​

title. Baloji’s Omen

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "The film illuminates the potency of the occult in modern life while exploring the difficulty of extricating oneself from the weight of the past."

​

title. Entretien. Mathilde Lavenne : « La réalité virtuelle est un moyen d’expérimenter la voyance »

published. Le Quotidien de l'Art

​

title. See Two Views of a Natural World Worth Preserving at the Morgan Library

published. Observer

quote. "These tales inform our relationship with the natural world and notions of interdependencies and rekindle deep entanglements between humans and other species."

​

title. ‘Matisse and the Sea’ Showcases Many Ways of Seeing

published. Observer

quote. "In many ways, Matisse used known surroundings and his love of the sea to paint a collective unconscious, in which water becomes the vessel of universal creation and fertility. In doing so, he also sought influences from other national cultures and visual traditions, including highly revered objects and symbols."

​

title. ‘Four Daughters’: Devoured by the Wolf

published. Art Review

quote. "The human cost of extracting these stories, treated at best as mere material, sometimes feels less significant than the message it’s supposed to deliver."

​

title. Tunis : la réouverture en demi-teinte du Bardo

published. Le Quotidien de l'Art

quote. "Malgré cette mutation, l’image d’une demeure noble et distante persiste, tout comme celle d’un lieu de pouvoir qui perpétue des récits dominants parfois figés."

​

title. Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "This landscape of possibilities honors the significant role played by Sudanese women during the 2018–19 popular revolution which toppled the longstanding dictatorial rule of Omar al-Bashir. During that window of hope, many Monas bloomed, and they resisted going back to the old days and a lesser version of themselves. As such, the film amplifies the potency of voice and defiance."

​

title. Tania El Khoury’s ‘Cultural Exchange Rate’ Tells a Living Tale of Exile and Migration

published. Observer

quote. "While underpinned by a personal story of many ramifications, the performance does speak more broadly to an attempt to frame intergenerational trauma and healing through the right to narrate."

​

title. The Women Shaping Contemporary Art in the Gulf

published. Observer

quote. "Contemporary art in the Gulf, or Khaleej, has seen the emergence of Khaleeji women artists interrogating a wide range of themes such as belonging, post-oil futures, ecology and dissonance through their visual practices."

​

2023

​

title. The Met Explores Africa’s Lasting Impact On the Mediterranean World

published. Observer

quote. "By placing Africa before Byzantium, one would imagine engaging not only in the ways that Byzantium (or, more aptly given the historical period covered, Constantinople) influenced faith, art and culture in Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan but rather the reverse."

​

title. Michael Rakowitz : « Il est important que les peuples aussi soient restitués aux œuvres »

published. Le Quotidien de l'Art

quote. "L'artiste partage ici ses réflexions sur l'exil, la disparition et le rôle des institutions culturelles pour accélérer un processus de justice réparatrice, tout en célébrant les artistes irakiens contemporains."

​

title. Maria Prymachenko’s Show at The Ukrainian Museum Rekindles the Potency of Folk Art

published. Observer

quote. "Folk art is a collective experience of art making and art viewing. While it convokes togetherness beyond strict notions of kinship, it also excavates belief systems that rely upon enchantment, myths, and remembrance."

​

title. On View Now: Women Making Their Mark

published. Observer

quote. "The show compellingly demonstrates that women artists make their mark in various ways, not by being women, but as artists."

​

title. 'Storytelling isn't just about the narrative': Yemeni photographer Thana Faroq on nurturing migratory grief

published. The New Arab

quote. "The New Arab sat down with Yemeni documentary photographer and storyteller Thana Faroq to discuss intentional photography, craft, and nurturing intimate narratives of displacement and resilience."

​

title. Celebrating Native American Photography’s Sovereign Gaze

published. Observer

quote. "What changes when we photograph from a place of kinship instead of domination? The show leaves us with a sense that a veil has been lifted on an expanse that requires additional and continued scholarship and public engagement."

​

title. Ali Cherri’s Muddy Affair

published. Hyperallergic

quote. "Cherri’s approach to metamorphosis is compelling: Humans have transformed the material of mud since the dawn of civilization, a relationship that continuously stirs something in the soul and alters how we relate to creation and death."

​

title. Take Me to Tassili

published. Art Review

quote. "Prehistory’s material strangeness is used as a device to question the singularity of the present. Communing with alternative and speculative stories offers grounds of empowerment, which makes dreaming of common futures conceivable."

