the shape of water

Guillermo del Toro’s film, The Shape of Water is magic.

Part fairytale, part myth, the story of Eliza Esposito—the princess without a voice—a janitor at a government facility, and the amphibious creature from South America she falls in love with, has a quirky humour and aesthetic that reminded me of the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, The City of Lost Children, A Very Long Engagement), laced with a dark and haunting lyricism. It’s a film that doesn’t shy away from issues of loneliness, isolation, discrimination, politics, race, and the violence and ugliness perpetrated on people (and creatures) deemed different. And what it means to be human; to be truly seen.

While I don’t want to ruin this film for anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s the poem recited at the end that encapsulates the heart of this gorgeous tale of love, longing and transformation: 

Unable to perceive the shape of you

I find You all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with

Your love. It humbles my heart,

For You are everywhere…

Morley's underwater adventures

This is great. Artist Morley (@official_morley) took his street art to another level—underwater!

On a trip to Hawaii, he and his wife decided to have an ocean adventure. They got in a cage underwater to check out some swarming sharks. While there, he stuck his hand outside the cage with one of his laminated artworks and took a photo.

And this is what he had to say about it:

“The message speaks to how doubt can feel insurmountable. It can feel like a chasm filled with ever searching creatures looking only to consume your hope, your faith and your optimism. Some people- and some dreams- are worth the journey, no matter how perilous they prove to be”'

a new year

Artwork: C215 (Christian Guemy) L’amour triomphe de tout

Here's to love, peace, kindness, hope, grace, empathy; being brave, honest, thoughtful, giving—to being whoever you want to be; whoever you believe you were meant to be. And don't forget your sense of humour! Laughter was a big antidote to some of the craziness that was 2017.

infinitesimal being

Photo: @mattbroadwin

I seem to be binge-reading Pablo Neruda's poetry these days. So, I just had to share this from Neruda's Selected Poems, a poem plainly titled Poetry (La poesía), exploring Neruda's revelation about being a poet, about wanting to write poetry, the tentative first lines, and how it made him feel. The third stanza is stunning:

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind. 

so lightly here

Artwork: paste-up by @murmurestreet

Something of the Christmas spirit—here are some beautiful words from Leonard Cohen: “We are so lightly here. It is in love we are made. It is in love we disappear.”  

(@_nitch)

earth without art

Artwork: Paste-ups by Levalet, Paris

Awesome.

eL Seed: The Bridge

For eL Seed’s artwork in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, he initially wanted to create a bridge-like sculpture rising about 20 metres, based on the idea of unity, peace and mutual respect. But due to security issues, this couldn’t be realized, so the result is this laser-cut horizontal artwork at the fence of the DMZ.

Describing the project, eL Seed wrote: 

“Bridges are never built from one side. It involves taking a step forward from both sides. I proposed a bridge that would begin in South Korea and extend to the mid-point a gesture of solidarity. The project will remain unfinished until another art piece is installed in North Korea, thus making it the ultimate symbol of unification. 'The Bridge' feeds the memories of the older generations with the souvenir of one united country, it stands as a reminder for the younger generations that there is a shared culture, language, and traditions and that art can bring people, culture and generations together beyond political conflict.”

The artwork translates the words of a poem, via eL Seed's  “calligraffiti”, by Kim Sowol, a North Korean poet who passed away before the country was divided:

You may remember, unable to forget:
yet live a lifetime, remember or forget, 
For you will have a day when you will come to forget.

You may remember, unable to forget:
Let your years flow by, remember or forget, 
For once in a while, you will forget.

On the other hand it may be:
How could you forget
What you can never forget? 

Artwork: eL Seed, The Bridge, 2017 (photo: @t.jchoe)

sky of beijing

Artqoek: Wang Gongxin, The Sky of Beijing, 2017 Guggenheim, New York

I recently came across this video installation by Chinese artist, Wang Gongxin. It’s showing at the Guggenheim NY: Sky of Beijing—Digging a Hole in New York, 2017. 

The genesis of this piece was a mirror installation created by Gongxin in 1995. After living in New York for nearly 12 years, Gongxin returned to China and created a video installation in the floor of his courtyard house. He dug a hole, 3 meters deep, and placed a video monitor at the bottom. It showed the sky in Brooklyn and was aptly named, The Sky of Brooklyn. There was also sound featured, a brief dialogue: “What are you looking at?” and then, “It’s nothing. Just the sky.”

Both pieces play on the idea of the remote distance between the two countries; the expression “digging a hole to China”, as the only direct (and impossible) way to get there, and the disparate cultures Gongxin experienced and its impact on identity. Yet, it’s also an eloquent meditation that despite borders, distance and differences, we all live under the same sky.

millo in Shanghai

Artwork: wall mural by Millo, Sound of You, Shanghai, 2017

I've been meaning to post this for a while. A wonderful wall mural by Millo in Shanghai for the Murmur project. It's called Sound of You—a poetic work about longing, dreams, nature and time.  

obviously

Image: @33thirdmedia

Hilarious.

invisible cities

There are books so fantastical you just want them to be real. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is such a book.

