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(10/23/24 4:10am)
For years, pictures of Yayoi Kusama’s iconic Repetitive Vision flooded my Instagram timeline with striking red polka dots and never–ending mirrored reflections. My understanding of the piece and the Mattress Factory museum existed only within the context of these images. It wasn’t until I went home over fall break that I finally took the initiative to check the iconic Pittsburgh museum off my bucket list. Hopping in the car with my twelve–year–old sister in tow, we made our way to the North Side, anticipating an abundance of artsy photo–ops.
(11/12/24 2:56am)
As midterms come and go, Penn students will be grateful to make an escape from the hustle of school with Thanksgiving and winter breaks. This year, however, call your Uber an hour earlier than usual and allow yourself a few extra minutes at the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to check out the incredible art installations that grace its walls. According to Time Out magazine, PHL ranks third in the United States’ top airports for art.
(10/16/24 4:00am)
Confabulation has appeared as part of a wave of new work—perhaps most popularly crystalized this year with Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, a parable of the horror of never coming out—which has finally gained the courage to treat queerness with a greater degree of allusion and allegory. After a long and sometimes grating infancy of obviousness, exposition, and simplistic narratives, this nascent subtlety could perhaps be taken to represent a welcome maturation of queer theater and film, which at long last feels equipped to go beyond the basic representation of our reality toward a deeper, more provocative territory.
(10/23/24 4:19am)
In the world of horror manga, few characters resonate as grotesquely as Tomie. The titular character is no ordinary femme fatale, and it would be an oversimplification to view her only as an object of sexual fantasy. Tomie ensnares men, and they respond with disturbing violence—chopping, burning, and murdering—only for her to return again and again. Ultimately, Ito’s goal is not to vilify her but to reveal the paradox in human desire: the simultaneous fetishization and fear of beauty.
(10/14/24 4:00am)
In the month that I’ve been at Penn, I’ve started walking twice as fast as I used to. I’ve lost my ability to slow down and look around as I walk through campus. With my headphones in and my head down, I may be getting to my destination on time, but I’m losing out on all of the little details that comprise my walk. The times when I allow myself to walk at my slower, natural pace, I gain control over my life again, and suddenly the trees look a little taller and the Quad looks slightly cleaner and the sun feels ever so slightly brighter. When I appreciate the beauty in my surroundings, or rather, the art in the little pieces of this new world around me, I find myself and can hold onto that feeling when I eventually end up stressed or frantic again.
(10/28/24 2:27pm)
Blank pages, brain fog, and a pad of crisp white sketchbook paper—the quintessential recipe for the inevitable onslaught of art block: the thief of creativity. But as the artist battles against the onset of apathy, October provides a unique cure: Inktober, an art challenge for everyone. Pen, paper, and a single–word prompt provide the antidote to every creative’s worst nightmare.
(10/14/24 4:00am)
Pilobolus, founded in 1971, has been creating acrobatic, playful contemporary dance since its inception. Its current show, re:CREATION, showcases Pilobolus’ iconic choreography as it tours across the United States. While the show had its moments of brilliance, the pacing dragged on at times, feeling overly grandiose.
(11/06/24 3:54am)
I have been single all 19 years of my life, and tuning into The Bachelorette every Tuesday night this summer only reminded me of that fact. Several times, I found myself thinking about how lucky Jenn Tran must feel to have a sea of men vying for her affection and how excited she must be knowing that she’ll walk away with a life partner. But after doing my own research on the show and learning that most couples from the show fail to stay together in the real world, I slowly realized that the show portrays an idealized, unrealistic image of love by avoiding one topic: politics.
(10/14/24 4:00am)
We arrive through the woods, following the anemic light of glowsticks scattered along an unmarked trail, vaguely referring to a map we received a few hours ago. As the distant rumbling grows more intense, we begin to feel a pulse in the earth, a change in the air; all trepidation and inhibition dissipate as we are drawn to that thudding siren song.
(10/02/24 4:00am)
A lush patchwork of green once welcomed visitors to the Arthur Ross Gallery in the Fisher Fine Arts Library. Bold brushstrokes stood firm against a fragmented sky, capturing the resilience of two pine trees whose branches stretched daringly into the expanse. They stood together, their limbs entwined as if each offered the other strength to rise higher. Their leaves, tinged with a hint of crispness, suggested a drought—a subtle nod to the hardships faced by the artist David Driskell in his formative years in Appalachia. These trees, like Driskell himself, embodied a defiant resilience, a strength echoed in his art and in his life’s work: the elevation of fellow Black artists.
