Page 24 - Rt Critic News Today

Connie Mae Concepción Oliver is a poet and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her third book of poems, dormilona, is forthcoming next year from Burrow Press. The poet is donating the honorarium for this piece to MECA (Middle East Childrens Alliance) more information can be found here: https://www.mecaforpeace.org.

Propelled by its strong female leads, the winner of the Freedom Prize at last year’s Cannes elevates a pivotal moment of Sudan’s recent history into a tale of fragile bonds and necessary emancipation.

Much has been extolled about Rothko’s retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (LVF) in Paris, but the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), featuring work on two levels, reveals the breadth of Rothko’s painting through highlighting smaller scale works and explorations on paper in which he employs a heavy watercolor paper substrate alternating with watercolor, ink, acrylic, and oil paint.

A charitable project for the Authors Guild Foundation, most of the stories in this collection are single entries by well-known writers whose diversity is described as “a thumb in the eye of … literary balkanization.” Told over fourteen days from March 31 through April 13, 2020, these are tales told by New Yorkers seemingly unable (or unwilling) to escape the city during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown.

From its first breath, the narrative is a visceral movement through the hiemal season, imbricating what is familiar and comforting “to honor the dark with festivals of light,” with an ominous, collective disquiet, as boys string garlands of bulbs on the houses of neighbors for pocket money, children skate and sled across frozen landscapes full of hidden treacheries, candlelight burns in frosted windows, and a fireplace roars with erotic charge.

On a December morning, I spoke with Atrek over Zoom—she in Istanbul, myself in New York. Our physical distance quickly dissipated as we bonded over complex mother-daughter relationships, personalities in different languages, and our love of writing postcards.

Me Seeing You Seeing Me Seeing You Seeing Me ad infinitum, until the walls break down, the plastic bags around our shoes decompose, the benches we’re sitting on decay, and the sound system breaks. Ad infinitum until there’s nothing left but the seeing and the me, no matter how unstable or temporary this arrangement ever was.

Anoushka Shankar’s music is about her struggles with her presence in and experience of this world. Beginning with Anoushka (Angel) recorded at age seventeen, most of her album covers are pictures of her; Anoushka with a mirror in hand, Anoushka in front of a large room, a painted portrait.

The Brooklyn Rail is a journal committed to providing an independent forum for visual arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and beyond.

The Brooklyn Rail is a journal committed to providing an independent forum for visual arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and beyond.