It’s a story of the Venetian explorer and merchant, Marco Polo, recounting his many and varied travels to the Chinese emperor, Kublai Khan. After each journey, Kublai Khan asks Marco Polo to describe the cities he has been to. And so it goes, the explorer gives the conqueror a vision of a world he has not seen, and most likely, never will. For each city is wondrous and impossible, yet Marco Polo is only ever describing one: the city of his birth, Venice, Italy. 

The story is woven with memory, desire, dreams, longing, and the constancy of change in trying to capture what is closest to our hearts.

Here’s a tantalizing sample of an exchange between Polo and Khan:

“I shall tell you what I dreamed last night,’ he says to Marco. ‘In the midst of a flat and yellow land, dotted with meteorites and erratic boulders, I saw from a distance the spires of a city rise, slender pinnacles, made in such a way that the moon in her journey can rest now on one, now on another, or sway from the cables of the cranes.’

And Polo says: ‘The city of your dreams is Lalage. Its inhabitants arranged these invitations to rest in the night sky so that the moon would grant everything in the city the power to grow and grow endlessly.’

‘There is something you do not know,’ the Khan adds. ‘The grateful moon has granted the city of Lalage a rarer privilege: to grow in lightness.” 

miles

Photo: Recording 'Kind of Blue' l-r: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Bill Evans

Chilling out with Miles Davis and my all-time favourite recording of his, Kind of Blue. Here's Blue in Green—a classic and truly beautiful. 

Blue In Green

Miles Davis

humanKIND

Artwork: wall mural by Seth, Wynwood Walls, 2017 (photo by John Parra)

Here's the latest work by SETH (@seth_globepainter) for Wynwood Walls as part of the 2017 Art Basel Collection in Miami. The theme for all artists participating was 'humanKIND'. Fantastic as usual. 

dark side of the lens

A riveting glimpse at an ocean photographer's passion for what he does, and what it means to live his life capturing the sea with his lens. The sheer power of the ocean and beauty of this isolated stretch of Irish coastline, accompanies a poetic narrative that is a meditation on this rarely considered art form. Directed by Mickey Smith and produced by Helen Hayden, Astray Films.  

alien blue

Artwork: Pamela Rosenkrantz's, Alien Blue Window, 2017

Blue is my favourite colour, so this artwork was a bit of a magnet. A cross between Yves Klein and James Turrell—Pamela Rosenkrantz's, Alien Blue Window, 2017, featured at Art Basel.  Cool title. And pretty tempting to walk through it—or dive into it—to see what's on the other side.

bloom

Water, water everywhere at the moment. It's been a squally, drenched few days. Trying to get into a writing headspace, listening to Radiohead, and a favourite from The King of Limbs—Bloom.

Bloom

Radiohead

white

Ever had that feeling of being at the edge of the world? Obviously not literally, but a sensation, feeling that if you stepped off the place you were standing, you’d be heading into an unknown?

There are places on the planet some would dub, “the end of the world”. My aunt just sent me a photo from Ushuaia in Argentina. Located at the southern tip of South America, it’s known in tourist hype as “the town at the end of the world”. After Argentina, she and her husband are off to Antarctica. And to my imagination, that is a place that feels like journeying into an unknown. 

Before going, I told her to read Marie Darrieussecq’s novel, White. 

Darrieussecq’s writing is evocative, immediate and exciting. My first encounter with her writing was a wonderful fictional story she wrote to accompany an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois, Dans la maison de Louise. It was a text that influenced my own Art Stories project. I’ve avidly read her work since. 

White is the story of two engineers, Edmée and Pete, both escaping their lives, to work on Project White in Antarctica, at a station 15 kilometers from the South Pole. Both seek a kind of tabula rasa—a beginning, an end; an emptiness that might wipe clean traumatic experiences they want to distance or inure themselves from. An escape that threatens to become a journey into a blanketing nothingness. Soon, the very landscape—isolated, magnificent, primal, dangerous—takes a hold of their lives, becoming a mirror for their inner struggles; a force that brings them together in a kind of fateful vortex. And then there are the ghosts. Trapped spirits who are the observers of this tale, they swirl around Edmée and Pete, a tightening web of unseen influencers.

It’s a love story at the end of the world.

parallel dive

Listening to this on repeat, new release from Akali Akali, Parallel Dive (Endless Music Records). It’s mesmerising and definitely worth checking out.

Parallel Dive (Original Mix)

Akali Akali

A Yoshitomo Nara Day

Writing...hope so…

L.E.T.: repost

Artwork: Paste-up by L.E.T. (l.e.t._les.enfants.terribles), I'm not beautiful like you, I'm beautiful like me

A repost of a paste-up by street artist L.E.T. (l.e.t._les.enfants.terribles)—“I'm not beautiful like you, I'm beautiful like me”, because sometimes we just need reminding.