3 days 3 hours ago
Ever since a massive wave of protests erupted in Turkey earlier this year, the ruling regime’s determination to silence all voices of opposition has been matched only by the steadfast creativity of the protestors themselves. In Istanbul, every night, teams of municipality painters sweep through the streets painting over in gray all traces of anti-government posters and graffiti. People respond with colour.
2 weeks 1 day ago
What’s it like to be making ‘out’ art in Vladimir Putin’s post-Pussy Riot, officially anti-LGBT Russia? The president's infamous new legislation, ratified in June, bans any ‘displays’ of homosexuality in the former Communist superpower. ‘Be a nice little person, and maybe you will survive’, says controversial Russian artist Yevgeniy Fiks in a must-read conversation with Mary Di Lucia.
1 month 1 week ago
A residence destined exclusively to Syrian artists in exile works in Lebanon towards preserving a generation of creators marked by war. The country of cedars, for fifteen years the backdrop to a gory civil war, has now turned into a gigantic refugee camp for more than a million Syrian people fleeing from the war.
3 months 5 hours ago
In a way, pictures born with the purpose to expose or criticize reality have lost the impact they were able to achieve back in the day. We look at them and keep going. Their ubiquity blinds us of their presence.
3 months 1 day ago
Yazan Halwani, one of the youngest graffiti artists in the Middle East, has spent five years decorating his hometown with creations that invite reflection. Citizens show their appreciation by protecting his work.
3 months 1 week ago
Young Turkish artists take on shaping a new society through peaceful demonstrations and installations, only to be met by tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons and police batons.
3 months 4 weeks ago
Pessimism may or may not be a key to actual political or social change in China, but it appears that it can serve an artist well and fuel quiet acts of resistance, as seen in Taikang Space's recent group exhibition.
Most Viewed
1 day 4 hours ago
According to the magazine ArtReview, Sheija al Mayassa bint Hamd bin Jalifa al Thani is the most powerful woman in the art world today. That may sound paradoxical, as there is hardly any local artistic or cultural movement in the tiny but astonishingly affluent Arab state. Big plans in Qatar include thirteen amazing museums that will surely be as empty of visitors as are the current two that exist. But sometimes you find an oasis which keeps up your hopes, as Rocío Fueyo reports from the seaside Katara culture valley.
2 days 1 hour ago
In her series ‘City of Champions’, photographer Mary Beth Meehan explores the demographic & post-industrial evolution of her hometown, Brockton (Massachusetts), the former shoe capital of the world. Its faded glory, uncertain future, and the perceptions held by the older generation of its newer (and foreign) residents are all revealed in a project emblematic of many other U.S cities who search for a new identity in the XXIst century.
6 days 5 hours ago
Long ago, Buddhist temples displayed wind chimes to enable them to ‘see’ the wind. Finding methods to make the invisible visible is the starting point for Bohyun Yoon’s 'Glassorganism', a 'sound drawing' project where he visualizes microorganisms, the interaction of various luminous sea creatures, and even the impact explosions of the stars in the cosmos. It all started with an old Japanese toy...
1 week 2 days ago
In the third episode of TurnOnArt TV we pop by the hotspots you can't miss if you visit Paris in November, a melting pot for those interested in photography and books.
3 weeks 6 days ago
The Tower of David, an unfinished structure of 75,000 m2 and 45 storeys right in the middle of Caracas' financial district, has been occupied by more than 2,500 people since 2007. It doesn't feature elevators nor electrical or sanitary facilities. Venezuelan artists Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría have been studying this environment for four years...
1 month 3 hours ago
Hundreds of spontaneous sacred architectonic installations break Argentina's endless roadside monotony. They are holy refuges of two popular deities, always close to the asphalt, periodically renewed or rebuilt as temples are in Asian culture. Neither of them ever needed to be recognized by the Catholic Church—or any other church—to bring together hundreds of thousands of devotees.
1 month 1 day ago
Janet Cardiff’s 'Forty Part Motet', a segment of contemporary sound art that reworks a piece of choral Elizabethan music, has been installed in a medieval Spanish chapel that has itself been reworked into part of a Manhattan museum. Amidst the parallels and paradoxes, the harmony and the dissonance, are we really blown away by the 'experience'?
1 month 6 days ago
It’s no secret that the social technologies of network culture are transforming the ways we conceive of ourselves as subjects. Digital culture is also changing the way artists represent the self, particularly with regard to age and gender, in America and China alike.
1 month 2 weeks ago
Can an art fair which shuns the participation of galleries be the new order of the day? Can it threaten the stronghold of established structures in the art world? The United Art Fair in India finds an ingenious way to make art work for struggling artists. Sahar Zaman reports from New Delhi.
2 months 4 days ago
Marketing campaigns and photojournalists keep remembering the second-costliest hurricane in United States history. Adding to familiar ethical questions is the unprecedented use of social media: for perhaps the first time on such a grand scale, professionals turned to their iPhones and Twitter to provide immediate access to what they were seeing. Does the overexposure just lead to a big blur?
2 months 5 days ago
Gülsün Karamustafa’s reflections on gender, state violence, Turkish migration, and displacement coincide with an unflinching refusal to draw a line between her art and her political activism, resulting at times in the artist being censored, banned from travel, and even imprisoned. TurnOnArt attended her 'Promised Exhibition' opening, cancelled afterwards due to another anti-government protest.