​

title. Kravets Wehby Gallery Showcases Furong Zhang’s Immigrant Dreams

published. Observer

quote. "Under this framing, Zhang’s paintings are an ode to dreaming, unleashing the power of uncanniness, and a remembrance of cultural upheavals. It’s not about chasing bygone days but rather, he proposes to examine the relationship between being and becoming as well as epistemic hierarchies. He plays with tropes and archetypes to engage with self-understanding."

​

title. Thien An Pham’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "For all its stunning aesthetics that elevate the power of visual art, the film leaves us wanting narratively. It’s evident that each shot has been thoroughly and generously crafted like a single deep breath. Yet outstanding visuals sometimes carry or make up for an unfulfilling storyline."

​

title. On View Now: Two Shows on Domesticity and the Housing Crisis

published. Observer

quote. "A common thread between these two shows is how artists choose to represent abundance and scarcity, which are woven into the layers they ascribe to a home."

​

title. Alex Bass’ Salon 21: Is It Art for All Or Just for a Few?

published. Observer

quote. "Should the 21st-Century art scene still promote ingenious, business-savvy taste-makers or instead reimagine ways to humbly engage with those who haven’t been heard, who lack platforms, for instance, to design collective models of participation and co-creation that seek to break huis-clos kinship?

​

title. Alexis Neophytides and Andres “Jay” Molina’s Fire Through Dry Grass

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "The film centers justice as an avatar of humanity. Men, who have been on a personal journey of redemption, continue to be punished for inexistent deeds."

​

title. The Fire of Origins

published. Art Review

quote. "But BISO’s third edition, which opens today, takes place in a radically transformed landscape compared to its 2019 inaugural edition, with alarming levels of violence and insecurity that have displaced nearly 2 million Burkinabè. How can a young institution like BISO survive in that context?"

​

title. The Yearnings of Cassi Namoda’s Gentle Rain

published. Observer

quote. "Namoda uses a modernist palette applied to a minimalist expression to create collage-like chronicles that resonate with cultural anthropology, sequential art and reinterpreted social realism."

​

title. Four Shows in Tribeca on Reimagined Figuration

published. Observer

quote. "In Tribeca, four exhibits of work by contemporary artists explore the power of representation in paintings, sculpture and installations. They question our assumptions of beauty and who gets excluded from mainstream narratives, as Ugo Rondinone, Michael Rakowitz, Jesse Mokrin and Roberto Lugo offer fresh perspectives on iconographies and how we relate to them."

​

title. What Does Zendaya Have to Do with Beauty?

published. Art Review

quote. "Ancient Mediterranean cultures used pigments, and not engaging with a more diverse chromatic palette reinforces whiteness – and does little to dethrone an iconography that often inserted subjects of colour to compliment the status of white subjects."

​

title. What to See at the 2023 Armory Show

published. Observer

 

title. What Not to Miss at PHOTOFAIRS New York

published. Observer

​

title. The Scream of Nature: Munch and Reflections on the Anthropocene at The Clark

published. Observer

quote. "What Munch does is capture the edge of a continuous movement via swirls and determined undulations, sculptural brushstrokes, organic matter from his plein-air practice and a distorted lens that becomes elevated."

​

title. Picasso and the Middle East: How Arab art embraced Cubism

published. Middle East Eye

quote. "Picasso never travelled to the Arab world yet his distinctive style became central to emerging Arab modern art movements and manifesto."

​

title. Joumana Medlej: Calligraphy artist and Kufi knowledge sharer

published. The New Arab

quote. "This artwork, which she hopes to complete by autumn, interrogates the unseen and transcendence, via letters and numbers, an alphanumerical system used by Arabs, called abjad or hisab al-jummal."

​

title. The Living Altars of Edgar Calel

published. Observer

quote. "Not all this knowledge has been consigned in writing. Discussions about translability, syncretism and intertextuality, which typically center a mainstream, Western-dominant view of art’s expressions and functions, escape Calel’s practice."

​

title. Eight MENA photographers reflect on environmental degradation and a grim present

published. The New Arab

quote. "In some ways then, water is both a past and a future. Amongst so much strife and numbness, maybe it is our shared fate that ultimately unites people, we want to believe. But through this constellation, we collect more testimonies of fragmentation and despair."

​

title. Youssef Chebbi’s Ashkal

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "In its depiction of long days and nights of confusion and mysteries, one can sketch an allegory of the Tunisian Revolution itself—an incomplete process, an uncertain maze, a country as a terrain vague where fallen heroes and desperate citizens burn under the weight of unfulfilled expectations."

