North Korea is so wacky they have their own calendar system, and it marks its centennial anniversary in 2012, the birthdate of the late Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather. Dovetailing neatly with the recent passing of Übermeister Kim Jong-il, A Postcard From Afar: North Korea From A Distance at Apex Art showcases this mysterious place.
Ellen Pearlman
Ellen Pearlman is a writer and new media artist who lives between New York and Asia, where she is a PhD candidate at the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University.
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A Tale of Two Cities: Istanbul Biennial and Istanbul Modern
ISTANBUL — Istanbul has launched a full frontal assault to claim its place amongst rising art centers by hosting the complex and provocative Istanbul Biennial, as well as a massive all-inclusive history of the city’s female artists, Dream and Reality – Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey at the Istanbul Modern right next door. The timing and juxtaposition of these two shows is not haphazard and should be viewed as twin prongs of an interior exploration and bold emergence.
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Festival of Ideas Animates a Gentrified Bowery
Obama laid a wreath at the base of the former World Trade Towers right after Osama had been buried at sea. And, as if on cue the utopian “Festival of Ideas For the New City” launched, vowing to “harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it.” Starchitects, visionaries, the homeless, mayors, artists, foodies, freegans, the playskool crowd, beggars, actors, bakers, and 100 plus organizations bulwarked by the combined might of the New Museum, The Architectural League, The Bowery Poetry Club, C-Lab, Columbia University Center for Architecture, Cooper Union, The Drawing Center, NYU Wagner, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Swiss Institute looked around their own post-recession backyards to tackle sustainability and revitalization, declaring “yes we can.” And for four days, they did.
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Sitting Bull S***: Kent Monkman at the Glenbow Museum
Gender issues and neo-colonialism are having a fine frippery field day courtesy of Kent Monkman a gay First Nations Manitoba Swampy Cree Canadian artist … is part of a small, but burgeoning contingent of Canadian First Nations artists who are engaging in sociological and scatological commentary on the state of the nations, First or otherwise.