Essenhigh and Mumford — who live together and work in adjoining studios on the Lower East Side — are unafraid to make declarations about what motivates the other.
Steve Mumford
Posted inOpinion
Mos Def Joins Artistic Resistance to Gitmo Prison Camp
“There are currently 120 detainees on hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay” fades onto the white backdrop in the opening of Yasiin Bey/Mos Def’s widely-circulated video published today on the Guardian. The video, directed by Asif Kapadia, shows Yasiin Bey (described as “better known as Mos Def”) as he voluntarily undergoes the process by which hunger-striking Guantanamo prisoners are force fed with legally-sanctioned brutality.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, Occupy art, Picasso abodes, an artist on Iraq, UK art blogs, lo-fi pics and working as a culture industry serf.
Posted inArt
Miami’s Seven Art Fair Goes Indie
The buzz before Miami was that Seven Art Fair was going to be one to watch and that is certainly the case.
This indie fair of seven galleries with solid programs — and some art stars among them — have created a wonderful little side fair that has a well-organized area for video works (which is both inviting and well spaced), a space for the #Rank event (which we’ve mentioned before), rooms for work by various artists to talk to one another (some better than others), but most importantly an attempt to collide gallery stables to see what they could come up with together (most notably on one wall covered salon style with pieces from the whole constellation of “Seven” artists).
Did all the artists fit perfectly together? No, but this is an art fair and not a curated exhibition. It was good to see some galleries try something that felt interesting and less commercial than the run-of-the-mill art fairs.
Posted inArt
Touring Afghanistan’s National Gallery
Last June, artist Steve Mumford visited the National Gallery in Kabul to explore the artistic heritage of the war-torn nation. He has written a short account of his visit — along with a few dozen photographs of what he saw — for Artnet.
