ArtsEnte
The 2,000-year-old ruins, once a public building where major political, economic and administrative decisions were made, were found underneath 85 Gracechurch Street, a commercial office close to Bank tube station and London Bridge, which is due to be demolished.
Begum, who was born in Bangladesh, another country that is highly vulnerable to climate change, told The Art Newspaper: âDuring my research visits to Oulu, I have been struck by the exceptional beauty of the low Arctic light, along with the wonderful walks along the seafront, where I have observed the many shapes of the frozen and melting sea ice.
âI had my heart set on it because, as an artist, I did a performance in Arnold Circus at the end of the road and I did some community classes in this building too, so it felt the right space for me.â She adds: âI find the Shoreditch art scene really excitingâIâm a big admirer of galleries like Emalin, Kate MacGarry, Maureen Paley.â
In its appeal, the AcadĂ©mie des beaux-arts also denounced âverbal attacks against arts and artists launched by some local politiciansâ who are seeking to justify the cuts and threatening the âfreedom of research and creation, necessary to our democracyâ.
A silicone cast of a peach tree from her garden that failed to survive Los Angelesâs heat and drought hangs upside down from the ceiling, with bits of delicate bark clinging to its limp branches.
When I asked about Charli XCXâs âBRATâ and BeyoncĂ©âs âRenaissanceââtwo of the biggest club albums of the past several years, each backed by expensive arena tours and hefty production budgetsâshe distanced herself from those records, calling them âbrilliantâ but âcommercial.â Where they had borrowed from some of the same scenes, she told me, â âEusexuaâ was born from a crevice of subculture.â (Reconciling her celebrity status with her genuine desire to be immersed inâand regarded asâpart of the underground can be a challenge.
Exiting through the lobby, you couldnât miss a familiar, heartening post-screening buzz: sounds of laughter and exasperation; hesitant, hazardous attempts at analysis; confused variations on âWhat was that all about?â We could have just seen âEraserheadâ or âBlue Velvet,â or stumbled out of âMulholland Drive,â as some friends and I did, not too far away, more than two decades earlier.
Other Biden appointees included the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, the curator Nora Halpern, the actors George Clooney, Jennifer Garner and Kerry Washington, the playwright Anna Deavere Smith, the screenwriter and producer Shonda Rhimes and Steve Israel, a former US representative for New York.
The inclusion of Begum adds a further political layer to the work: in 2023, Indiaâs National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) removed significant sections of Mughal history from school textbooks under the guise of ârationalisingâ the syllabus.
Itâs pulled in less compelling directions by the broad caricatures who now populate the edges of the story, including a marriage-crazed blonde hottie Mo humors until he canât, and a recently green-card-approved friend whose gun collection seems considerably more expansive than his English-language vocabulary.
With examples including rebellious colonistsâ proud adoption of âYankee Doodleâ as their anthemâthe song was initially sung by British troops, to make fun of supposedly unsophisticated localsâand the emergence of blackface minstrelsy, Zelnik shows how white settlers used playfulness and humor to position themselves as the rightful owners of the land, to the exclusion not only of foppish Brits but also of Indigenous and Black Americans.
Hauser & Wirth also had strong opening day sales, selling more than a dozen pieces, including a landscape painting so geometric as to almost feel hallucinatory by Jeffrey Gibson for $100,000 and the 38-year-old artist Avery Singerâs Poker Players (study) for $575,000.