Category Archives: Art and design

‘There is less fear’: restoration of Kabul repairs the ravages of war

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Afghanistan rebuilds the old town and creates register of dwellings to promote peace and help residents feel safer

Amir Gol first arrived in Kabul after fleeing his home – a Taliban stronghold – in Nangahar. He had no idea where to settle, so he rented a small mud house and started collecting and selling used plastic to make a living. Almost a decade later, little has changed for the 60-year old father of eleven. He sits cross-legged on a cushion outside the house he rents for 600 Afghani (£5) a month. Occasionally, he says, members of insurgent groups come to his neighbourhood, a settlement specked with poorly constructed mud houses and plastic tents in the city’s outskirts.

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I have seen the tragedy of Mediterranean migrants. This ‘art’ makes me feel uneasy

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The vessel that became a coffin for hundreds has gone on display at the Venice Biennale. It intends to stir our conscience – but is it a spectacle that exploits disaster?

On the night of 18 April 2015, about 180 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, a fishing boat capsized with hundreds of migrants on board. Among the waves and beneath the ship’s 23-metre hull, 700 passengers who had dreamed of a better life drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean.

Last week that giant, rusty vessel arrived in Venice on the occasion of the city’s Biennale art festival, where it went on display on Saturday in an installation designed by the artist Christoph Büchel.

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Venezuelan upheaval delays pavilion at Venice Biennale

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Political chaos leaves country’s artists playing catch-up just days before art event begins

Switzerland is partying, sequin-clad dancers whirling on a vast screen. Russia is staging an elaborate homage to Rembrandt. But between them – or rather between their national pavilions in the public gardens of Venice – Venezuela is deserted and padlocked shut.

The Venice Biennale, the art world’s most celebrated international event, is due to open to the public on Saturday, and the venues have already thrown open their doors to curators, artists, museum directors, press and collectors. But not Venezuela’s pavilion. Winter leaves are piled up in the courtyard; discarded building materials and rubbish are heaped at the side.

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Fuel for thought: black market in petrol in Togo and Benin – in pictures

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For thousands of people in Benin and Togo, the illegal trade in fuel looted from oil-rich Nigeria offers a lifeline. The human impact of this lucrative dealing has been documented by Spanish photographer Antonio Aragón Renuncio, whose series on the subject – described by the judges as ‘brilliantly affecting’ – won him the 2019 London Business School photography award

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Ghana shakes up art’s ‘sea of whiteness’ with its first Venice pavilion

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In curving galleries designed by David Adjaye, artists are putting Africa firmly on the biennale map

The Venice Art Biennale, the world’s most celebrated international art event, has a history that is inextricably bound up with colonialism.

Its first pavilion for the showcasing of a “national” art was established by Belgium in 1907. Britain followed soon after. European countries remain dominant at the event – at least numerically.

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Dream weavers: the indigenous Ainu people of Japan – in pictures

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The Ainu of Hokkaido in Japan were not officially recognised as an indigenous people until 2008. This recognition came after a long history of exclusion and assimilation that almost erased their society, language and culture. Photographer Laura Liverani collaborated with members of the Ainu for this exhibition called Coexistences: Portraits of Today’s Japan, showing at the The Japan Foundation, Sydney until 21 June.

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Italians try to crack Leonardo da Vinci DNA code with lock of hair

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Hair tagged as polymath’s in US collection to be tested against remains in French grave

Two Italian experts are set to perform a DNA test on a lock of hair that they say might have belonged to Leonardo da Vinci.

The hair strand was found in a private collection in the US and will go on display for the first time at the Ideale Leonardo da Vinci museum in Vinci (the Tuscan town where the artist was born), from 2 May, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.

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Paolo Di Paolo’s Italy in the 1950s and 60s – in pictures

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The Paolo Di Paolo: Lost World exhibition presents more than 250 largely unseen images from the photographer’s archive. Di Paolo chronicled life in his country as an economic boom followed the destruction of the second world war. Although those were the years of la dolce vita he was an anti-paparazzo – he shunned the salacious and respected his subjects. The exhibition is at MAXXI in Rome until 30 June

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Why we need to pause before claiming cultural appropriation | Ash Sarkar

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The debate, tied up with racial oppression and exploitation, is a difficult one. Yet not every interloper is a colonialist in disguise

Is Gordon Ramsay allowed to cook Chinese food ? Is it OK to dress up as Disney’s Moana? Can Jamie Oliver cook jollof rice despite plainly not knowing what it is? Exactly what is cultural appropriation? To take a glance at Good Morning Britain, the ITV show that never takes its finger off the pulse of Middle England’s clogged arteries, you’d think it’s a question of white people seeking permission to have fun. And in return, new media outlets have guaranteed traffic from anxious millennials by listing things that fall into the category of problematic when white people adopt them (blaccents, bindis and box braids).