​

title. On View: Six Art Shows to See in London This Summer

published. Observer

quote. "For British Black artist Julien, archives serve to resurrect forgotten, non-dominant narratives. They are a creative labyrinth enabling self-expression and self-reflection on the space Black bodies occupy across our collective imagination, unearthing vibrant ways of remembering."

​

title. On View Now: Four Art Shows in Chelsea to See Off-Frieze

published. Observer

quote. "Day Jackson sketches a topography of ambiguity, in that most of his work suggests moments of primordial creation and post-apocalyptic doom, an irresistible attraction and a dread. In other words, the two sides of the sublime."

​

title. 1-54’s Annual Fair of Contemporary African Art Returns to Harlem

published. Observer

quote. "These are some examples of the stunning portraits on view in which Mivekannin exquisitely questions who gets to inhabit which bodies and the extent to which visual qualifiers perpetuate signs of power and dominance."

​

title. On View Now: What to See at Frieze New York 2023

published. Observer

quote. "One takeaway: the blue-chip galleries seem to pack the most punch this year."

​

title. The Rise of the Contemporary Artist-Historian

published. Observer

quote. "The artist-historian questions ownership and liminality but also contributes to redefining the role of the critic."

​

title. Yayoi Kusama Returns to David Zwirner with ‘I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers’

published. Observer

quote. Kusama still dreams and hopes as her titles suggest. Their whimsicality can feel at odds with our current craving for less hyperbolic extravagance and deeper, more sober forms of human connection."

​

title. 'We need to push back at art from the West': The Gulf as a cultural hub

published. Middle East Eye

quote. "In the contemporary art scene, a challenge for these institutions will be to define their communities and audiences for long-term and meaningful growth."

​

title. Curating a postcolonial vision at Sharjah Biennial 15 with Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi

published. The New Arab

quote. "As it becomes evident when visiting the 19 venues of the Biennial, the postcolonial world presented in Sharjah is made up of various worlds. Yet there are commonalities, shared emotions, and experiences that bind individuals and communities together."

​

title. Omar Ba Paints the Pride and Pain of the Colonized

published. Hyperallergic

quote. "In art coalescing with a public-facing affirmation of identity, Ba’s contemptuous — and, at times, satirical — take on oppression gives way to a new history, in which Black people choose to remember as they please."

​

title. À Paris, l’Institut du monde arabe célèbre l’Algérie heureuse de Baya

published. Middle East Eye (FR)

quote. "Baya exprime une joie de vivre, une explosion de couleurs vives et dansantes. Dans un bestiaire composé de paons et d’oiseaux, les formes humaines, animales et végétales coexistent en harmonie en tant que créatures divines exubérantes."

​

2022

​

title. Rummana Hussain and the ghost of female Muslim heroes

published. The New Arab

quote. "She wanted to say, we can turn the hate in love, we can turn the oppressed, the victims, into heroes they will one day celebrate. We can tell our own stories. They matter."

​

title. Korean Musical Traditions Meet Greek Tragedy in Trojan Women

published. Hyperallergic

quote. "While in keeping with the original characters of the Greek play, this production and its Korean cast playfully re-interpret Western tragedy using Korea’s expansive musical culture, demonstrating the cross-cultural resonances of traditional and contemporary storytelling devices."

​

title. Review: ‘Dodi & Diana’ Asks if a Relationship Can Survive the Past

published. Observer

quote. "Yet the play moves from reunion to confrontation, from marital bliss to contrived penance, as the couple’s imposed intimacy unearths lies and brutal truths."

​

title. Biennale Report: The Venice Biennale Celebrates the Feminine

published. Observer

quote. "Surrealism is first about a renegotiation of reality, a fundamental jump and audacity, an unapologetic coup against impossibility that transcends the aesthetically weird and daring with a reflection on perception, existence, and alterity."

​

title. Tunisia’s “Dream City” Festival Needs Awakening

published. Hyperallergic

quote. "But no matter how strong Dream City’s dream may be, it’s hard to mask the reality of today’s hardships in Tunisia."

​

title. Rithy Panh’s Everything Will Be Ok and Irradiés

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "Panh believes in the power of transmission and storytelling to prevent further wrongdoings. There is little distance between subject and object in his philosophy of cinema. The magic of film lies in this intimacy."

​

title. No Narrative to Debate: Artist Raheleh Filsoofi Knows Iran, Clay, and Migration

published. Observer

quote. "Childish and innocent at first, rope skipping echoes with deeper connections, such as with the possibility of freedom after years of entrapment and the difficult embodiment of a migrant’s experience. She’s never quite landing on solid grounds and constantly picks herself up—to keep going."

