them seem like willful renegades from an industrial assembly line.
Art
Art as an Exercise in Moving Through Grief
What’s clear in These Conditions is artist Adelita Husni Bey’s ambition to push art to be more than an exercise in spectatorship.
Art
“Women’s Work” as an Aesthetic Provocation
While I cheered at the idea that a largely forgotten woman Dadaist was finally getting her due, I couldn’t help but wonder why the art world’s recognition of Sophie Taeuber-Arp has been so spotty.
Art
The Edgy and Lucid Video Art of Rafael França
Video art was something you watched “with the lights on,” as França insisted, without pretenses of high art.
Opinion
Remembering Jaider Esbell and How His Activism Challenged Art Institutions
Jaider Esbell showed us that future biennials will need to look to art activists and ethnic collectives not as contingent collaborators but as authoring agents.
Film
The Power of the Dog Is a Different Kind of Western Film
Acclaimed director Jane Campion returns to film with an all-star cast featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and more.
Art
Rosalind Fox Solomon Captures the Humanity of Everyday Lives
In a way, Solomon's photo series The Forgotten harks back to a time when viewers believed that pictures told it all.
Art
The Jewish Immigrant Modernists Who Dreamed a Better Future in Brazil
As Jewish artists fled World War II, some settled in Brazil, where their resilience and desire for renewal shaped their art that looked hopefully to the future.
Art
The São Paulo Biennial Captures a Perpetually Discontinuous World
Many works take disruption and repetition as their themes, and many artists resurface in different sections, creating multiple affinities.
Film
Don’t Miss These Experimental Works at the New York Film Festival
With films touching on protest in France, China’s one-child policy, and Indigenous life in Canada, the 2021 Currents program stays both culturally and politically forward-thinking.