(List) Misc. favourites
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Nirvana Memorial Garden, Singapore, 2022. Photo: Elaine ML Tam. Re-touching: Lidija Kononenko.
For long, I’ve held a fascination with cemetary studies, death rituals and burial practices. Ever since I’d visited Nirvana Memorial Garden columbarium, I’d been looking for an excuse to do an interpretive reflection on the aesthetics of Chinese gold-worship, fetishism and the afterlife etc. Current Obsession’s programming around ornamentation and the underworld were sympathetic to my curiousity, and provided me with such an excuse. Read here.
Fun and friendly at the ICA, moderating a panel discussion feat. research-editors Geiste Kincinaityte, Paulius Petraitis and artists Vytautas Kumza, Julija Steponaityte. Together we discussed the heroism of vision, the unstable image, verisimilitude in a post-truth world, representation and hypermediation – in an attempt to draw a ‘fragmentary portrait of the contemporary moment’. E-mail me for the audio recording, if this kinda thing is also your jam. Or read my book review here, which speaks to some of the above.
Radek Brousil, Two (2025), Krupa Gallery, London. Photo: Judd Art Index.
‘My heart is an old museum...’ so begins the prose that accompanies the eponymous group exhibition curated by Radek, curated by Radek Brousil, featuring Greg Carideo, Henrik Potter, Jungwon Jay Hur, Kamil Dossar, Marlon Kroll, Minh Thang Pham, Viktor Timofeev. Extending the metaphor, my text stages an encounter between exes that takes place in a quiet museum and is, at once, a thought piece on chronopolitics, objecthood, anamnesia. Read it here.
Tilda Swinton’s first book is a dedication to a method and ethic of working she established early with the late Derek Jarman, as well as the intimate, ongoing relationships that she has forged. For Tilda (2025), I had the pleasure of structuring the textual elements of the book, and editing the recorded conversations Swinton had with filmmakers Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Almodóvar, Joanna Hogg, Luca Guadagnino; text messages with Jim Jarmusch; an introduction by Olivia Laing and a personal address to Jarman by Swinton herself. This rich, image-led publication is designed by Irma Boom and published by Rizzoli, and is available for purchase here.