Artwork: Wall mural by 17matrix, Radical Love, Idaho-a-Velha, Portugal for Boom Festival, 2023
Incredible wall mural titled Radical Love by 17matrix (@17matrix) in Idaho-a-Velha, Portugal for Boom Festival. I’ve always loved 17matrix’s bird murals—the vibrancy, freedom and explosion of colours, which is on display here as well.
Artwork: Installation by Chiharu Shiota, Lost Words, St. Nikolai Kirche, Berlin, 2017
It seems fitting that I rediscovered this poem I wrote for Chiharu Shiota’s installation at Berlin’s oldest church, St. Nikolai Kirche, titled Lost Words—a poem lost and then found. I rewrote it, and I think initially I just didn’t have the words to write it. The installation is fascinating, created with thousands of pages of the Bible in different languages, tangled and seemingly blown away by some invisible wind. The artwork was created to commemorate the 500th year of the Protestant Reformation that was celebrated in Germany in 2017. Shiota drew on her own history of migration, of her native Japan and having migrated to Germany where she now resides, and a kind of reverse migration of Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century who came from the west to spread Christianity in Japan. Christianity was subsequently banned in Japan, so that Japanese Christians had to go into hiding to practice their religion. The themes of immigration through storytelling is at the heart of Shiota’s work, with the black thread representing a universal element of connection, such as the night sky.
Shiota said this about Lost Words: “Our heart, soul and feelings empower the act of moving. They serve as the energy of our decisions and beliefs. My installation of floating Bible pages conveys this concept.
And here is the poem I wrote, inspired by the installation:
words, inspired
divine, arc through eons
shaped by different tongues
migrating as stories told
and prayers incanted
in whispers, at times
stifled as heresy
yet printed boldly
in faded ink
those words still live
inscribed in heart
and soul, the very essence
of being, belief
always to be heard
never to be erased
(Poem inspired by Chiharu Shiota’s installation, Lost Words, Berlin, 2017
© Angela Jooste)
Artwork: Saad Qureshi, Tree of Life, Prayer, woven paper, 2023
British artist Saad Qureshi is a storyteller and collector of stories. For his exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Something About Paradise (2020—see my art story of this installation here), he travelled around the United Kingdom asking people what paradise meant to them, and the resulting installation was an otherworldly dreamscape of such intricacy and imagination that no one person could have envisaged such a collection of landscapes or experiences.
For his recent exhibition at Aicon Gallery in New York, Spaces & Places, Qureshi continues telling stories, this time in the two-dimensional format of woven paper Tanabanas (tapestries). It is a form he utilised in his 2022 exhibition, Tanabana, where his family’s tradition of working with textiles and needlework shaped the woven images taken from family carpets and books. Qureshi photographed the textiles that were significant to him growing up, and then printed the images onto paper, cut them into strips, sometimes combining different images, and then wove them into tapestries. The same practice is employed in the Spaces & Places exhibition.
Qureshi’s contemporary interpretation of an ancient artform creates a dialogue with past and present expressions of weaving that entwines with his personal history and family traditions. There’s also the wonderful association of weaving and writing. The Latin for weaving or ‘to weave’ is texere, hence weaving is referred to as ‘textiles’. The English word ‘text’ similarly has its etymology in the Latin texere, bringing the relationship of weaving and writing or printed words together. Qureshi’s fascination with storytelling finds a perfect, synergistic outlet in his series of woven paper Tanabanas.
Artwork: Installation by OAKOAK, Paris, 2023
Another poetic piece by OAKOAK (@oakoak_street_art) with the added quote from Victor Hugo (translated) “When the moon rises, do we think about the setting sun?”
Artwork: Painting by Seth, and there was light…, Qalandiya, Palestinian Territories, 2022
« et la lumière fut… » / « and there was light.. » / وكان هناك ضوء
Stories that bring light into the world, and into someone’s life. A simple and beautiful painting made by Seth (@seth_globepainter) in 2022 in the remains of the Palestinian village of Qalandiya at the invitation of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation and Baladk Urban Arts Project.
I’ve been listening to Baltra’s remix of Me & George’s track Slash a lot lately. It’s cool, light and catchy. Check it out!
Artwork: Anselm Kiefer, Women of Antiquity, Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, 2023
Anselm Kiefer’s current exhibition at Château La Coste in Aix-en-Provence (June-September 2023), features a number of sculptures from his ongoing Women of Antiquity (1999—) series, inspired by specific historical and mythical female figures who intellectually and creatively challenged the boundaries of their times.
