Category Archives: Art and design

The show can’t go on: Russian arts cancelled worldwide

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Concerts, dance recitals and exhibitions have been postponed indefinitely after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted responses from the cultural sphere, with Russian artists and companies beginning to feel the repercussions of decisions taken by the Kremlin. Not only has Russia been stripped of two prestigious events – the Champions League men’s final and Formula One’s Russian Grand Prix –but an increasing number of performances by Russians are being cancelled worldwide.

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Doomed ship of gold’s ghostly picture gallery is plucked from the seabed

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Eerie photographs recovered from the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America are now being published for the first time

It is one of the most famous treasure wrecks ever discovered, a steamer named the “ship of gold” after it sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina with one of the largest cargoes of gold ever lost at sea. Miners who had struck it rich in the California gold rush were among those bringing home to New York their hard-earned wealth, only to lose their lives when the SS Central America was struck by a hurricane, sinking nearly a mile and a half beneath the waves.

When nuggets, ingots and coins were recovered from the seabed in various expeditions between 1988 and 2014, the world was dazzled. But, with reported values of tens of millions of pounds, it sparked a complex legal case that landed its original treasure-hunter in jail.

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‘Bleak, marginal and unpopular’: Australia unveils divisive exhibition for Venice Biennale

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Marco Fusinato describes his experimental noise project as ‘discordant intensities’, with his curator hoping that people who hate it will ‘hate it right away’

Marco Fusinato is counting on his forthcoming show at the Venice Biennale being immediately disliked.

Outlining his contribution as Australia’s representative at the world’s oldest art show this week, the 57-year-old Melbourne-based contemporary artist and noise musician said Desastres was the product of a nightmarish two years enduring the world’s longest lockdown.

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The brave woman who symbolises Ukraine: Mark Neville’s best photograph

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‘This image is from a collection I made called Stop Tanks With Books. I have sent out 750 free copies to try to stop the war’

This was taken in May last year in Myrnohrad, an industrial town 50 miles from Donetsk, a stronghold of the illegal Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine. Then, as now, fears of a Russian invasion were high. While much of the west thinks the threat of conflict started only a few weeks ago, it’s been the reality for Ukrainians for almost a decade.

I was walking around Myrnohrad taking photos with a big portable flash and a plate camera when I saw this woman sit down and light a cigarette. She looked so confident and self-absorbed. I speak a little Russian, so I told her I was taking pictures of ordinary life across Ukraine and asked if she would pose. She agreed without hesitation.

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‘They fill me with emotion’ … Benin celebrates the return of its looted treasure

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Priceless treasures stolen by the French army over a century ago have finally been returned to the African nation. Our writer joins the emotional celebrations

At first glance, it seems to be just another day in Cotonou, Benin’s largest city. Motorbike-taxis are everywhere, filling the streets of the country’s economic capital with dust and noise. But inside the swanky presidential palace, something seismic is talking place: over a century after they were looted by the French army, 26 treasures that once belonged to the nation have gone on display to the public.

Art of Benin Yesterday and Today is more than just a stunning show of these ancient works, though. It segues from the looted 19th-century artefacts to work by 34 of the country’s contemporary artists. “This is a form of regained dignity,” says local art historian Didier Houénoudé, “and the culmination of a long fight started by African countries shortly before independence.”

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Two of Nigeria’s looted Benin bronzes returned to traditional palace

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Colourful ceremony marks artefacts’ homecoming more than a century after they were pillaged by British troops

Two Benin bronzes were returned on Saturday to a traditional palace in Nigeria, more than a century after they were pillaged by British troops, raising hopes that thousands more artefacts could finally be returned to their ancestral home.

The artefacts, mostly in Europe, were stolen by explorers and colonisers from the once-mighty Benin Kingdom, now south-western Nigeria, and are among Africa’s most significant heritage objects. They were created as early as the 16th century onwards, according to the British Museum.

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Row about Congolese statue loan escalates into legal battle over NFTs

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Gallery at site of uprising against colonial rule accuses US museum of stonewalling request for artefact

A statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during an uprising in Congo in 1931 is at the centre of a tug of war between a US museum and a Congolese gallery at the site of the rebellion.

The statue of Maximilien Balot, a colonial administrator, has travelled to Europe but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is accused of stonewalling requests for a loan to the White Cube gallery in Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

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Benedict Cumberbatch swans about on the baffling cover of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue

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Scowling, sodden and surrounded by waterfowl, the actor adorns the new Hollywood issue as an icon of … what exactly?

The customary brouhaha erupted yesterday after the release of Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue cover photos, the most striking of which depicts an angry Benedict Cumberbatch emerging fully clothed from a hot bubblebath sesh with a bevy of swans.

The Hollywood Issue increasingly feels like it belongs to a different era, when fashion magazines and actors’ star power were at their respective heights. These days, the printed press is clinging on for dear life (Entertainment Weekly announced just last week that it will be ceasing its print edition), and in Hollywood no one performer is bigger than a franchise. So the Hollywood Issue, which trades in the nose-to-the-window glamour of movie stars, has a more forlorn quality than it used to.

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Lovers overlooking Sarajevo 20 years after the war: Chris Leslie’s best photograph

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‘The couple were just strangers blocking my view. But as they reached out and embraced each other, it seemed an optimistic image representing the young people of a city that had suffered’

I first visited and photographed Sarajevo in 1996. I had been volunteering in neighbouring Croatia and managed to hitch a ride in to Bosnia in a UN vehicle. The war and siege had ended a few months before and the city was enjoying its long-awaited peace. Sarajevans took to its scarred streets in huge numbers, meeting with friends and drinking coffee safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be struck down by a sniper or shell.

