Sculpture

In creating a mesh by looping and interlocking single strands of wire, Asawa defined an intricate shape without precluding a view of its interior; instead, she foregrounded space itself. The artist had learned the basic premise of looping wire into permeable volumes during an American Friends Service Committee volunteer trip to Toluca, Mexico, where in 1947, she encountered—and briefly studied—a unique wire-basketry technique. While today, thanks to a series of critical analyses from 2006 onward, Asawa’s art sits comfortably within the trajectory of radical innovations of modernist sculpture, the Mexican origin and craft pedigree of her signature looped-wire creations are typically cast in a role subservient to the major narrative of the artist’s singular contributions.

The Sisi Kwa Sisi Collective was founded in 1983 amid turbulent political conditions following Kenya’s failed military coup in 1982. Etale Sukuro is a cofounder of the group, which was made up of 12 artists, including Kangara wa Njambi (b. 1957), Kabacia Gatu (b. 1951), Gakunju Kaigwa (b. 1958), Mwaniki wa Gachia, Zarina Patel (1935–2024),…

On September 29, 1967, William Rubin wrote to the Ford Foundation after attending a slide presentation by Frank McEwen. McEwen, the founding director of the National Gallery of what was then Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), had shown images of what Rubin described as “ateliers of native sculptors in Rhodesia—some of them actually out in the…

Rajyashri Goody (b. 1990) queries food and water politics, Ambedkarite Buddhist practices, literacy and Dalit literature, and mobility and place-making in the context of caste-based violence and Dalit resistance in India. She works primarily with paper pulp, clay, text, photography, and printmaking. What follows is an abbreviated account of Goody’s session with the C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Group.…

The Triangle Network is a global network of artists and visual arts organizations that supports professional development and cultural exchange among artists, curators, and other arts professionals worldwide. It was initiated in 1982 by Anthony Caro and Robert Loder in New York City with the first Triangle Artists’ Workshop, and over the next two decades,…

In times of danger, we learn to seek sanctuary—a place of safety and security when the world we know is under attack. Once we have regained our strength, perspective, and a better vantage point for reclaiming what was lost, we must consider when to leave the protective space that has sheltered us from harm. During…

“The past must not be forgotten, but the present reminds us of the past, so we must take responsibility for it.” —Romuald Hazoumè Romuald Hazoumè (born 1962, Porto-Novo, Benin) began his artistic training unintentionally. Between the ages of 10 and 12, he made masks as part of…

Across Pratchaya Phinthong’s more than two-decade practice, an idiom of materiality and form has emerged that aligns his artistic trajectory along a conceptualist vein. Phinthong discusses his relationship toward this categorization and shares how he approaches his artistic practice against and alongside conceptualist gestures and methods. This edited transcript comes out of two interviews conducted with the artist over video call in June 2024.

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…

The following essay by art historian Talita Trizoli reveals the influence of a Catholic and spiritual pathos in the work of influential though relatively unknown Brazilian critic Maria Eugênia Franco. Taking as case studies Franco’s writings on artists such as Samson Flexor, Henri Michaux, and Mestre Nosa and artworks attributed to unrecognized Baroque artisans, Trizoli…

“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…

Invocation of Montien Boonma (1953–2000) almost always arrives in the form of an elegy. Best known for meditative sculptural installations that incorporate herbal medicines and earthy fragrances, he was a rising star of the international biennial circuit before an untimely death from cancer at the age of forty-seven. For many curators and critics who came…