The Native Journalists Fighting for a Free Press / HYPERALLERGIC
Bad Press follows a Muscogee publication’s struggle against local government censorship and corruption. The new documentary Bad Press (2023) takes a deep dive into the trials and tribulations of freedom of press laws for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma...
The Haunting History of America’s Largest Confederate Monument / Hyperallergic
A new documentary investigates the racist origins of the Stone Mountain monument near Atlanta, Georgia — the Mount Rushmore of white supremacy. You’ve heard of Mount Rushmore, but do you know of Stone Mountain? If you answered no, here’s a fun fact: Though they lost...
Miami, Chonga Girls, and Claiming an Aesthetics of Excess / Hyperallergic
I reviewed Jillian Hernandez's stellar book Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment for Hyperallergic. Author Jillian Hernandez theorizes the intersecting formations of gender, class, and race in relation to the...
What Makes Medieval Art So Meme-able? / HYPERALLERGIC
What Makes Medieval Art So Meme-able? All over Instagram, medieval imagery has been remixed, captioned, and somehow reads as peak hilarious, depending on your sense of humor. Medieval imagery wasn’t meant to be funny when it was made hundreds of years ago, but all...
To Vaccine Selfie or Not to Vaccine Selfie? / Hyperallergic
The coronavirus pandemic isn’t over, but on social media it might feel like it is. In the United States, the happy, smiling faces of recently vaccinated friends and family members offer a slice of hope, but the vaccine selfie can elicit a mix of reactions. It’s...
For Turkish Women Artists and Advocates, #challengeaccepted Is About More Than Just Selfies – HYPERALLERGIC
The oddly phrased message popped into my inbox on a Sunday afternoon in late July. It read more like a chain mail text than a note from my friend in Istanbul with whom I usually chat with in a mixture of Turkish and English. “I was careful to choose who I think will...
The Queer Art that Helped Define Post-Blackness – Hyperallergic
LOS ANGELES — “Post-black” is a term that’s thrown around a lot, though its meaning is not totally fixed. In Derek Conrad Murray’s book Queering Post-Black Art: Artists Transforming African-American Identity After Civil Rights, he argues that the intersectionality of...
Artists’ Fascination with the Soft, Tingling Sensations of ASMR / Hyperallergic
Sometimes we all just want someone’s gentle, soothing voice whispering in our ear that it’s all going to be okay, or we long to hear some meditative, relaxing sounds that induce calming sensations.ASMR, or “autonomous sensory meridian response,” offers these types of...
6 Male Artists Making Inspiring Feminist Work / Hyperallergic
We all know about the terrible gender disparity in the art world. As ladies, we live with systemic sexism on a daily basis. We are reminded of the art world’s sexism by investigations like Micol Hebron’s findings that women (here we speak only of gender not even...
A Miniature Version of the Broad Museum Parodies the Art World / Hyperallergic
LOS ANGELES — Scott Marvel Cassidy’s art makes viewers do a double take. Stylistically, his paintings are located somewhere between realism and magical realism, and this sense is only heightened when his work takes on three dimensions. In his new project “Levitate the...
Twenty Years Later, Returning to a Pioneering Black Lesbian Film / Hyperallergic
It’s the 1990s when a young, ambitious filmmaker goes on the hunt for “the Watermelon Woman,” a black actress who played mostly mammy roles in 1930s and ’40s Hollywood films. So goes the plotline for The Watermelon Woman, a movie by Cheryl Dunye, a black, lesbian...
Supercharged Sex and Corporate Control in a Queer Erotic Novel / Hyperallergic
In Lex Brown’s book My Wet Hot Drone Summer, #4 in the Badlands Unlimited New Lovers series (Hyperallergic previously reviewed #1), the artist/writer looks at a world not unlike our own, where sex, surveillance, and loss of privacy are intertwined in a commodified...
A Filmmaker Probes the Magic and Madness of Female Adolescence / Hyperallergic
LOS ANGELES — As a woman who was once a teenage girl, I have a certain fondness for any filmic or visual art that harkens back to that time of intense, unbridled feelings, awkward physical changes, and sexual desires running wild ’n free. Now that I am far from my...
Inhabiting Other People’s Recorded Memories / Hyperallergic
“I turned the computer on and began to write — all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory,” writes the author dubbed Elena Ferrante in her book My Brilliant Friend. This is how the narrator begins her four-part story about a lifelong...
Breathing Life into a High-Tech, Glowing Sphere / Hyperallergic
Back in the late ’90s, I considered going to raves. There were kids at my high school wearing jelly bracelets, wide-legged JNCO skater jeans, and last night’s eyeliner and mascara, smeared and stained. In our 9am homeroom class I could see the multi-colored,...
From Cum Shots to Orgasmic GIFs, a Playful Take on Virtual Sex
From Hyperallergic, January 8, 2015, by Alicia Eler: Faith Holland’s show TECHNOPHILIA at Transfer Gallery left me wanting more, kind of like I imagine a good dick pic would. Of course, like any sexualized image sent between two consenting parties, it’s not about the...
From Cum Shots to Orgasmic GIFs, a Playful Take on Virtual Sex / Hyperallergic
Faith Holland’s show TECHNOPHILIA at Transfer Gallery left me wanting more, kind of like I imagine a good dick pic would. Of course, like any sexualized image sent between two consenting parties, it’s not about the image — it’s about the energy activated between...
California Artists Address Coast-to-Coast Political Struggles // Hyperallergic
What goes West must always return East because New York is still the center of the American art market. California has gone on a cross-country road trip to New York City with the exhibition Left Coast: California Political Art. On view through May 30 at the City...
Performance Artists Use Stand-Up Tropes, but Not For Laughs / Hyperallergic
LOS ANGELES — There’s nothing funny about art. Writing art criticism is a serious endeavor. But at some point, the performance of professionalism in the art world just started to feel like one big joke, and I began noticing a crossover between the art and comedy...
An Aquatic Video Performance Immerses Us in the California Drought / Hyperallergic
LOS ANGELES — Imagine you are trying to get dressed underwater but every time you lift your arms the water you’re wading through pulls them back down. Like a blinded, injured fish you want to sink into the abyss of your tank and just flounder. You can see the...