Related: Gordon Ramsay defends new restaurant in cultural appropriation row

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High-density megacities: the photographs of Michael Wolf

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Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf is best known for Architecture of Density, which shows the city’s tower blocks as dramatic geometric abstractions, and Tokyo Compression, which captures rush hour on the Japanese capital’s subway. He died this week aged 64

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London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert

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Art dealer who owns a dozen pieces by the street artist is convinced by Marble Arch work

A Banksy collector and expert believes a mural that appeared at Extinction Rebellion’s Marble Arch base overnight is an authentic piece by the Bristolian street artist.

John Brandler, who owns a dozen pieces by Banksy is convinced the artwork – which features the slogan “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin” next to a young girl sitting on the ground holding an Extinction Rebellion logo – is an original because of its execution and theme.

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A love song for Europe: the couple who drove 20,000 miles to record 731 tunes

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They put a recording studio in a rickety motorhome and crossed 33 countries – asking strangers to knock out a tearjerker

‘People asked us, ‘Are you crackers?’” says Gemma Paintin. She can see why. Along with fellow Bristol artist James Stenhouse, Paintin spent half of 2018 travelling around Europe in an old motorhome, recording love songs. Their epic trek took in almost 20,000 miles, 33 countries, 46 languages and 731 songs – each sung in their battered mobile studio, mostly by random strangers.

These ranged from a seven-year-old Greek boy singing the Kiss song I Was Made for Lovin’ You (“even the guitar parts”) to MEP Peter Simon, who laid down a German folksong. There was a singing security guard in Madrid and some lads in Leeds who bawled through Robbie Williams’s Angels. This, says Paintin, was “exactly how you’d expect a lad version of Angels to sound”.

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‘Even more beautiful’: should Notre Dame get a modern spire?

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The competition to repair the Paris cathedral will attract global interest. Architects give their views

It is less than a week since the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and the response has swung from global grief at an architectural tragedy, to relief that the damage was not as extensive as it could have been, and on to matters of reconstruction. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the 13th-century landmark will be rebuilt within five years, “even more beautifully”.

Macron’s words accompanied the announcement of an international competition to design a new spire and roof structure – boosted by €1bn of private donations pledged so far. The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said they hoped for “a new spire adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era”.

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France announces architecture contest to rebuild Notre Dame spire

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PM says rebuilt cathedral should reflect ‘techniques and challenges of our times’

The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has announced an international architecture competition to rebuild the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The 93-metre spire collapsed on Monday in a fire that began at its base and spread through the cathedral’s ribbed roof, made up of hundreds of oak beams, some dating back to the 13th century.

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Notre Dame fire is devastating – but iconic cathedral will live on

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Edifice joins long list of culturally significant buildings with history of destruction

The history of beloved, culturally significant buildings is inextricably connected to a history of destruction – and very often fire. Less than a century after building of the present Notre Dame began in 1163, fire damage is thought to have prompted the remodelling of parts of the cathedral. The Gothic structure replaced an earlier church that had been built on the site of a Roman temple to Jupiter. By the 19th century the building was in a state of deep neglect: almost a ruin and lacking its spire.

Related: Notre Dame Cathedral fire – a visual guide and timeline

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Academics launch petition against ‘racist’ mural in French parliament

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Mural was created in 1991 to commemorate France’s abolition of slavery in 1794

Two French academics have launched a petition to remove a parliament mural commemorating the abolition of slavery, which they said was a racist, humiliating and dehumanising depiction of black people.

Mame-Fatou Niang, associate professor of French at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Julien Suaudeau, who lectures in Pennsylvania, said the vast mural which has hung in a corridor of a building at France’s National Assembly for 28 years should be taken down. It was created in 1991 by French artist Hervé di Rosa to commemorate France’s first abolition of slavery in 1794.

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