Offscreen: Evading Whiteness in ‘Spring Breakers’
New in our b-roll column, writer Ben Lewelynn-Taylor takes a closer look at the 2012 film Spring Breakers, analyzing its undertones of racism through the lens of the current political climate
A Note From the Editors: Issue 37
Reclamation of the Exposition
Nigerian-British photographer Tayo Adekunle's images explore the commodification, fetishization, and sexualisation of the black female body – specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Old Love
Dutch photographer Annabel Oosteweeghel creates stories of intimacy between six older couples, whom she photographed in original 1960s houses, as a nod to and revival of the sexual freedoms from that era
GoodBye
Palestinian-American, genderqueer artist Ali El-Chaer offers a living, collaborative photo series about their transition
Critical
Philadelphia based author Allison Whittenberg considers the end of the world
走得安樂嗎？
走得安樂嗎？(Did You Leave Peacefully?) is a personal exploration of what it means to die on your own terms. The audio weaves together a recording of Ah Bun, a gymnastics-instructor-turned-quadriplegic who wrote a public letter to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong asking for euthanasia, and Disney’s “I See The Light”
Massage Cards
Two UAE-based artists, one female and one male, approach a quirk or glitch of the city of Abu Dhabi – the prevalence of “massage cards”
Alternate Endings
New in our haiku column, three short lyrical turns on a traditional ending. With accompanying artwork by Korean-American artist Julie Lee
Press Record Now
Allie Rigby meditates on nature, aging, and the sunset
the applause of dead mothers
Han Khan evokes the memory of his mother through cooking daal. The poem takes the form of a Garland cinquain, a poetry form using fixed syllable counts for each line
Sweat Prints
This mixed media series considers the female body in an athletic physical setting. Created with cosmetics (or watercolor) and workout sweat on thin, fragile papers, they allude to sweat connoting sexuality, exertion, and other push-pull responses
Kamoté
A bilingual poem by Phillipines based poet Mai Santillan, exploring the importance and history of language, family, and kamoté (sweet potato)
Spare Me
"There is nothing so unattractive as the stage of development you have just left" —Robert Kegan. Poem by Joan Mazza, accompanied by artwork by Katarzyna Pitek.
Interiors
Robitaille’s black and white pictures are documents of intimacy, where they try to find a balance between emotional vastness and formal beauty or simplicity through photographing people in their personal spaces
Woman
A film by Ariana Rodriguez, Woman is an intimate, almost visceral account of what it means to be born a woman in a castrating patriarchal system. As an internal monologue, it takes you by the hand through the experience of coming from oppression to freedom, from sleep to awakening
Symbiosis
The abstract bloated shapes in Oleksandra Radchenko's canvases are influenced by the Zero Art Movement in which the "0" is both an end and a beginning, a life cycle process
Stephanie Comilang’s Float: Into the Liminality of Overseas Filipino Workers
In conversation with Filipina artist Stephanie Comilang, Louise Gerodias discusses Comilang's solo exhibition Float, on show at Abu Dhabi's Warehouse421, and the realities of Filipino migrant workers abroad
DEATH TO DISNEYLAND
Writer, musician, and teacher Godefroy Dronsart imagines the dismantling of “the happiest place on earth”
"This lark sips at every pond": Reclaiming the Muse & Female Agency
Our EIC Vamika Sinha discusses This lark sips at every pond, on show at maisan15 and curated by Sarah Daher, as an exhibition opening up discussions on female representation in art