​

title. Double Fair Report: The Armory Show and Art on Paper Pack a Punch in 2022

published. Observer

quote. "Overall, the Armory Show paradoxically delivered in what it lacked: intimate disruptions, sculptures, and textiles."

​

title. Aicon Gallery Presents Colorful Victor Ekpuk and Natvar Bhavsar’s Pigments in Parallel Exhibitions

published. Observer

quote. "Where Ekpuk communicates visceral love and violence, Bhavsar’s diffused light appears more forgiving but no less profound."

​

title. Review: Acclaimed Francophone Musical ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ Premieres in New York City

published. Observer

quote. "Yet for all its medieval resonances, Notre Dame de Paris is a show that speaks to today’s unsettling violence, incarnated in relentless victim-blaming and racism. Esmeralda combines everything that men of power hate; she’s an unapologetic lower-class, foreign-born woman who follows her heart. Of what should she repent?"

​

title. War and Trauma in Yemen: Asim Abdulaziz’s “1941”

published. The Markaz Review

quote. "In focusing on the human scale, Abdulaziz tries to understand how war shapes and transforms — an event seen as a disorientation, numbness, and nudge."

​

title. Mamadou Sarr and Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s Afrique sur Seine

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "Maybe by insisting so much on this desire to abolish otherness, Afrique sur Seine unintentionally reveals insecurities and prejudices already present in the 1950s, hinting at what Frantz Fanon had already analyzed as “black skin, white masks” in his namesake book released in 1952."

​

title. Artists Lydia Ourahmane and Cristina Iglesias Both Have NYC Shows Grasping Human History and Our Environmental Culture

published. Observer

quote. "The camera alternates between licking the basking, blinding light of the desert, to stroking the more subdued and mysterious shadows of caves where silhouettes of ancestors, animals, and spirits project the spectral remanence of a lost world, the lost city of Sefar."

​

title. Licence to Chill: Why Is Lofi Girl Our Dream Study Partner?

published. Elephant Magazine

quote. "Beyond playfulness, Lofi Girl’s popularity hints at a craving for slowness and a desire for authenticity in an oversaturated digital culture that feeds on insecurities and consumerism."

​

title. Photographer Naima Green Is Documenting the Afro-Queer Present

published. Observer

quote. "In documenting an Afro-queer present around her, Green bears witness to conjugated lives."

​

title. The Pilgrimage of the Soul by Kathia St. Hilaire

published. Burnaway Magazine

quote. "The artist imagines a firmament, searching for the space where angels are said to populate and from which they attend to our lives."

​

title. Omar Offendum revives the memory of New York's Little Syria through music

published. The New Arab

quote. "Little Syria perpetuates the pleasing good immigrant story, and yes it’s a lovely attempt at mythologising an answer to the perennial 'where do you come from?' But do we need to be likeable to simply exist? And for whom?"

​

title. This Weekend Is All About Frieze New York and the Rebirth of the Art Fair

published. Observer

quote. "Back to art and the fair’s common thread which centers on the body as both speculation and projection, we’re drawn to its expanding realm—a froth, a mirage, a concern, a condition, a proposition, a liberation, organs, blood, flesh, sweat, and so much more."

​

title. Chinese Artist Sun Xun Turned His Hotel Quarantine into a Studio of Infinite Freedom

published. Observer

quote. "In this search for expansive movement, he perhaps indirectly emulates one of his protagonists, Xiaozhi, who travels to the land of Luocha described in his postponed solo show as 'a nation with no history, no memory' ruled by a ghost."

​

title. Film Review: “How to Kill a Cloud” Brings Rain to the UAE

published. The Markaz Review

quote. "How to Kill a Cloud brings up questions that aren’t anodyne — from the role of scientists as proxy demiurges deployed by an authoritarian state and regional military power, to the uncertain ownership of clouds (national, global good?), and the looming threat of climate-related terrorism, which could unleash floods or droughts upon dedicated targets."

​

title. Emilija Škarnulytė’s Short Film ‘Aldona’ Is a Must-Stream for Eastern European Film Lovers

published. Observer

quote. "Her condition coincided with the Chernobyl power plant explosion and doctors think the two events are related. In Aldona’s contamination and struggle for autonomy, we project Lithuania’s past and affirmation towards independence."  