2 months 6 days ago
In the second episode of TurnOnArt TV we attend the fourth edition of Apertura, Madrid's gallery weekend. We visit some of the best exhibitions, interview gallerists and artists such as Olafur Eliasson and John Isaacs, join the first art happening of Kreëmart in Spain and even find some time for partying...
Interviews
1 week 1 day ago
What exactly makes an artist an artist? Money? Press? Popularity? 'Art is Trash' is the street warrior’s name of an artist that wasn’t sure he wanted to be considered as such, but doesn’t complain now that finally his street artwork draws the attention of buyers. 'Isn’t the art world a complete contradiction?', he says to Bárbara Celis in a surprisingly honest conversation.
1 week 5 days ago
Two themes absorb Tamas Dezso’s photographic work in Eastern Europe: the still visible ruins of the Soviet era and the traditions which are being lost with the passage of time. Ignacio Evangelista chats with him about his next photobooks (in collaboration with writer Eszter Szablyár) and the opportunities and risks for visual artists in the digital age. Don't miss out on the captivating photos in the gallery...
2 weeks 4 hours ago
An exclusive interview with Iranian-born visual artist Shirin Neshat. Don't miss the stunning photo gallery...
2 weeks 2 days ago
For two consecutive days, the choreographer Vera Tussing and her team have occupied the entrance landscape of Central Saint Martins in London with a refined atmosphere of movements and sounds devised for passers-by who agree to close their eyes and lie down. 'Sound Bed', disarmingly subtle in the mise-en-scène, turns out to be 'a seven minute ride which might feel endless'.
2 weeks 6 days ago
Ignacio Priego interviews Zahira Asmal, managing director of THECITY, an agency that develops projects in the areas of city making, design and architecture. With long experience of working on good city-making practices between South Africa and Brazil, she reflects on how the world, 'even after the World Cup, is very ignorant about South Africa'.
3 weeks 2 hours ago
In our first article about New Fun Palaces and self-initiated projects, architect designer and curator Mariana Pestana gives practical advice on how to dismantle the rumour that some street markets in London sell rat meat...
4 weeks 1 day ago
New York City artist Gwyneth Leech paints on paper cups that others would have mindlessly thrown away. In 2011, at Prow Art Space, she sat and painted 800 hanging cups, which ultimately caught the eye of Anthropologie London. Her work has now been transformed into limited edition porcelain cups. Leech gives her insight on the ephemeral beauty found in a cup to TurnOnArt.
1 month 5 days ago
David Favrod (1982, Kobe, Japan) was born to a Swiss father and Japanese mother, and grew up in Switzerland. When he reached his legal age he requested dual citizenship from Japan, which wasn’t granted. For the Swiss he was Japanese; for the Japanese he was Swiss. As a result of that rejection he has invented, through some stunning photographic projects, his own imaginary Japan.
1 month 2 weeks ago
Romanian designer Dinu Bodiciu opens up to TurnOnArt on how he got started in the fashion world, how his creations are being sported by Lady Gaga, the London jungle, his opinion on where 'fast fashion' is headed and his rather unique material experimentation in his work: there are even dried worms covered in golden acrylic involved.
1 month 2 weeks ago
During two decades Javier Vallhonrat was a top international fashion photographer. These days, after earning a degree in Psychology, he focuses his work on mountain ranges and organizing workshops on creativity. Top model Kate Moss recently expressed her wish to work with Javier and managed to get him back to the noisy city for some days, but he has since returned to his solitary working environment.
1 month 2 weeks ago
South Korean-born, New Zealand artist Jae Hoon Lee was invited last year by the New Zealand government to visit the Frozen Continent for a week. Lee’s response to the trip (two videos and still images) has recently made him the winner of the significant Wallace Art Award. TurnOnArt interviewed him about his voyage, motivations, and creating art in one of the most pristine (and silent) environments in the world.
1 month 3 weeks ago
'The Pigs' was destined to be one of the best photobooks published in 2013... And it recently won the Kassel Photobook Festival 2013. We had already interviewed Carlos Spottorno, Spanish photographer and author of the book, reflecting with him on the good, the depressing and the sarcastic parts of an ambitious work about four Mediterranean countries devastated by a long financial and moral crisis.
Art & Numbers
3 weeks 2 days ago
'Crowdfunding' seems to already be an old word, but nowadays, at times when emotional economy is such an important value, it could be the key to overcoming this crisis, especially in the art world. Is it correct to have public works stem from private money, asks Marisol Salanova?
3 weeks 3 days ago
The city is awash with institutional prizes, but Adela Yawitz wonders whether they are still in touch with the artistic community. Is it possible that Berlin's art prizes uphold a moment of young discoveries in a city that may have already passed? How does one of Europe's most vibrant cities crown their new princes today?
2 months 4 weeks ago
I propose to edit a guide based on Portfolio Reviewers, such as hotels or restaurants guides, with scores marked by coloured stars and users’ comments.
Editor's pick
1 month 1 week ago
'Karma' is Óscar Monzón’s (Málaga, Spain, 1981) first photobook and one of the nominees for the Aperture Photobook Awards. TurnOnArt talked with Óscar about his working process: five years of hard work on the streets of Madrid, right after dusk, when people get out of the office and into their cars (the main setting for the book).
1 month 1 week ago
Luc Tuymans’ exhibition at the Menil Collection (Houston) displays an impressive collection of his portraits alongside artwork dating from 1200 BCE to 1968 CE. The exhibition is an eclectic history of human likeness which speaks to issues of afterlife, religion, morality, and colonialism. Tuymans’ work ranges from more traditional portraiture to works simply suggestive of human presence...
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