“Instead of exploring the intricacies of submission, consent and trust that circumscribe actual BDSM relationships, we are immersed in a poorly executed plot of intrigue that tries to upend power and gender dynamics in the workplace in a reversal of roles that feels about as feminist as Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), if better acted.”
My BOMB Interview with Alannah Farrell
“Alannah Farrell is one of those rare artists who is both humble and brave, reminding us that without vulnerability there is no courage, no ground gained, no evolution. I’ve long been a fan of their intimate and psychologically charged portraits of queer friends: painstakingly rendered paintings that marry a sense of deep interiority with stage-like drama. More than just a documentation of their trans and gender-nonconforming community, these works allude to a lived reality inextricably tethered to fantasies of self-actualization. The resulting mix of the otherworldly and the quietly sardonic feels like a reflection of—and an antidote to—this troubling moment when trans rights are being aggressively and systemically eroded.“
Read moreI Interviewed Ai Weiwei on the occasion of his FAURSCHOU exhibition
“AT A TIME WHEN DIALOGUE IN THE ART WORLD IS INCREASINGLY FRAUGHT AND POLARIZED, ESPECIALLY WHERE “POLITICS” ARE CONCERNED, THE ABILITY TO HAVE A DEEPLY THOUGHTFUL CONVERSATION WITH AI WEIWEI—ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST PROMINENT ARTIST-DISSIDENTS—FEELS LIKE A MOMENTOUS OCCASION. CENTERED AROUND THE WORKS ON VIEW AT FAURSCHOU, OUR EXCHANGE CONSIDERS THE ROLE OF ART HISTORY, CONSUMER READYMADES, POETRY AND NATURE, AMONG OTHER PREVALENT THEMES THAT HAVE LONG DEFINED AI’S PRACTICE. WHAT EMERGES IS AN ARTIST WHO STILL PUTS ACTIVISM AHEAD OF FAME, AND WHOSE DEDICATION TO CIVILITY AND GRACE EMBODIES A GENEROSITY THE WORLD IS IN DIRE NEED OF.”
Read moreMy Frieze review of the Jenny Holzer show at the Guggenheim
“The violent machismo of Trumpism lurks everywhere (‘SEND THEM AWAY GAGGING, OR SOBBING IF THEY’RE SOFTHEARTED’), though in true Holzer fashion, the lack of attribution makes the origins and intentions of many slippery by design. You could just as easily imagine a statement such as ‘ACTION WILL BRING THE EVIDENCE TO YOUR DOORSTEP’ coming from the mouth of a radical climate activist as from a Bible-thumping preacher. During my visit, one patron sat on one of the marble Truism benches placed nearby to read them more closely and was quickly shooed away. The authority of such a corrective felt ironic in the context of the room’s messaging – an insidious reminder that no one escapes institutional power.”
MY PROFILE ON JA'TOVIA GARY IN URSULA MAGAZINE (IN PRINT AND ONLINE)
The idea of speculative time, in which past, present and future remain open to perpetual revision, has become a hallmark of Gary’s work. Known for poetic, experimental films that engage with and trouble notions of the archive, Gary uses a documentarian’s instincts to underscore the fallibility of the historical record, bringing a radical subjectivity to Black femme concerns. Her work is intrinsically reparative, redressing the distortions that underpin America’s racial imaginary.
I CURATED AN EXHIBITION FOR THE NEW MUSEUM'S NEWINC FEATURING ITZIAR BARRIO AND JANET BIGGS
"Particles and Digital Serfs” features a series of multichannel, transmedia works by Itziar Barrio and Janet Biggs that explore the compelling intersections of science, art, labor, and robotics. Evoking technology’s ever-shifting role as collaborator, servant, and master, the works in this exhibition consider issues of identity and bodily control in an emergent AI world.
My Review of Cauleen Smith's exhibition at 52 Walker for Frieze magazine ( in print and online)
EXCERPT: Wanda Coleman is a poet’s poet, known for her biting lyricism and deeply felt explorations of the quotidian and personal. Alternately dubbed ‘the LA Blueswoman’ (by poet Tim Joyce) and ‘LA’s unofficial poet laureate’ (by the Los Angeles Times in her 2013 obituary), her raw vulnerability and unwavering resilience recently inspired artist Cauleen Smith to turn Coleman’s work into a collaborative songbook.
MY FEATURE INTERVIEW IN BOMB MAGAZINE WITH PUPPIES PUPPIES ON HER SHOW AT THE NEW MUSEUM!
I’M ON A PANEL AT NYU FALES LIBRARY FOR KATHE BURKHART’S EXHIBITION
NEW YORK TIMES PREVIEW OF THE E.JANE/MHYSHA PERFORMANCE I CURATED FOR PIONEER WORKS
My Frieze review of the bleak and lyrical film, War Pony (2022) - my first film review in ages ! →
Excerpt: Shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, War Pony (2022) documents such abject poverty – chronic joblessness, addiction, shed-like trailer homes, bands of kids left to fend for themselves – that it might almost seem gratuitous, were it not for the fact that the region is one of the poorest in America. This hardscrabble land, long forsaken by the US government, is home to the Oglala band of Lakota Sioux and sits adjacent to Wounded Knee, the infamous site where, in 1890, federal soldiers massacred almost 300 Lakota. While never overtly addressed, the spectre of this genocide, alongside many other injustices, looms large throughout this bleak yet lyrical film.
“Shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, War Pony (2022) documents such abject poverty – chronic joblessness, addiction, shed-like trailer homes, bands of kids left to fend for themselves – that it might almost seem gratuitous, were it not for the fact that the region is one of the poorest in America. This hardscrabble land, long forsaken by the US government, is home to the Oglala band of Lakota Sioux and sits adjacent to Wounded Knee, the infamous site where, in 1890, federal soldiers massacred almost 300 Lakota. While never overtly addressed, the spectre of this genocide, alongside many other injustices, looms large throughout this bleak yet lyrical film.”
Read moreThrilled to Interview Derrick Adams for Frieze magazine!
“When Derrick Adams began representing Black joy on canvas in the 1990s, I was reminded of the uplifting images created by artists of the interwar Harlem renaissance, whose art affirmed the power of ‘racial respect and race pride as an instrument of change, and as a visual embodiment of cultural emancipation1.’ At a time when Black figurative art was often taken to be synonymous with the social realism of Black trauma, Adams’s insistence on creating images of Black refuge, celebration and leisure felt revelatory. Since then many artists have followed suit. Sola Olulode’s Bed Series (2022–ongoing) is devoted to Black queer couples in states of quiet languor, and projects like Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa’s Black Power Naps (2019–ongoing) are currently being celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”
Read moreMy fourth and final One to Watch column for Flash Art:
The Palestinian-born artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna’s explorations into land rights, plant taxonomies, and the ongoing struggles for sovereignty in the Middle East implicate this same colonial mindset in the twenty- first century. “Throughout her work, she reveals the consequences of an archival impulse to procure and control not just nature, but culture and knowledge as well. Speaking of her film Wild Relatives (2018), for example, which considers the power dynamics of centralized seed banks and industrial agriculture, Manna reminds us that Catlin’s disturbing sentiment is still very much with us: “They are another manifestation of this classical modernist contradiction of the urge to preserve the very thing being erased, and this has been a red thread in much of my work.”
Read moreMy essay on Lynn Hershman Leeson for Arkive Museum just posted online!
‘Leeson’s “Phantom Limb” series similarly reflects the ways in which, as women, our self-perceptions are shaped by mass media’s inevitable pull. Yet the solitary, model-like women in her photographs, who are so seamlessly integrated with their machinery, suggest a naturalized intimacy between the body and machine that can no longer be disentangled…Made just as this deeply confessional project was getting underway, Seduction, 1985, is perhaps the quintessential representation of Leeson’s “Phantom Limb” series and its cyberfeminist leanings. It depicts a young femme fatale lying across a bed in a tight black dress, her come-hither pose, long legs, pointy-toed heels, and outstretched arms beckoning us closer. Inside the TV set that encases and replaces her head, a pair of enlarged eyes, closed in erotic contemplation, replete with Dali-esque eyelashes, fills the screen.”
Read moreAnother Upcoming Talk! At CANADA gallery with Carol Saft and Katherine Bradford
Thrilled to be part of this Bronx Museum panel on Abigail Deville's solo exhibition, Bronx Heavens!
My upcoming talk with Catalina Ouyang for Kimball Art Museum!
My Interview with Farah al Qusami for FOUNDWORK
In Farah Al Qasimi’s photo-based practice, digital and mythical realms merge in a staging of fantasy that is nonetheless rooted in the documentary. Recent work employs multiple screens and layered imagery to enhance this signature mix of the surreal and archival. Best known for a style of portraiture that both reveals and conceals identity, this cubist mashup is increasingly expressed through installations that incorporate film and video. In the last few years, the artist has been exploring ancestral stories of colonial resistance, the plight of coastal economies amid global warming, and the loss of folkloric traditions in the Persian Gulf. These newer bodies of work point to the power of the supernatural and the communal to transcend the limits of white capitalist supremacy.
Read moreMy third One to Watch column for Flash Art: Devan Shimoyama: Inventing Male Archetypes that Privilege Softness and Introspection
“In many ways, I see Devan Shimoyama’s “Barbershop” series (2017–18), which similarly underscores and resists this internalization, as a continuation of Jenkins’ pursuits — albeit from the vantage of a twenty-first-century artist growing up Black and queer. But rather than embody the objectification endemic to ontological Blackness as Jenkins did, Shimoyama turns to the liberating potential of fantasy, inventing male archetypes that privilege softness, introspection, and joy instead. Known for psychedelic-hued portrait paintings that embellish flat areas of color with sequins, glitter, feathers, faux fur, photos, and rhinestones, the artist’s take on the homophobic barbershops of his youth — places he often felt shamed and unsafe — imbue these memories with the power of femme transcendence: “Creating that fiction of glamour, of decadence, of wealth,” he noted, “is something heavily ingrained in drag culture that always fascinates me, but it’s also heavily ingrained into Black culture.”
Read moreMy BOOKFORUM review of George Byrne's Post-Truth (Hatje Canz Verlag, 2022)
“Besotted with Los Angeles’s radiant sunshine and pastel-hued architecture, George Byrne began obsessively photographing his adopted home in 2010. By 2014, the Australian transplant had turned to medium-format cameras like the Mamiya 6 and Pentax 67, which the images gathered in GEORGE BYRNE: POST TRUTH (Hatje Cantz, $70) derive from (though many are digitally altered)…Patently contrived yet wholly familiar, they have a nostalgic, retro vibe, recalling Memphis-Milano design, David Hockney pool paintings, and the Deco-inspired sets of Miami Vice. “
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