Spot 1: Borders / Barriers
Out of Beirut
I never made it to Beirut until 2009. I was an adult on a career path. I had spent my life until that point confounded by the fact that so few people in the art world looked like me or bore names like mine. Where were they hiding?
The Universe Flickers
“How do you create a record or generate matter in transitory times when the very limits of language, registers, and representation of truth are severely tested?”
Spot 2: Interviews
Contemporary African Art: Beyond Colonial Paradigms
FROM THE ARCHIVES: Chika Okeke met with Okwui Enwezor to discuss “The Short Century,” African artists, and his work as a critic, publisher and curator of contemporary art.
Porous Cosmopolis: Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman’s many co-extensive projects merge activist praxis, intellectual and skill exchange, horizontalist planning, and creative production to examine and change the way that borders, and the communities around them, are conceived of and function.
We Were Creative Before We Were Human
Freshly back from excavating in the Afar desert of northeast Ethiopia, Yonas Beyene PhD sat down in his Addis Ababa office to discuss the origins of human creativity.
Valley Visionaries
In Los Angeles a group of Armenian-American artists sat down with Sara Wintz to discuss the whitewashing of diasporic artists’ contributions in their own historic neighborhoods – and how to fight back.
Spot 3: Ports of Call
Supernumerary
In August 2017, I was a passenger—a “supernumerary,” in shipping lingo—aboard a cargo ship that sailed the North Sea’s perimeter before crossing the Atlantic Ocean: Le Havre to Antwerp to Rotterdam to Bremerhaven and over Scotland to Charleston, South Carolina. These photographs and notes document the journey.
Spot 4: Atlanta
The Infinite Nature of Black
Artist Paul Stephen Benjamin’s work explores the relevance, resonance, and poetics of the color black and ranges across media including photography, painting, video, and sculpture. We discussed his belief in simplicity, the relationship between interpretation and artist intention, and the experience of preparing for his solo debut in New York City.
clarkston
Just outside Atlanta, one of America’s most diverse refugee destinations.
The Practice of Circuit-Making
To “know” a city, walk it.
Spot 5: Cultural Capitals
Las Vegas: Still Learning?
As the entertainment capital struggles to pioneer a new arts & culture landscape, the shape of the “future city” begins to take form—and it looks like a “strip.”
Viva Vienna
Young gallerists inject Austria’s primary city with cultural capital, fresh program strategies, and plenty of teamwork.
Decolonizing the Ethnographic Museum
Europe’s museums turn to institutional rebrands and infusions of contemporary art to update their imperial-era collections —but are these efforts enough?
Tropical Hangover
Between reality and escapism, magic and engineering, there is Florida, where the swamp is an unlikely breeding ground for global cultural capital and investment.