AgBags, part of Natalie Jeremijenko’s Farmacy project, in action.
“The work that I do is an invitation to co-produce the future.” Artist-engineer Natalie Jeremijenko is creating nature-oriented, scalable projects: the Farmacy urban-agriculture initiative, “tree offices,” and pencils made from–and measuring–carbon pollution in the air. Through her work, Jeremijenko seeks to redesign systems we all depend on, such as food distribution and transportation, to make them environmentally sustainable.
- London’s Assemble—a collective of 18 designers and architects—has won the Turner Prize. The first non-artists to win, the group was recognized for its “ground-up approach to regeneration, city planning and development in opposition to corporate gentrification.”
- Among Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers are 21 artists “bound by the belief that art serves a higher purpose,” including Cuban artists Tania Bruguera and María Magdalena Campos-Pons, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and Nigerian-American sculptor Adejoke Tugbiyele.
- In keeping with a theme in his art—make visible that which is rarely seen—Trevor Paglen has led a scuba-diving expedition to the bottom to the ocean’s floor to view “both the physical structure of the Internet and a site of government spying.”
- The Rubell Family Collection’s new show “is a welcome response to other contemporary art shows in which women are frequently underrepresented.” Pairing familiar faces with new ones, it features works by 72 women, including Lisa Yuskavage and Cady Noland. Though the show itself had no thesis, many featured works subvert typical representations of women. The Rubell’s daughter, Jennifer, has a work in the show–a life-size nutcracker in the shape of a blow-up sex doll. “When understood as a prop in a performance enacted by the crowd, the work comes alive as a funny, surreal, political gesture.”
- David Hammons considers his artwork “a combination of outsider art, Arte Povera, and Marcel Duchamp.” Tom Finkelpearl talks with Thomas Lax about organizing a 1988 show of North Carolina outsider art, curated by Hammons and sculptor Ed McGowin. The show, Outside Insight, “evinces [Hammons’] identification with vernacular African-American cultural forms, self-effacing relationship to authorship, and profound sense of the value of everyday objects and gestures.”
- Mattel didn’t plan on widely distributing its “Sheroes”-edition Ava DuVernay Barbie, but did so after fans of the Selma director campaigned online. The doll sold out within a day of its release. Proceeds go to the advocacy organizations Color of Change and Witness.
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