Born in the village of Kwali, Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925–1984), the pioneering Nigerian potter, grew up in a family in which it was the norm for women to make pots for practical use and sustenance. Although it was customary for mothers to teach this skill to their daughters, Kwali learned pottery from her aunt. She…
Before Nightfall, a 1981–82 triptych by Nilima Sheikh, imagines a scene unfolding at twilight on the campus of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, a city in the Indian state of Gujarat (fig. 1).1The name of the city was officially changed to Vadodara in 1974. Since the university was founded prior to then and…
In a sketchbook that dates to her early student years at Framingham State College (now Framingham State University) in the mid-1970s, the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, 1940–2025) wrote, “[I] have a brainstorm . . . to do a series of paper dolls.”1Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, unpublished sketchbook, c.…
The prefix “para-” stages an ancillary relation: near, beside, beyond, off, away. Across the series of essays that comprise Paracuratorial Southeast Asia, we look at the “paracuratorial”: methods, sensibilities, frameworks, and practices that work within, alongside, or as supplement to exemplary curatorial frameworks such as the exhibition or the collection. The series of essays focuses…
“In cosmic beauty, there is no place for degrees or locations in time and space: Cosmic beauty is infinite. Words like pretty, ugly, tragic, funny, and useful—the abiding limits in the brief race toward death—on the other hand, are part and parcel of sensual reactions.”1Manuel de la Cruz González, “El arte como integración cósmica” [1957],…
“Seyni Awa Camara doesn’t belong to any artistic school,” wrote art critic Massamba Mbaye in 2016. She resists any classification and has always considered herself a singular artist, whether in the context of her own country or in that of the international art…
On Conspiratorial Materialisms Firearms, Molotov cocktails, flags, and banners are some of the objects in an arsenal of protests and revolts. Alongside clenched fists and enraged bodies, these objects form an imaginary of human gestures associated with the uprising. Art historian and curator Georges Didi-Huberman dedicated the exhibition Uprisings (2016–17) to this theme, assembling artworks…
This essay examines the practice of architecture and the roles assigned to female architects in Latvia in the 1950s to the early 1990s through the life and work of Latvian architect Marta Staņa. My initial encounter with Marta Staņa (1913–1972) and her work in architecture occurred in 2002 when, as a young architecture journalist, I…
These presentations and panel discussion at MoMA brought together four filmmakers and artists who work in expanded documentary modes, using existing footage, archival research, interviews, and scripted narratives to produce imaginative accounts of transnational struggles, solidarities, and interventions. Using moving images, some of these practitioners interrogate the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements of the mid-late 20th…
This essay by feminist scholar and art curator Jana Kukaine explores the work of Latvian artist Daina Dagnija, who lived in exile in the United States after fleeing the Soviet occupation in 1944. While threading questions of migration and exile; memory, loss and belonging; and womanhood and mothering, Dagnija’s practice remains grounded in Baltic history,…
In this essay, Guillermo S. Arsuaga presents a critical examination of architectural modernism through the lens of one of the most renowned examples of modern architecture in Africa: La Pyramide designed by Italian architect Rinaldo Olivieri in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). His meticulous study of Olivieri’s unique photographic record of the project, the focus…
In the etching Youth (1965; fig. 1), a contemplative figure sits atop a globe, head resting on a knee, legs twisted together, arms tucked protectively into the body. The figure’s head, which is turned inward, counterposes the frontal, downcast face in the lower left foreground. It is this face that the etching’s maker, Ugandan artist…
