Have a Nice Day is a stark, ruthless, and true-to-life movie about people living on the urban-rural fringe of China today.
Author Archives: Mengna Da
Mengna Da is a freelance writer, amateur artist, and 24/7 sleepwalker based in Brooklyn. Her current interests involve moving image, surveillance, and politics behind what is (constructed to be) seen. With a day job as an artist's project manager, she also aspires to be an independent curator.
In The Shape of Water, Small Acts of Rebellion Make a Splash
Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, about a mute cleaning woman who liberates and falls in love with a humanoid amphibian monster, is intimate in scale but tells a potent story of empowerment.
The Many Arms of Takashi Murakami’s Career
A retrospective at the MCA Chicago charts the many strands of Murakami’s painting practice, from his early Nihonga style to recent Buddhist iconography.
Jordan Wolfson Evades the Politics of His Violent Images
At a screening of his work at the New Museum, the artist failed to acknowledge the privilege that lets him reduce violence to an aesthetic form.
Surveying Landscapes for Clues to Political Violence
Two films made almost 50 years apart use silent shots of landscapes to examine the conditions that drove two young people to criminality.