On April 26, the Pakistani Supreme Court convicted current prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of contempt of court for not reopening graft cases against president Asif Ali Zardari. Less than a week before, a discount airline crashed in Islamabad, killing all 127 passengers; this was later attributed to company negligence. Sources of entertainment, political talk shows dominate prime time—all alarming signs of an anomalous environment.

The first time I proposed to open a porn theater was during a meeting with museum curators. My cinema was not meant for humans but for houseplants, which I intended to titillate by photosynthesis: projecting explicit scenes of honeybees pollinating flowers onto their foliage. 

This is the first of a two-part series about the mega-exhibition; the second part will run in AAP 80 (Sept/Oct). Smith’s article is drawn from a chapter of his Thinking Contemporary Curating, to be published by DAP for Independent Curators International, New York, in September.             

A brave and beguiling art project, “Time Divisa” (2006–10) by the Mexico City-based artist José Antonio Vega Macotela, reminds us that art is not mere property or an asset class. It is also a gift that can be unexpected and impossible to value, and demands that we, as recipients, share it with others.

Manuel Ocampo is a painter. The rest of what one can say about him is up for negotiation, or of shifting importance.

With her recently released film, The Three Disappearances of
Soad Hosni (2011), Lebanese-born filmmaker Rania Stephan celebrates one of cinema’s golden eras, the Egyptian cinema boom of the 1950s to its decline in the 1980s. Stephan’s film focuses in particular on the story of acclaimed Egyptian actress of the period, Soad Hosni, the star known as both  “Zouzou” and “the Cinderella of the Arab screen”—the latter
inspired by her own rags-to-riches story.

“Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904–1965),” which toured to the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was a far-reaching tribute to one of the greatest Chinese artists of the 20th century. 

Atsuko Tanaka is best known for her work Electric Dress (1956/1986), a functional “garment” made from hundreds of flashing lights and electrical cables, which completely subsumes its wearer in a captivating display of and color. This piece formed the nucleus of a beautifully scaled retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, which traced Tanaka’s creative trajectory from 1952—just prior to her decade-long involvement with the Japanese avant-garde artist group Gutai—to the years before her death in 2005. 

Public commentary and provocation can be risky for arts practice in Singapore, where self-censorship is a familiar shadow. Since the late 1980s, multidisciplinary Singaporean artist Lee Wen has determinedly tested the waters of creative expression, exploring narratives of the self in society, and provoking contemplation of the role of contemporary art in his city-state and elsewhere. 

The bohemian-ethnic Kreuzberg neighborhood in Berlin is rich in art galleries and Turkish döner kebap shops. Formerly a working-class residential area in East Berlin, it retains its character today despite two decades of gentrification.

While the idea of co-owning works of fine art is not a new one,
art collectors have been increasingly turning to co-ownership
arrangements as a means to further diversify their art portfolios
and share the high carrying costs of art ownership.