One sculpture resonated, the weight of a book upon one figure’s shoulders, like wings that could give flight, but heftier, keeping her grounded. And here’s the poem I wrote about it:
and the book
weighs heavy
the knowing
too immense
to carry
indefinitely
although
she’ll try
©Angela Jooste
What’s great about actor Ethan Hawke’s talk about being creative is how down to earth it is. Creativity as he expresses it is a vital, essential part of being human and can take many forms, unique to each individual. It’s about passion, energy, but mostly it’s about love. Check it out.
Artwork: Pietro Tenerani, Psyche, c.1819, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Beautiful poem by Haitian-born American writer Assotto Saint titled Soul:
I remember the beginning
a dream ancient as dawn
a dream of destiny drumming up
the blood
the flesh
this earth
a dream we were once one
soul
Artwork: Paste-up by Marshal Arts, Cologne, 2023
I’ve posted this rather cool dude before in another location by Marshal Arts (@marshal.arts_streetart). This time he was spotted in Cologne. No need for special black ops programs by the US military to uncover alleged alien spacecraft to further the narrative “we’re not alone” (otherwise known as “unidentified anomalous phenomenon”—the timing for this disclosure by NGA whistleblowers to the US Congress is pretty suspect—Look up!!! It’s an unidentified hostile weather balloon!! Be afraid!!! 👻). Anyhow, this guy is hiding in plain sight, and looking at how he’s tricked out, my guess is he’s happy using public transport and avoiding the people in uniform (or wearing aviators and black suits). 👽
Artwork: Mural/installation by OAKOAK, Sous les murs le ciel, Paris, 2023
Poetic wall mural/installation by artist OAKOAK (@oakoak_street_art) in Paris, Sous les murs le ciel (Under the walls the sky).
Artwork: Wall mural by Nate Frizzell, Long Beach California, 2017
I love these two stanzas from American poet Stephen Dunn’s poem Mon Semblable:
Anonymous among strangers
I look for those
with hidden wings,
and for the scars
that those who once had wings
can’t hide.
Artwork: Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1973-6, Great Basin Desert, Utah
I recently published an art story for Nancy Holt’s installation Starfire, which was originally created in 1986 and recreated for the exhibition Ecstatic Land at Ballroom Marfa in Texas this year. I was initially drawn to Holt’s permanent land art installation constructed between 1973-6 in the Great Basin Desert in northern Utah, where she bought forty acres of land to create Sun Tunnels.
Holt said this about the land and how it inspired her:
“In the surrounding area are old trails, crystal caves, disused turquoise, copper, and tungsten mines, old oil wells and windmills, hidden springs, and ancient caves. A nearby cave, coated with centuries of charcoal and grease, is filled with at least ten feet of residue—mostly dirt, bones, and artefacts. Out there a “lifetime” seems very minute. After camping alone in the desert awhile, I had a strong sense that I was linked through thousands of years of human time with the people who had lived in the caves around there for so long. I was sharing the same landscape with them. From the site, they would have seen the sun rising and setting over the same mountains and ridges.”
Sun Tunnels is currently owned and under the stewardship of DIA Art Foundation, who oversee Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Holt consulted with numerous people such as astrophysicists, engineers, astronomers, surveyors, road graders, carpenters, construction workers, and photographers to create the large cement tunnels that are positioned in alignment with the rising and setting sun on the days of the solstices around June 21st and December 21st. On these days the sun is centred through these tunnels, and nearly centre for about ten days either side of the solstice.
Artwork: Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels, 1973-6, Great Basin Desert, Utah
The four tunnels are positioned in an X configuration eighty-six feet long on the diagonal, and each tunnel is eighteen feet in length. If you go inside the tunnels, there are holes cut out in the upper half of the tunnels, each pattern of holes is different to align with the constellations Draco, Perseus, Columba and Capricorn.
Holt speaks eloquently of how the concept of time is intrinsic to the installation:
“’Time’ is not just a mental concept or a mathematical abstraction in the desert. The rocks in the distance are ageless; they have been deposited in layers over hundreds of thousands of year. “Time” takes on a physical presence. Only ten miles south of Sun Tunnels are the Bonneville Salt Flats, one of the few areas in the world where you can actually see the curvature of the earth. Being part of that kind of landscape, and walking on earth that has surely never been walked on before, evokes a sense of being on this planet, rotating in space, in universal time.”
Like with Starfire, the Sun Tunnels installation connects the artwork with the cosmos, the stars, the seasons and brings awareness of this to the viewer, bringing the vastness of space back to the human scale, to bring the heavens that much closer to earth.
