The Language of Mud: On Tamara Henderson’s “Womb Life”
At the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, Tamara Henderson’s kinetic sculptures Sun Spider, Nomad, Sound Shepherd, Language of Mud, and…
Features
Art and the Idea of Black Film: A Conversation
This past fall, the Fondazione Prada in Milan hosted “The Black Image Corporation” (September 20, 2018–January 14, 2019), conceived by…
Tiana Reid on Landscape and the Figural in the Sculptures of Tau Lewis
If you Google image “figural,” you’ll see thousands of images of Disney keyring dolls, mostly made of foam. Since abandoning…
Where Art Can Work: Interview with Tania Bruguera
Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s installation “10,142,926” takes over Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this fall with a series of works and…
Cauleen Smith: The Art of Giving
Fanta Sylla: Ever since the publication of Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning in 2011, I have yearned…
Amy Sillman. An Impossible Language
The modern history of painting is framed by narratives of artists struggling to undercut its representational character as art’s most…
Plunging into the Void: Judy Chicago’s Images
I first saw Judy Chicago’s Birth Trinity (1983) and Birth Tear/Tear (1982) when visiting the artist’s studio in Belen, New…
Antek Walczak. Planned Obsolescence?
Antek Walczak advances the medium of painting as a kind of machine through which social, economic, political, and technological systems…
Tony Conrad. Aural Symbiosis
I met Tony Conrad the first time while playing the carillon at Saint Thomas Church one afternoon between 5:00 and…
The Mask and the Motor
Around 1968 Raul Guerrero purchased a Yaqui ceremonial mask from a dealer in indigenous artifacts (and purported warlock) working out…
Scene of a Scene
OMNES VIAE ROMAM DUCUNT — all roads lead to Rome. In the case of Tobias Kaspar this may hold true,…
Bruce Nauman: Being is Nothing
The Absurd Wouldn’t it be convenient to introduce this essay by noting a general euphoria surrounding Bruce Nauman in the…
The Everyday Right Outside The Door
Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, US; lives in New York) interrogates the nature of painting by creating assemblages that dynamically…
Piper’s Threat
In a 2003 letter titled “Dear Editor,” Adrian Piper asks, in various permutations, that no modifier indicating her political identity…
Playas Only
At the end of March, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., opened the exhibition “No Spectators:…
The Way Men Never See Women
Two long tunics made by artist Luchita Hurtado hang in my closet. One is ribbed and purple, and the other…