
Theatrum Mundi: Colonial Farce and the Task of Indigenization in Niles Atallah’s Rey
Rey Dir. Niles Atallah (Chile/France/Holland/Germany/Qatar, 2017) The indigenous peoples of what we have come to call Latin America continue to struggle against exile and genocide today. This is the takeaway, stated plainly (written, actually) in the final moments of Niles Atallah’s film Rey, yet another reminder of the urgency with which indigenization must be dealt in our present moment of advanced—truly global—neocolonialism. Rey recalls the story of the French lawyer Orél

Current Affairs 29.01
City Officials of Busan destroy Dennis Oppenheim sculpture City officials of South Korea’s second city, Busan, recently took it upon themselves to destroy one of the last remaining works of surrealist sculptor Dennis Oppenheim. The officials claimed that the sculpture, which had supposedly fallen into disrepair was an “eyesore” with “no artistic value”, before ripping it down in December. “Chamber” was installed during the 2010 Busan Biennale and stands at 13 feet tall, compr

Patriotism: Britain’s Blind Spot.
Illustration by Anna Seibæk Torp-Pedersen The recent engagement between HRH Harry and Meghan is a funny one, marking the beginning of a royal union but the ending of a Markle-sparkle-ing career. Meghan Markle isn’t the first and most certainly won’t be the last: a woman whose engagement signals the end of her professional career, and the beginning of her marital life. Grace Kelly did it, a prolific actress who wedded a royal, only to end her acting career to meet the demands


Loving Vincent and the Van Gogh Mania
Just like the bad boy Caravaggio, the legendary Jackson Pollock, or the eccentric Andy Warhol, van Gogh has become a sacred figure in the commercial world of art. Whether at the museum, the cinema, or even the theatre, the obscure and mysterious circumstances surrounding his life and death have been the source of endless fantasies that captivate millions. Most recently, this obsession was realised in the self-flattering film Loving Vincent, directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh

In the future we stood apart
Illustration by Matthew Page and Cyril Babeev It was between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when western societies developed the idea of historicity, of seeing their present as fundamentally different and separate in time and space from the past. Industrialisation led to vast transformations in the social, economic and even physical landscapes of western society. With mechanisation came the idea which would dominate global culture for the following centuries: the not

Current Affairs 15.01
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros gives more than 200 Latin American Artworks to six Museums Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, a Venezuelan collector and philanthropist, aims to boost the visibility of Latin American art, and in order to do this her foundation, the Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is donating more than 200 artworks to a carefully selected group of museums across the United States, Latin America and Europe, in particular the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The piece


Interview and Studio Visit with 'the Godson of Andy Warhol'
Written by Eleanor Stephenson. Photographs by Juliet McLoughlin E.S. André Leon Talley, the former editor of Vogue, called you ‘the Godson of Andy Warhol’, how did that come about? P.C. I was doing a performance in New York for the Rodnik Band and he came along to the show. He said, “Oh my god this is amazing, this is like the Velvet Underground, it’s so crazy. Andy Warhol would have loved this. You remind me of Andy Warhol.” It was just a comment he made in a small article a


OBJECT No. 1
OBJECT No. 1: Lagneau (active 1590-1625), Middle-aged man with curly hair, 1620s We look at objects, write about them, talk about them, consume them. They are the centre of our discipline - the focal point and its reason to be. For OBJECT No.1 Dr Rachel Sloan looks at Lagneau’s enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged man. The man’s eyes are the first thing you notice. Dark, slightly sunken, but with a bright glint, their expression is hard to read; the longer you look at it, the

Hello, world. I’m whatever you want me (you) to be.
Ghost in the Shell, Dir. Mamoru Oshii (Manga Entertainment. 1995) The advent of sophisticated robotics in the form of Sophia – produced by Hanson Robotics and the first robot to be granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia– comes as no surprise. We’ve anticipated her for centuries. Her predecessors were the clunky automata that so fascinated the Victorians, the machine-human hybrids in the form of the war wounded with their prosthetics in post-World War I Germany, Furby, Barbie. Th

Marine Tanguy Interview
Illustration by Jemima Hooke Following Marine Tanguy’s talk last month in collaboration with the Business of Art Society, we have asked her a few questions about how her company, MTArt, relates to our ever evolving world. Following the birth of the internet—what society believed was the start of new connectivity, equality, and technological advances to improve our lives—we are beginning to realise that these expansions are not always informing our development, but hindering i