[source quotes: https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/sun-tunnels-0]
Artwork: Vong Phaophanit, Neon Rice Field, 1993, Tate Britain, London
The Tate Britain has rehung its collection to mixed reviews, yet Vong Phaophanit’s installation Neon Rice Field (1993) in the Duveen space, has a meditative strangeness and quiet beauty that stands out.
Phaophanit was born in Laos, educated in France and now resides in London. Such cultural dislocations have had a profound influence on his work. Neon Rice Field is created with seven tons of dry, white long-grain rice with six parallel tubes of red neon light nestling in the furrows of what appears as a ploughed field. The juxtapositions of natural and unnatural substances; the connotation of the East (rice/agriculture) and West (neon/industry) is simplistic and not what Phaophanit intends. Instead there is a subtle subversion to such dichotomies, as in the past he’s used American sponsorship to supply the rice, while industrial production and its commercial associations is most often offshored to Asian countries such as China.
Phaophanit is more interested in opening up the potential for “possibilities of meanings”, and says: “Once you name all the meanings, something still remains, something left over. That’s how I work. For instance, I use rice not only as a material, a substance, a smell or a symbol of food in the East, but I want to shake things – see what falls down.”
Artwork: Mural by NEAN, Adrift, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2023
Alone in the woods, wondering which way to go next…
This incredible mural by NEAN (@nean_kingdom) titled Adrift, kind of sums up how I was feeling today.
Artwork: Paste-up and wall drawing by seiLeise, somewhere in Paris
Just a boy reaching for the stars…with a small cat-friend watching as well. Lovely paste-up and wall drawing from seiLeise (@seileise & seiLeise.com) somewhere in Paris.
Nick Cave wrote this in his recent The Red Hand Files letter:
“Art is the agent best equipped to bring light to the world. That is its purpose. That is its promise.”
So, I thought I’d share a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis track, A Rather Lovely Thing, from the film, The Assassination of Jesse James. Music that brings some light into the world.
Photograph: Jacques Brel, 1963, by Joop Van Bilsen
I read these words by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel today and they felt like a prayer or blessing, and I was immediately uplifted by them:
“I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to realize some of them. I wish you to love what must be loved, and to forget what must be forgotten. I wish you passions. I wish you silences. I wish you birdsongs as you wake up and children’s laughter. I wish you to respect the differences of others, because the worth and virtues of each person often remain to be discovered. I wish you to resist the stagnation, the indifference, and the negative values of our time. I wish you at last to never give up the search, for adventure, life, love. For life is a wonderful adventure and no reasonable person should give it up without a tough fight. I wish you above all to be yourself, proud of being and happy, for happiness is our true destiny.”
For anyone who needs to hear this.
(source: @_nitch)
Artwork: Andrew Rovenko, The Shuttle, from the Rocketgirl Chronicles, Melbourne, Australia
In Melbourne during the crazy lockdowns a truly wonderful and poetic project was born. Photographer Andrew Rovenko and his daughter decided to explore this “new” world that we found ourselves in, and so began the Rocketgirl Chronicles. Rovenko wrote this about the photographic project:
“An unintended photography project, born out of the intended family time in Melbourne’s 6th lockdown.
With no more rainbows on the pavements, stuffed animals away from the windows and once vibrant spoonvilles turned sad ghost towns – everyone needed to figure out their own way to keep going. Small things. Small wins. Like making a space helmet for your child fascinated by the night sky. And a suit.
Too bad that the novelty of a costume doesn’t last. Stories however, seem to have worked since forever. So we took the costume and went looking for stories. The good thing is that stories can be found anywhere, be it 5km travel limit or your bedroom. The bus stop or a laundry.
These photographs are the memories from the stories we found. The lockdown has now ended. We’ll outgrow the costume. But the time spent together exploring and imagining is one special gift to keep.”
Rovenko intends to make the Rocketgirl Chronicles into a photo book that will be crowdfunded through Kickstarter. If you wish to explore the beautiful and otherworldly photographs of a small astronaut stranded in Planet Lockdown, check out Rovenko’s Instagram @rovenko and website, https://rovenko.com.
Artwork: Mural by Seth, Migration, Rennes-Saint Malo, 2023 (middle section of wall)
Artist Seth (@seth_globepainter) painted this recent mural, Migration, for the Teenage Kicks Biennale at Rennes-Saint Malo in France. Seth is one of my favourite mural painters and artists for his depiction of children, whether they’re daydreaming, trying to connect and play, travelling through portals into alternate dimensions, hanging out reading books and discovering new worlds, or in this case, flying like birds.