by Mingqian Liu Hutongs are narrow alleyways with low-rise constructions lining both sides. These low-rise houses are called Siheyuan, or courtyard houses, a traditional type of vernacular architecture in northern China (fig. 1). Hutong neighborhoods first commonly appeared as an integral part of the capital city’s grid layout during the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368).[1] Dongsi is […]
by Rachel Kase Hendrick Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, dated about 1608, is typical of the bustling winter scenes for which Dutch artists are known (fig. 1). Current scholarship generally regards such works as illustrations of the extent to which the Dutch enjoyed winter or how the ice leveled class distinctions.[1] The Dutch Golden […]
by Kate Hublou … go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth.1 […]
by Francesca Soriano Alchemy of the Soul, Elixir for the Spirits (fig. 1), a sculptural installation made from glass, metal, and liquid by the Cuban-American artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, is designed to evoke memories of the Cuban sugar and rum industries. When it was exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2016, […]
by Kristina Bivona Section One The Crusher I went to the exhibition alone, as I usually do. I had to wiggle my way through a gallery filled with work I really wanted to care about but hardly could. See, I am deeply informed by my time as a sex worker and smothering my way through […]
by Kristina Centore In 1952, tensions that had long been implicit within Egypt’s complex colonial power structures were brought to the fore. The 23 July Revolution of 1952, which led to the political rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser, succeeded in both overthrowing the British occupation that had been in place in Egypt since 1882 and […]
Are we human? With the aim of observing the invention of the “human” category in historical layers, the Third İstanbul Design Biennial (2016) regarded the simple yet bizarre question as simultaneously urgent and ancient. Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, curators of the Biennial, conducted an archeological excavation that extends from the smallest subatomic level to […]
In representations of gender in art, storytelling operates on a political level by either affirming or subverting normative tropes. The artist’s power to control visibility, to selectively reveal or hide, becomes a political gesture. This paper examines the radical potential of photography and Photorealist painting within this sphere. It applies a case-study approach to read […]
In New York’s East Village in the 1980s, visitors flocked to Einstein’s on East 7th Street to catch a glimpse into the world of Greer Lankton. What distinguished this clothing boutique from countless others were the androgynous, emaciated figures that filled its glass storefront with a kaleidoscope of strange glamour. Made from cloth, wire, and plaster, […]
The body is a moving, singing thing. Every pulse, breath, beat unfolds with mechanical momentum, in a tempo set to the otherwise mundane activity of forward-moving life. Body sound, bodied sound: the pumping of blood, the intake of air, the movement of organs, the consuming of nourishment, and the expulsion of waste—this is the undercurrent […]