Film
A Documentary About Syrian Refugees Undermines Its Subjects
'A Syrian Love Story' has an opportunity to do delicate, powerful work; instead, like its subjects, it gets trapped within the limits of its own choices.
Reviews
Books
Frank and Feminist Poems About Encounters with Famous Men
Khadijah Queen’s new collection of poems, I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men and What I Had On gathers her firsthand accounts of run-ins with male celebrities.
Books
Zora Neale Hurston’s Life in Comics, Overdue but Awkwardly Drawn
This book may have much to admire on the micro level, but the experience of the whole leaves a lot to be desired.
Art
An Eclectic Assortment of Collages, Cut from Context and Pasted Together
Though the exhibition is a little bit all over the map, there are some real gems to be found here.
Art
Jason Rhoades’s Outdated and Unchecked Art
Jason Rhoades's work can feel besides the point in today’s context — what might have seemed provocative 10 or 20 years ago now comes off as just loud and obnoxious.
Art
Photographs that Aestheticize Human Suffering
The people in Alex Majoli's strobe-lit images are treated as metaphors instead of themselves.
Books
Banned Horror Comics Rise from the Dead
All of your pre-Code goods are here: blood and guns and tentacles and stranglings and hell demons.
Art
The Stories of Asian American Activism in 1970s LA
The Chinese American Museum’s exhibition Roots uses books, posters, films, and music to examine the politicization of Asian Americans.
Art
Overlooked 19th-Century Landscape Photos from East of the Mississippi
An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art highlights the environmental and artistic influence of 19th-century landscape photography in the eastern United States.
Art
From Bananas to Bills, an Artist Peels Back the Layers of the Global Economy
Adriana Martínez, who has organized a multi-faceted collective in Bogotá, focuses on the geopolitical implications of resource distribution in her art.
Art
Grappling with Racism Past and Present in Segregated Cleveland
Exhibitions by Imani Roach, Soda_Jerk, and Anthony Warnick at SPACES gallery explore American racial prejudice across different periods of time.
Film
Revisiting an Antiquated Chris Marker Film About Technology
French director and artist Chris Marker’s 1997 film Level Five, screening this weekend at Metrograph, is a hilariously antiquated portrayal of the internet.