Film
In 3 Faces, Three Generations of Iranian Actresses Grapple with Oppression
Iranian director Jafar Panahi has violated his 20-year government-imposed filmmaking ban to make a powerful feature about Iranian women’s relationships to art and labor.
Review
Art
Contemporary Artists Contextualize the Work of Black Panther Photographers
Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics & Black Futures highlights Bay Area artists and artist collectives whose work contextualizes the lasting impact of BPP ideology and activism, and the photographs of Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones.
Books
The Radical Activist Ambitions of New Left Cinema
A new book chronicles how leftist directors of the 1960s and '70s used the essay film as an activist tool.
Art
The Undiscussed Sexual Exploitation Buried in Matisse’s Odalisque Paintings
So ingrained is exploitation in our understanding of female sexuality within (and outside of) art history that incredibly basic readings recede into the background and are deemed somehow radical.
Art
Formerly Incarcerated Artists Visualize Healing
The OG Experience amplified the voices most directly affected by mass incarceration, putting the spotlight on artists thoughtfully grappling with the prison industrial complex.
Art
A Surreal Landscape Transforms the Garbage Scattered in Beirut’s Streets
This is an imaginary landscape crafted by humans, but the urban dweller will recognize it as scarily quotidian.
Film
How MASS MoCA Transformed a Struggling Mill Town Into an Art Hub
Worlds collide in a new Meryl Streep-narrated documentary that traces the evolution of Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Books
César Aira’s Memoir Responds to an Existentialist Crisis
Whatever might be truth or fiction in Birthday is used in service of the book’s main question: What has been the purpose of the author's life?
Art
Radical Women Artists Prove Medea Never Dies
The exhibition, The Medea Insurrection, comes across not as an apology but a cumulative roar against the curtain of silence and opacity that renders invisible the works and lives of women artists everywhere.
Books
A Book Attempts to Solve the Joys and Mysteries of Puzzles
Oftentimes it feels as though art satisfies itself by “raising the question” or “complicating ideas” about a subject. Puzzles, by contrast, hold an inherent promise of resolution.
Art
A Photographer's Portrait of Addiction and Recovery
Jeffrey Stockbridge's images reinsert those with opioid addictions into public discourses, picking up where mass media has failed.
Art
Knitted Works of Endangered Animals that Inspire Warmth and Empathy
Fiber artist Ruth Marshall, who used to work at the Bronx Zoo, uses a comforting medium to build interest in wildlife conservation.