​

title. Three Gallery Shows in New York: Hend Samir, Lalla Essaydi, and Walid Raad

published. Observer

quote. "Raad reinstates a prismatic blurriness; like watercolor, his imaginary brushes bleed into shapes. Imperfect narration serves as a significant medium to incarnate history and to contribute to intergenerational memory."

​

title. Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s The Gravedigger’s Wife

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote."In this decrepit scenery, Guled and Nasra’s love channels an aesthetic act of resistance. The film’s play with color is pure aesthetic delight. Lighting shifts from viridian green in nighttime settings outside, to warm hues in the tender and humble one-room family home."

​

title. Room with a Viewpoint: Making a Space to Reflect on Art

published. Elephant Magazine

quote. "Experiencing art carries both intimate and collective forms, two dimensions that are crucially absent from Studiolo."

​

title. 'The sublime is an experience looking for context': Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi's Le Chant de l’Ardent Désir

published. The New Arab

quote. "Through a visual lexicon bearing witness to human suffering and dignity, Rachid Koraïchi invents a new performative grammar to challenge the limits of representation and indifference."

​

title. Three Exhibitions in New York City of Seven Western African Artists

published. Observer

quote. "Adomako seems to linger on the poetic properties of faces which oscillate between a surface of immensity and as a defining enclosure. Geisha and Bull in the fields (2017) hints at the tension between duality and self-affirming identity, fusing and colliding worlds. Faces blend into each other and create an epistemic confusion."

​

title. Do We Really Need a Mona Lisa Immersive Experience?

published. Hyperallergic, picked up by Courrier International

quote. "The show’s trailer clearly introduces the artwork’s status, as an “art superstar,” contributing to the skewed view of equating “good art” with moneymaking. In doing so, it consolidates structural inequalities, rather than doing something to meaningfully level the playing field."

​

title. Three Songs for Benazir: A heartfelt plea for a new, free Afghanistan

published. The New Arab

quote. "When guns want to silence harmless human ecstasy, colour and music, is there hope to sing and dance again in Afghanistan?"

​

title. Neil Jenney’s Modern Africa Series in “American Realism Today” at Gagosian Gallery

published. Observer

quote. "Jenney’s “Modern Africa” falls short of a radical, Surrealist proposal and shrinks to the miniature of a kitsch background when it could have offered the possibility of a vibrant homage to bustling countries and cultures (plural matters)."

​

2021

​

title. 'The Other Side of Silence': Hrair Sarkissian exhibited at the Sharjah Art Foundation

published. The New Arab

quote. "Sarkissian dives in the uncanny in his eerily quiet snapshots of mundane-looking squares. Taken early morning, the photographs – a macabre stage once the viewer understands their theatricality – strikes by an absence of visible bodies. Sarkissian fights against erasure, against normalising the abnormal. His still-life squares whisper to us, would you want to die this way, in this place?"

​

title. “Detail from a Mural” at Salon 94 Honors the Influential Artist Ahmed Morsi

published. Observer

quote. "In the airy and light-filled room of New York’s Upper East Side, Salon 94 presents Morsi’s artworks, spanning from 1948 to 2010. They carry a distinctive uncanniness, reminiscence, and the symbolic, gentle movement and hypnotic hues of the Alexandrian sea he continues to miss."

​

title. Ibrahim Mursal’s The Art of Sin: Who decides what is normal?

published. The Brooklyn Rail

quote. "Umar undergoes a difficult physical transformation prior to his long-awaited return. He shaves his head. He is visibly nervous and struggles to hide his emotions. He misses family members whom he may not see again for several years. 'This is my country,' he simply says, as people answer when asked why they love the person they love. They just do."

​

title. Living On the Edge: Journeys Through the Outer Fringes of Paris

published. Elephant Magazine

quote. "Throughout Périphérique, young people try to reclaim geographies as best they can: in the building corridors, entrance lobbies, and contested communal terrains. Sport is an escape and friendship an extension of family. Women make fleeting appearances in what remain male-dominated spaces where gender roles are rigidly assigned."

​

title. Remembering Etel Adnan: Between nature, art and belonging

published. The New Arab

quote. "Etel Adnan did not become the architect she wanted to be. Instead, the visual artist and writer built scaffoldings, temples of memory, nostalgia and justice which we cannot always see in physical expression but inexpressibly and intimately feel in our hearts."

​

title. Hilma af Klint’s “Tree of Knowledge” Watercolors on Display at David Zwirner

published. Observer

quote. "Af Klint’s trees cast a shadow and thus convey nuance and intensity. Her interpretation of this theme is prismatic and complex. Her trees come alive under gentle strokes, with heart-shaped crowns delicately framing higher spheres. A halo, womb-like shape embraces the trees and within them, we find angular and binary constructions suggesting opposition and necessary complementarity."

