An Archive of Absences
In this personal essay, Susanne Niemann considers her family history and roots in Germany, and the need to document memory
A Note from the Editor: Issue 39
UNBECOMING
A poem that questions the lines between love, care, gender, and sexuality and what it means to be and become
Down and Out in the UAE Badlands
Film camera in tow, Benjamin Kirby heads to Al Dhaid in Dubai, where he meets an enigmatic TikTok-famous travel agent and muses on the urban landscape in this new essay
Three Poems
New in our milk & vodka column, a trio of crashing, biting, tender poems by Laura Evers on womanhood
A Knotty Problem: Politics of My Hair
When cutting your hair is a radical act – Lubnah Ansari unpacks the social paradigms surrounding the politics of female hair in the South Asian context
The Visitant
A subtle piece of free verse by Lorelei Bacht thinks about making a life and losing a life
A Conversation with Emirati Artist Nujoom Alghanem
One of the pioneering figures of UAE art history, Nujoom Alghanem speaks to our Visual Arts Editor about her evolution, practice, and new solo show in Sharjah
Two Poems
Two poems by Rabha Ashry watch a girl rebel against what is expected of her, playing with the ties that bind her to her bed, a boy, to God. With artwork by Zayn Qahtani
Kintsugi
Taken from her titular photo book “Kintsugi”, Polish artist Martyna Benedyka’s poetic black and white photographs are a reflection on self-repair
Two Poems
“Saturday morning my hair meets this drain” and “Not a snow day” are two poems by Tawanda Mulalu that reckon with loving, existing, belonging, and all the gaps in between
Accent Politics
In this personal essay, Zambian-born Mbiko Mayaka explores her relationship to language, touching on code switching and the manifestation of social hierarchy and inequalities on the tongue
What’s a vacation, Mr. Roque?
A trio of haiku in response to a statement by Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque that Filipinos are on vacation because of COVID-19
POST-COLONIAL SPORTZ TEAMS
David Straange pulls apart the colors, lines, and paradigms of typical sports logo branding, turning them into works of abstract art
On Artists and Institutional Stigma
What do artists and institutions truly want from each other? How can this relationship tread the tightrope between exploitation and care? Artist and creative practitioner Mays Albaik opens up the conversation in this essay
whatever you want to call me is fine
The question of pronouns should not be a question – Hannah Coakley distills a limpid sense of resistance in this new poem
Two Postcards
Two poems by Teresa Cherukara offer tiny, epistolary stories of love and travel in the UAE
How does it feel?
This issue’s cover star, Aurélie Guichard’s black and white photography series is a soft reflection on the past year
Two Poems
A duo of existential poems by Irish writer Kevin McDermott faces life's hardest's questions
Binocular Rivalry
A series of haunting landscape photographs taken in West Bengal, India, as part of Arindam Manna’s graduate thesis