Long-form Research Essays
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 […]
In his 1932 watershed study, pioneering art historian Aby Warburg accused fifteenth-century Florentine cosmopolitan elites of unabashedly emulating “the superstitious Etruscans” in their devotional art practice.[1]This enigmatic quote—reproduced here in its porous entirety—has haunted art history for nearly a century: By associating votive offerings with sacred images, the Catholic Church, in its wisdom, had left […]
In ancient Rome, social constructs moderated any form of luxurious decoration, personal or otherwise, by linking them to an excessive – and therefore morally questionable – lifestyle. Yet, documented parallels between decoration and identity reveal that only conservative Roman citizens in socio-political centers avoided decorative adornment, whereas others relegated their decorative predilections to more rural […]
On January 1, 1994, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN or Zapatista Army of National Liberation) declared war on the Mexican government. Indigenous fighters engaged in a guerrilla attack and seized nearby cities, towns, and ranches and occupied the colonial capital of Chiapas, San Cristóbal de las Casas. Though an eventual ceasefire was called, […]
Niçois watercolorist and oil painter, Gustav Adolf Mossa (1883-1971) exaggerated and satirized popular nineteenth-century motifs by coating his compositions with caricature. In turn, his oeuvre is slippery, referencing multiple—even conflicting—styles and tropes especially evident in the watercolor La Marchande d’Amour (1904) (Figure 1). Mossa crowds La Marchande d’Amour with references ranging from classical subjects to stereotypical […]