Category: travels

berlin biennale

the venice biennale at the KW institute of contemporary art – photography and a long term relationship with a romani family, footage of the algerian liberation army from 1959-1962, music inspired by moroccan rug patterns, a performance by zuzanna hertzberg about the resistance of women during the shoah, african women, slavery, seeds and the need to plant/regenerate life, ‘vomit girl’ about the trauma of the vietnam war

first impressions

so first impressions about berlin. it’s not pretty. it’s industrial-looking, overtaken by graffiti (not wall art, mostly disruptive graffiti), it’s stark, modernist, activist, international, eclectic. it’s less about form, more about substance. for a city chock full of art and artists, it’s incredibly relaxed and accessible. since sept 18th was the last day of the berlin biennale, i got here, took a shower and walked straight to KW institute for contemporary art. more about that later. while walking around, i came upon a tent city with signs that said ‘a better world is possible’ and a rally with people on bikes playing cuban music and brandishing red che guevara flags – it was organized to show solidarity with socialist cuba and people on the street responded with ‘viva cuba.’ it’s like being in an alternate universe. lunch at mogg where many of us were seated outdoors (even though it was raining) and the restaurant offered blankets to those who wanted to feel more cozy. they had a japanese menu today so i had scrambled eggs and ground chicken on white rice with spinach and pickled ginger on top. ‘mogg is housed in an old red brick building, a former jewish girls school on berlin’s august strasse, designed by alexander beers in 1927.’

back in chicago

after taking off for laguardia this morning, we were told that the plane didn’t have enough ‘pressure’ so we had to turn back. we circled on top of chicago for an hour and then landed back at o’hare, close to the time we would have landed in ny had everything gone as planned.

but my sister picked me up, we had lunch at portillo’s, fresh samosas from asian island, and then chai with her lovely friends. everything works out in the end <3

The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men

‘Berlin-based Pakistani artist Bani Abidi’s photographic work, The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men (2021), is one that gently chips away at longstanding mythologies of male power. And like those myths, it works by endless repetition, in this case, and as the title suggests, of the hand gestures that have, for millennia, been an essential component of the performance of politics.’
Some of the individuals featured in this work: Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Ronald Reagan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Alexander Lukashenko, Jair Bolsonaro, Tony Blair, Imran Khan, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Joseph Stalin, Hun Sen, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, Idi Amin, Benjamin Netanyahu, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Omar Al-Bashir, Fidel Castro, Boris Johnson, Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Haile Selassie, Jorge Rafael Videla, Pervez Musharraf, Muhammad Ayub Khan, Augusto Pinochet, Than Shwe, Kim Jong-un, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Muammar Gaddafi, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, etc

seagull at the steppenwolf theatre

tuesday night (may 10th) my sister and i went to see ‘seagull’ at the steppenwolf’s new in-the-round theater. sadly, yasen peyankov’s adaptation of the chekhov classic didn’t quite work for us.

the brisk pacing, economy of language, and non-stop humor created a disconnect between some of the messed up relationships in the play (that can evoke heartbreak) and the constant, almost canned, laughter coming from the audience. to me ‘the seagull’ is not exactly seinfeld. it’s dark humor no doubt, but it’s delivered thru sarcasm and innuendo. making the dialogue clipped and direct removes some of the layers needed to make the play work as a tragicomedy.

the actors were good but they were stuck with a less than stellar adaptation. an experience nonetheless.

#seagull #theseagull #chekhov #play #steppenwolf #steppenwolftheatre #chicago #intheroundtheatre #antonchekhov #theatreisback #theatreislife

gallivanting in chicago

my sister and i gallivanting in chicago yesterday: lunch at beatrix, afternoon spent at MCA, and then dinner at tao chicago, a spectacular restaurant housed in the historic building that used to be castle chicago nightclub before it closed in 2014. esp taken by the giant mural created by HUSH, ‘a british mixed-media artist who fuses the aesthetic of street art with subjects from japanese iconography’.

#mca #museumofcontemporaryart #chicago #taochicago #hushartist #japaneseiconography #art #sisterarethebest

The Man Who Talked Until He Disappeared

The exhibit at MCA takes its name from Bani Abidi’s watercolor series “The Man Who Talked Until He Disappeared” which depicts writers, political leaders and bloggers from Pakistan who have been disappeared on account of their activism over the past decade. In this minimalist delicate series, we see them disappear gradually on paper with the last watercolor portraying threadbare, eyeless, bodiless specters that continue to haunt us.

#baniabidi #mca #museumofcontemporaryart #chicago #pakistan #pakistaniartist #disappearances #politicaldisappeared #politicalviolence #stateviolence #militaryviolence #thedisappeared #themanwhotalkeduntilhedisappeared

Memorial to Lost Words

This sound installation by Pakistani artist Bani Abidi at MCA brought me to tears. A powerful memorial to the one million South Asian/Indian soldiers who fought in WW1 but have been completely erased. My own great grandfather fought in France, under British colonial rule.

Bani Abidi’s Memorial to Lost Words is a song installation based on letters and songs from the First World War. They are not the well archived memoirs of European and British soldiers, but the words of Indian Soldiers and their womenfolk back home in India. Even a hundred years after the fact, it is a little known fact of WWI history that more than a million Indian soldiers fought in this war. So, clearly, official accounts and memorials are very rarely truthful transmitters of history. This memorial draws from letters that were written home by Indian Soldiers and folk songs that were sung by their wives, mothers and sisters at the time but were censored or forgotten because of their candid condemnation of the war.

#baniabidi #pakistaniartist #mca #museumofcontemporaryart #chicago #worldwar1 #indiansoldiersinww1 #southasiansoldiers #soundinstallation #memorial

edward ryerson conservation area and then shopping

my sister’s gorgeous artwork, a morning walk at the edward ryerson conservation area (an enchanted place with fairies and magic dust), and then some shopping at the fashion outlets here in chicago – my sister helped me find the the eyeglasses of my dreams.

#chicago #edwardryersonconservationarea #morningwalk #natureisbeautiful #shoppingwithmysister #art #artwork #hangingoutwithmysister

Cherry blossoms at Branch Brook Park

Drove two hours each way to visit Branch Brook Park in NJ. “With more than 5,200 trees, Branch Brook Park in Newark is the country’s largest collection of Japanese cherry blossom trees.” The 360-acre park was designed by the Olmsted brothers in 1895. Felt like I was in the center of a water color painting. For lunch stopped over in Paterson and had Turkish red lentil soup and koftas at Toros. 70F and sunny. Heaven <3

#branchbrookpark #branchbrookparknj #branchbrook #torosrestaurant #paterson #newark #cherryblossoms #japanesecherryblossoms #cherryblossomtrees #spring