In this essay, Māra Traumane guides readers through the diverse, interdisciplinary practice of the Riga-based collective Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings (NSRD), which operated from the end of the 1970s until 1989. NSRD was involved in the avant-garde music scene as well as in architecture, and their activities ranged from concerts and the production of record albums to performances, writing, and video art.
This essay highlights the reconstruction of memory through material culture in Ukrainian museums since the 1990s. Within the context of the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts, the Ivan Honchar Museum, and the Maidan Museum—all of which are in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital—cultural workers have responded to politically salient events, including Ukrainian independence, the Maidan revolution, and the current war.
Collaborating artists Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho take a speculative approach to Alfonso Ossorio’s sculpture, currently on view in Gallery 415, attempting to locate an insurgent potential bubbling underneath the picture’s baroque aesthetic.
In her essay Slender Threads, Nancy Dantas revisits the cross-generational dialogue and transnational history evoked by Saigon-born artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s The Spectres of Ancestors Becoming, presented at RAW Material Company during the Dakar Biennial of 2022.
Gaëlle Choisne shares the details and entryways to her artistic practice. This text serves as a record of Choisne’s artistic and conceptual process, and is part of the C-MAP Asia Fellow’s ongoing research about curatorial approaches to art.
Historian Sumit Mandal initiates a comparison of the architecture, surrounding landscapes, and histories of two keramat, or Muslim gravesite-shrines—Habib Noh in Singapore and Tuan Guru in Cape Town.
What is common and what differs between Georgian artist collectives of the late 1980s and those of today are among the questions explored by curator and researcher Vija Skangale in this text.
vqueeram and Vishal Jugdeo reflect on their film Does Your House Have Lions (2021), which was screened earlier this year as part of Doc Fortnight 2022: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media.
Grace Salome Kwami (1923-2006), undoubtedly a forerunner of modern art in Ghana, was one of the first women to undertake academic training in fine art. Elsbeth Court takes a closer look at her artistic formation, key work and restitution.
Art historian Y. L. Lucy Wang analyzes the architecture and photographic record of the 1955 Bandung Conference, revealing the ways in which the event visually projected its aims of South-South solidarity by bringing new meanings to architectural forms previously charged with colonial and historical associations.
In this text focused on how postcolonial and decolonial processes are reflected in contemporary Ukrainian culture, art historian Svitlana Biedarieva examines methods of decolonizing Ukrainian cultural discourse through the lens of works by contemporary Ukrainian artists—specifically those addressing complex aspects of identity conflicts actualized by Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.
The late Zimbabwean painter, Helen Lieros occupied herself with creating solidarity and going against the status quo. Tandazani Dhlakama recalls her trajectory and broad imprint as a member of The Circle, and founding member of Gallery Delta and Gallery Magazine.
