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The Witness and the Wound: Seeing with Sebastião Salgado

“I photograph to testify, not to preserve.” - Sebastião Salgado, quoted in Lélia Wanick Salgado (ed.), Genesis (Cologne: Taschen, 2013), 14. It was Fall 2005, and I had made my way to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris to see Sebastião Salgado: Territories and Lives. More than an exhibition, it was a map…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMay 27, 20250Comments

Is Pluralism the New Orthodoxy in Global Art?

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased.” —Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham,…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMay 4, 20250Comments

In a Genocide Words Die First

"In times of dread, artists must never remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That's how civilizations heal." — Toni Morrison in No Place for Self-Pity,…

ByNarendra PachkhédéDecember 23, 20240Comments

Viewing In the Shadow of Genocide: Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

“Africa is shaped like a gun, and the Congo is its trigger.” — Frantz Fanon Over the year, I saw Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d’État a few times. It is not an easy film to watch, and it always demands another viewing. Watching archival footage of Patrice Lumumba in the 150-minute long…

ByNarendra PachkhédéNovember 28, 20240Comments

Elegy for Beauty: Memory and the Ecology of Presence

“Land art involves a relationship between art and nature that refuses to separate the two, asserting that art is as much a part of the land as the land itself is a part of art.” - Lucy Lippard in Landscript 7: Land and Environmental Art, 2007 Christian Bernard Singer's work is a poetic testament…

ByNarendra PachkhédéNovember 21, 20240Comments

POLITICS Fiction Uncategorized

Larry the cat

Dave the Rave has all the moves. Verily, is he the Lord of the Dance. Yet no one or their cat noticed the sky turning black upon his return. Only I saw the devil on his back as he leads us towards post-Brexit temptation. But something is afoot. Mark my words. These tea-guzzling-biscuit-gobbling Fat Cats…

ByMiranda HusainApril 1, 20240Comments

Without a Word, Without a Tear: Two Poems

Quest for love O Refreshing rain! Douse the fire within my soul. Caress my wounds, Like the sword that slithers over my lover’s neck. Replenish the forsaken garden within my chest, Once besieged by a grotesque guest. Bury thorns in my flesh, Let them grow veins for ichor yet some blood. Make my body agate,…

ByLalain BalochFebruary 10, 20240Comments

ART Fiction Poetry POLITICS

Trading Misery for Death: The Tragic Death of a Sudanese Poet

Translations and a tribute to a young Sudanese poet who drowned, last week, in the Mediterranean Sea: A young Sudanese poet’s prediction of his fate came true last week when he drowned in the Mediterranean. Abdel Wahab Yousif, better known as Latinos, died when a rubber boat packed with African immigrants sank into the sea…

ByAdil BabikirFebruary 10, 20240Comments

ART Fiction Poetry

Notes to Myself and My Other Privileged Friends.

Here are some things that I haven’t been able to deny, when I check in with myself; I was lying in bed unable to sleep And I remembered The intro of this song My friend DJ Zakham used to play at an underground party, called Mutiny in New York City; “AZADI KIS NEY LA-KAR DI HY?”…

ByMonica DograFebruary 10, 20240Comments

ART INTERVIEWS Philosophy Poetry POLITICS Uncategorized

“To Sing, To Dance, To Creolise and make Music”: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera On Transitions from the Present

Oscar Guardiola-Riverateaches International Law and Globalization and is the Assistant Dean of the School of Law at the University of London, Birkbeck. He is the award-winning author of "What If Latin America Ruled the World" and "Being Against the World: Rebellion and Constitution". He is a member of the Naked Punch Collective and the Editorial…

ByOscar Guardiola-RiveraFebruary 10, 20240Comments