Kaufman’s sculptures can go from orderly to helter-skelter, making them seem like willful renegades from an industrial assembly line.
Ela Bittencourt
Ela Bittencourt is a critic and cultural journalist, currently based in São Paulo. She writes on art, film and literature, often in the context of social issues and politics.
Art as an Exercise in Moving Through Grief
What’s clear in These Conditions is artist Adelita Husni Bey’s ambition to push art to be more than an exercise in spectatorship.
“Women’s Work” as an Aesthetic Provocation
While I cheered at the idea that a largely forgotten woman Dadaist was finally getting her due, I couldn’t help but wonder why the art world’s recognition of Sophie Taeuber-Arp has been so spotty.
The Edgy and Lucid Video Art of Rafael França
Video art was something you watched “with the lights on,” as França insisted, without pretenses of high art.
Remembering Jaider Esbell and How His Activism Challenged Art Institutions
Jaider Esbell showed us that future biennials will need to look to art activists and ethnic collectives not as contingent collaborators but as authoring agents.
The Power of the Dog Is a Different Kind of Western Film
Acclaimed director Jane Campion returns to film with an all-star cast featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and more.
Rosalind Fox Solomon Captures the Humanity of Everyday Lives
In a way, Solomon’s photo series The Forgotten harks back to a time when viewers believed that pictures told it all.
The Jewish Immigrant Modernists Who Dreamed a Better Future in Brazil
As Jewish artists fled World War II, some settled in Brazil, where their resilience and desire for renewal shaped their art that looked hopefully to the future.
The São Paulo Biennial Captures a Perpetually Discontinuous World
Many works take disruption and repetition as their themes, and many artists resurface in different sections, creating multiple affinities.
Don’t Miss These Experimental Works at the New York Film Festival
With films touching on protest in France, China’s one-child policy, and Indigenous life in Canada, the 2021 Currents program stays both culturally and politically forward-thinking.
Huguette Caland’s Vivacious Takes on the Female Form
Robust, voluptuous, and sexually frank, the works in Tête-à-Tête showcase Caland’s outré sense of humor and vivacity.
A Mystical Masseuse Sends a Gated Community Into Upheaval
Director Malgorzata Szumowska uses fantasy to satirize the lives of the affluent in Poland’s official Oscar submission.