​

title. 'Alternative Narratives: Islamic Mythology, Reimagined': Self-representation and identity in the digital age

published. The New Arab

quote. "His heavens start with the space closest to the artist – an object of love, a heart – to the more spiritual, eventually reaching the divine. Samman draws a geography of desire, connectivity and outlines in the ascending concentric circles how we situate our place on Earth and in celestial spheres."

​

title. Transience, Transformation and the Iridescent Work of Gabriel de la Mora

published. Elephant Magazine

quote. "The artworks in Lepidoptera are metaphorical portals, inviting us through their shape, construction and extraordinary colour-shifting ability to meditate on finality and the chance of starting anew."

​

title. 10 Artists to Discover at the 2021 New Museum Triennial

published. Artsy

quote. "Taking its title from a Brazilian proverb, the exhibition borrows from the phrase the notion of limits, tenacity, and inevitable decay, and reminds us that one cannot be understood without the other."

​

title. Before the Rise: Recreating the Forgotten Dubai of the 1970s

published. Elephant Magazine

quote. "Yet myth-building is by essence political. As Reisz reminds us, it’s essential to historicise the city as a living, breathing space of past, present and future."

​

title. Vasily Kandinsky Brings Life to the Guggenheim

published. Observer

quote. "Kandinsky’s non-objective leans towards an exploration of the subconscious; its form is multidimensional and freeing. His art conveys a sensation of memory but also carries elements of a collective unconsciousness. For Kandinsky, art is an experience of spiritual elevation. Harmony coexists with discord on a canvas as much as in the fleeting space called life."

​

title. ‘Art on Paper’ at Pier 36 Held for the First Time Since March 2020

published. Observer

quote."In Green’s sculpture, book pages are whimsically folded and superimposed, mimicking the organicity of honeycombed, alveolar patterns which together create a wall, a sanctuary, the softness of a retreat, perhaps even the insides of a creature. It’s an introvert’s shelter, a silent refuge silencing the sirens."

​

title. In Transit

published. Mekong Review

quote. "It doesn’t feel so long ago that I visited Anlong Veng on my way to Preah Vihear temple. En route, in a humble roadside wooden shack, I had eaten a breakfast I still think about often: rice and a perfectly fried egg with a generous, runny yolk and a bit of glutamate sprinkled over it for flavour."

​

title. The Louvre Shouldn’t Exhibit Trafficked Antiquities from Libya and Syria

published. Hyperallergic

quote. "The museum views their presence as a testament, a contribution to increased public awareness on the issue of looting — except it forgets that it is already a violent graveyard of colonial-era cultural trophies removed from their homelands under dubious circumstances."

​

title. Visiting Martin Roth’s Experimental Plant Concert Where Ruins Meet Nature

published. Observer

quote. "Overgrown, the former City Club is a Romantic dream. It feels like stepping in the 18th and 19th-century ruin paintings of Canaletto, William Turner or Hubert Robert. Leaning towards familiar melancholy, I could imagine French writer Chateaubriand’s sensation standing in the Colosseum apprehending the decrepitude of the world."

​

title. Asia Society Triennial “We Do Not Dream Alone” Unifies Artists Across Continents

published. Observer

quote. "Eternity is both female and male which is to say, it is neither. But the conjoined statues are also telling the story of a sophisticated Khmer artefact interrupting Venus’s majesty as an enduring symbol of Western arrogance and its jealous appropriation of what constitutes 'civilization'."

​

title. The Met’s ‘Good Life’ Shows Life Was Good, for Some

published. Observer

quote. "Where is the good life of masses, regular people, who formed the backbone of Egyptian society since time immemorial? One 6th-century fragment on display hints at the centrality of the Nile floods on the everyday life of Egyptians, which meant abundance or famine, and I craved for more, to immerse in their prayers, rituals and festivals." 

​

title. The Murals of Yemen's Haifa Subay (interview with the artist)

published. The Markaz Review, a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books

quote. "I want to portray women not only as victims but also show the other side, the bright side — peace, hope, happiness — which gives the positive energy we need to carry on living in these hard times."

​​

title. ‘Haunting The West’ Explores Artist Michael Rakowitz, Colonialism, and Restitution

published. Observer

quote. "For Rakowitz, museums are 'crime palaces' and his artistic journey is first a response to colonial violence, reckoning with institutionalized displays of superior, asymmetrical brutality."

​