The destruction of the city at that time was jaw-dropping, surreal and seemingly total: rows upon rows of broken, bombed-out high-rise flats; shell craters and explosion indents everywhere; hospitals, offices and factories all in ruins. This was urbicide, a late-20th-century Dresden or Stalingrad. Everyone who lived through the nearly four-year siege had a nightmare to share.

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Women behind the lens: raising awareness of albinism in west Africa

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People with albinism across Africa face the harsh sun as well as social exclusion and suspicion. Photographer Maroussia Mbaye hopes to bring greater understanding through her work

An estimated 10,000 people are living with albinism in Senegal. Albinism is genetically inherited and, while prevalence varies from region to region, some of the highest rates are found in sub-Saharan Africa. The deficit in melanin is characterised by the absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism can lead to skin cancer, visual impairment and sun sensitivity. About 90% of people with the condition across Africa die of skin cancer before they are 40.

Myths surrounding people affected by albinism have led to extreme practices involving the use of body parts. Hundreds of attacks including horrific mutilations, ritual killings, sexual violence, kidnappings and trafficking of people and body parts have happened in many countries across the continent. Many people with the condition are at risk every day because of superstition and witchcraft practices.

Franco-Senegalese photographer Maroussia Mbaye is a graduate from the London School of Economics and the London College of Communication. She was raised in a politically active family and her experiences fuelled an interest in social division and justice, leading her to pursue documentary photography, through which she aims to capture human life in new, perspective-shifting ways

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Port Talbot says bye-bye to its Banksy as art dealer brings in a crane

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Much loved work that appeared in 2018 on a steelworker’s garage heads to England on the back of a lorry

It appeared one winter’s night on a steelworker’s garage, a wondrous piece of street art making points about the innocence of childhood, industrial decay and air pollution.

After a three-year sojourn in the town of Port Talbot, Season’s Greetings, Wales’ first and only Banksy, was craned on to the back of a flatbed lorry and trucked out of the country.

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Kicking back at the regime: artists open another front in Myanmar war

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With the military increasing its use of informants, rappers and artists must keep their identities secret, even from one another

Early one morning last February, a group of young people gathered on a street corner in Myanmar armed with brushes and buckets of paint. In the faint light of dawn, they quickly completed their task and dispersed.

“I felt excited and nervous. I was scared too, because I didn’t want to get caught,” says Tu Tu, a pseudonym for the group’s organiser.

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In limbo: the refugees left on the Belarusian-Polish border – a photo essay

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Offered a route into Europe by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, thousands of asylum seekers are now stranded on the EU’s frontier

By Lorenzo Tondo. Photographs by Alessio Mamo

On 13 August last year, a villager in Ostrówka, in the east of central Poland, posted two pictures on Facebook featuring groups of men, women and children walking through the cornfields with bags on their backs.

They were families from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraqi Kurdistan, and they were among the first asylum seekers to enter the country from Belarus. The post was accompanied by the following short text: “In the heat of day through wheat, at night through corn, they sneak through, they wander, just to get to the west. Great politics and slight refugees leave their print on the fields near Ostrówka.”

The makeshift shelter of a Syrian family with small children in the forest near Narewka, Poland

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How the UK’s dutiful launderette is fading under Covid and energy prices

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A much-loved community space and an essential service, their days now seem numbered

The first thing Rajiv Shrikul does when he opens up his launderette in south Edinburgh each morning is pray. He says the 7am routine, which he started as a young boy in India, helps him cope with the kaleidoscope of personalities that pass through his shop. “Some people are angry, some are generous – you need to have a very stable mind. Meditation calms you down, especially in these hard times.”

Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

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‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book Club

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Conservatives are pushing to ban books from school libraries. At a time of crisis, a group of Pennsylvania teenagers are fighting back

“Napoleon’s use of the sheep was notable,” says Jordan Daughtry, 14. She’s clutching a copy of Animal Farm, and referring to the authoritarian Berkshire boar who seizes control of an English acreage, before bending his fellow animals to his will.

The sheep, who represent the unwitting masses in George Orwell’s critique of Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian rule, are “ignorant buffoons”, Daughtry says.

Kiara Daughtry, left, and Lena Cackley.

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‘My first time holding a gun’: from Myanmar student to revolutionary soldier – a cartoon

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Faced with increasing state violence, young people across Myanmar are learning to fight. This is one young woman’s story

In the year since the 1 February coup, young people across Myanmar have risked their lives to resist military rule.

At least 295 young people aged 18-25 have been killed in the military’s suppression of the pro-democracy movement. More than 1,000 have been arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. In response, thousands have left their homes and families to train as revolutionary fighters.

JC is a young artist and illustrator from Myanmar’s ethnic Karen community. She was born in Myanmar and raised on the Thai-Myanmar border

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A surfing god rides The Cradle of Storms – Chris Burkard’s best photograph

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‘This is Josh Mulcoy, the godfather of cold-water surfing, catching a wave in Alaska. The place is so windy and wild, it’s known as The Cradle of Storms’

The Aleutian Islands are fabled in surfing. Part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, they’re a raw chain of islands connecting Alaska to Russia. The area is known as The Cradle of Storms because it’s so windy and wild.

Most of the islands are made up of tundra and there are big active volcanoes. This island, Umnak, is home to a very small Aleut community. I went there in 2013. The planning alone took two years. You need to be completely self-sustained. You need to charter a small plane and have enough food and supplies for your entire stay, with the means to charge all your equipment.

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