(09/30/24 5:22am)
I splatter acrylic paints on the wall of my environmental science teacher’s classroom. I infuse fluorescent yellows to render a lightbulb, add small stipples with my round brush to develop the fluffy texture of a tree, and layer shades of gray, dusk orange, and violet sky to depict the smokestacks of a power plant. My first ever mural, now a glowing display of vibrant colors and botanical imagery, proudly serves as a visual aid for renewable energy at my old high school. Though my mural project may seem small, it helped me find a second home in the “Mural Capital of the World” during an uncertain and sometimes intimidating transitory period of my life. But I couldn’t imagine a better place to start my college journey.
(10/07/24 4:00am)
At the boba shop where I worked this summer, I would often spend my time idly staring at the art on the walls. Among the canvases of blue lakes and rugged mountains, my favorite was an illustration of a pink cat perched atop a milk–tea bottle. With each piece of art marked with a price tag of $100, I found myself hoping that prospective owners would cherish these pieces made with hard work and clear, careful precision.
(09/11/24 4:00am)
What makes an exhibition so immersive that it seamlessly draws viewers into both its external world and inner life? In The Illuminated Body, a new art exhibition by Seattle artist Barbara Earl Thomas at the Arthur Ross Gallery, viewers are invited to explore this very question.
(09/04/24 4:00am)
Walking into the Institute of Contemporary Art on Penn’s campus, the inaugural work of the Entryways project greets you: Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s cut–vinyl depiction of ironwork and braided hair calls upon African craftsmanship and memories of the design and textures that have guarded her life. The curling imagery pays homage to the protective hairstyles and gates found in African communities around the globe: particularly, Mutiti’s motherland of Zimbabwe and neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The ornate visage adds to the otherwise flat, modernist architecture of the building.
(08/02/24 4:00am)
Late July afternoons in Athens, Greece are sweltering. Tourists choke the narrow streets, the pavements steam with a dense heat. The cool white basement of the Contemporary Greek Art Institute, tucked discreetly behind the central Syntagma Square, provides a welcome relief. For the first time, the National Gallery has sponsored an exhibition here, introducing the works of the Korean–American writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and placing them in dialogue with Greek artists.
(08/02/24 4:00am)
You know that scene in Elvis where the teenage girls in his audience start freaking out, shaking, screaming, sobbing, overcome by an intense, invisible hysteria? I always assumed that was exaggerated until I saw Cats. Not the OG Andrew Lloyd Webber musical or the horrendously CGI’d movie, but Cats: “The Jellicle Ball”—a queer reimagining that shines a light on contemporary Ballroom culture.
(07/19/24 4:00am)
Percival Everett reread Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 15 times before reimagining the classic in his newest novel, James. “Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere,” writes literary critic Roland Barthes. Everett is sure to have read Barthes, an expert in semiotic theory, writing a baby–savant character in the novel Glyph. Everett’s James from the titular enslaved person’s perspective echoes Barthes’ sentiment, in a retelling in which a radically different story plays out.
(07/07/24 4:00am)
“Everybody, every subject position, and every demographic should be treated as if they could be the most interesting person in the world,” Asali Solomon tells Street. “And that’s the method by which we become more human while reading fiction, that the concerns of any person you see on the street should be something that should be deeply explored with all of the nuances.”
(06/21/24 4:34am)
Visibility is a certain tyranny: We should question how ways of seeing the world are constructed in order to draw our gaze to certain things. Why are only certain artists made visible to us? Certain works? It is through visibility—an alternate visibility—that a certain displacement of the status quo occurs, a displacement away from the expected ways of seeing, towards youthful creativity where new art is championed unabashedly.
(06/07/24 4:00am)
As a child, I could spend hours in a bookstore. Amidst the murmurs of fellow bookworms and the satisfying turning of pages, I wandered the kid’s aisle with my head tilted sideways as I traced the spines along the shelves and drew out books, meticulously deciding which would be my next pick. Although I would still happily spend hours in a bookstore today, my mind is full of the viral books I’ve seen on TikTok. Instead of looking for beautiful art covers, I spend a vast amount of time scouring the shelves for familiar names. Even when I do get roped in by an intriguing book, I instantly check its Goodreads rating—anything less than four stars is a waste of time!
