Nov / Dec 2017 Issue
“Empathy”

Hospitality and Hosting Relationships in Michael Rakowitz’s Art

Hospitality and Hosting Relationships in Michael Rakowitz’s Art

Through his work, Michael Rakowitz consistently asks how we can care for what we’ve discarded, and opens new possibilities to reimagine previously hostile relationships.

Strategies & Resources

Below the Surface: Creating Hope through Portraiture

Strategies & Resources

Below the Surface: Creating Hope through Portraiture

Educator-in-Residence Joseph Iacona’s students embark on a project of self-discovery, inspiring them to feel hopeful about themselves and their future while protecting their identities.

Reading Critically: Alexandra Bell’s “Counternarratives”

Reading Critically: Alexandra Bell’s “Counternarratives”

Alexandra Bell’s “Counternarratives” series shows inscribed corrections of “New York Times” print articles, exposing editorial bias conveyed by ill-chosen images, poorly worded headlines, and textual masking of white crime.

Dominate Anonymity: An Interview with Guy Woueté

Dominate Anonymity: An Interview with Guy Woueté

Cameroonian artist Guy Woueté takes inspiration from everyday life to create socially critical work that addresses questions of migration and equity in a globalized twenty-first century.

Patient Time Scripts: Revisiting the Work of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi

Patient Time Scripts: Revisiting the Work of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi

Same Mdluli details the significance of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi’s work, created in response to the conditions of his people during apartheid in South Africa.

Empathy in Training: Kerry Tribe’s “Standardized Patient”

Empathy in Training: Kerry Tribe’s “Standardized Patient”

Kerry Tribe’s new video installation “Standardized Patient,” examines the relationship between doctors and patients—or, more accurately, between medical students and actors playing patients.

Orawan Arunrak: Words to Communicate

Orawan Arunrak: Words to Communicate

With a practice based loosely on choreographed interactions between the artist, various interlocutors, and the spaces and places that they share, Thai artist Orawan Arunrak complicates categories of identity and perception by creating work with many meanings, in many languages, for many people.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Radical Art in a Conservative School

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Radical Art in a Conservative School

Art21 Educator Dennis Greenwell shares how a project on empathy helped his students better understand one another and our current political landscape.

Booked

How Did We Get Here? A Reading List for Understanding Race in America

Booked

How Did We Get Here? A Reading List for Understanding Race in America

Artist Cauleen Smith and “Culture Type” editor Victoria L. Valentine select twelve texts that offer rare perspectives on the central role race plays in American life.

Composing Compassion: On Jumana Manna’s “A Magical Substance Flows Into Me”

Composing Compassion: On Jumana Manna’s “A Magical Substance Flows Into Me”

Jumana Manna’s 2015 film “A magical substance flows into me” weaves together the musical traditions of communities living in and around Jerusalem, undermining the state-sanctioned forgetting of complex cultural contexts.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Keep it Real, Keep it Relevant

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Keep it Real, Keep it Relevant

Educator-in-Residence Joseph Iacona shares the impact socially engaged artists have in classrooms with trauma-impacted students.

The Poetry of Everyday Life: An Interview with Project Row Houses Director Eureka Gilkey

The Poetry of Everyday Life: An Interview with Project Row Houses Director Eureka Gilkey

Houston arts nonprofit Project Row Houses responds directly to the needs of the Third Ward community, offering both arts programming and access to social services, proving both can work hand-in-hand.

Robots, Race, and Algorithms: Stephanie Dinkins at Recess Assembly

Robots, Race, and Algorithms: Stephanie Dinkins at Recess Assembly

For her residency at Recess Assembly, artist Stephanie Dinkins is exploring if social robot BINA48 is capable of speaking from the perspective of a Black woman.

Letter from the Editor

Living in an Age of Empathy

Letter from the Editor

Living in an Age of Empathy

Curator Yvette Mutumba discusses how biased empathy can be problematic, but when understood as a means of inclusive human solidarity, empathy can lead to a greater understanding of the issues troubling the world today.