My interest in art spans performance, video, painting, sculpture, sound to the undefinable. Issues of sex, gender, race, the colonial legacy and the climate emergency are a particular focus. I write across a wide range of topics for a variety of publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, Art Monthly, ARTnews and many more. Below is a selected archive of my articles with links to the full texts.
Tallinn is a beautiful city whose architectural mishmash of gothic, baroque, art nouveau and Soviet modernist styles testifies to upheaval, displacement and occupation over many years. Such events leave a residue of trauma that is passed down through generations, finding expression in different forms, whether through humour or sensory and somatic languages.
Read MoreFicre Ghebreyesus, who died in 2012, made vertiginous paintings celebrating family, the diaspora and his own turbulent story.
Read MoreSammy Baloji finds that the violent legacies of Belgian colonialism in the past continue to haunt the presenting the form of multinational corporate extractivism and exploitation.
Read MoreA pioneer of both video and feminist art, Nil Yalter (b.1938) has championed marginalised voices for the past five decades.
Read MoreThe award-winning artist is reinventing the way landscapes are depicted in art – not least by pointing out that human bodies are made of the same stuff
Read More‘Wakchakuna’ can be seen as Martínez Garay’s own symbolic gesture of restitution.
Read MoreAs he puts his films on display, he talks about the way conkers cross cultures, password games in Ukraine, and whether ‘playing out’ is under threat
Read MoreTwo years in the making, and drawing on themes of healing, the slave trade and even Vikings, the latest show by Alberta Whittle, has taken over a mansion on a holiday isle
Read More“It shows survival, despite all the horrible things that happened. We’re still here and continuing our cultural practices,”
Read More“I thought it was quite beautiful because a lot of workers on this building had to chip off the concrete by hand to create the texture. I was trying to respond to that. So I thought, ‘Why not start from the basis of labour and produce everything by hand?’”
Read MoreThis exhibition might be described as a collective haunting. The ghosts of dead and living women populate the show, their fates entwined by three films that touch on themes of memory, erasure, war and borders.
Read MoreI am making enormous sculptures derived from overlooked cultures. It has to do with what we consider important and with refocusing the gaze
Read MoreArt in this country is expected to be funny, satirical, shocking or clever. But if it gets too personal or doesn’t fall under ‘kitchen sink realism’, then it becomes ‘too close’ for some people.
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Dean Kelland has spent almost five years making art with inmates at Europe’s only fully therapeutic jail – with a little help from Elvis and David Bowie
