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    in Exhibitions

    ‘I Just Had to Make Them’: Artist Sarah Meyohas on Her New Holographic Works That Change Colors Based on How You View Them

    Entering Sarah Meyohas’s new show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, you might be forgiven for thinking the artist has simply installed a number of pitch-black glass panes across the gallery. Step in front of these mirrored panels, though, and they reveal mesmeric three-dimensional images—a cluster of plants here, a fragment of a naked female form there—all tinged with iridescent hues. No, it’s not digital trickery, but the result of Meyohas’s continued adventures into holographic technology.
    These new works are the “Rolls Royce version” of holograms, as Meyohas put it, technically known as diffraction gratings, devices with multi-lined or grooved surfaces that split light into its different wavelengths or colors. The resulting vibrant tones seen by the human eye are known as structural color, an occurrence that Meyohas has lately found “religiously appealing.” 
    “Essentially, any color that changes based on your angle of viewing is structural color,” she told Artnet News. “The idea that a regular shape or form at nanoscale can refract and create light and color on the visible spectrum, and the fact that light is dependent on your position just felt so beautiful to me.”
    Sarah Meyohas, Interference #17 (2023) . Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
    Her diffraction gratings, making up her ongoing “Interferences” series (2021–present), have been created by machine-etching millions of microscopic lines onto glass at a depth of 600 nanometers. So meticulous is this operation—emerging from “our desire to encode more and more information in smaller and smaller spots,” Meyohas said—that in effect, “we can create structural color that is more precise than what nature creates.” 
    It is fitting, then, that the artist’s gratings have been etched from her film photographs of unearthly flora, offering a head-on collision between nature and technology. (Meyohas also considered water droplets and spiderwebs as subjects, except the former was difficult to execute and she did not want to raise spiders for the latter.) 
    Sarah Meyohas, Interference #19 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
    “I didn’t want to put in a pattern. I didn’t want to put in something that could be repeated,” she explained. “It’s more about seeing the texture of life and living matter, and focusing on that up close.” 
    The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 14-foot long, multi-panel diffraction grating, titled Interference #18 (2023). The 30 trapezoid glass panes variously carry visuals of plant matter and snatches of a naked female body, with the entanglement between the biotic and technologic taking an abstract, sensual turn. 
    Sarah Meyohas, Interference #18 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
    Meyohas’s newfound interest in anatomy is also captured in Diffraction #1 (2023), a sculptural form that’s part of a new series. Across the work’s conjoined glass windows can be glimpsed three-breasted female torsos—a surreal vision that emerges from Meyohas’s observation that “you really don’t see nude forms anymore,” whether in galleries or Hollywood movies. “I like putting bodies in spaces they’re not supposed to be,” she added. 
    These new pieces trail Meyohas’s other experiments with high-end tech, whether with the blockchain or A.I. But hers have never been idle pursuits of technology; instead, they are attempts to lift the lid on the true nature and ramifications of such innovations—what it might mean to financialize art (as in 2015’s Bitchcoin), or algorithmize beauty (as in 2017’s “Cloud of Petals“). This has entailed turning to “a different type of engagement with technology,” she said. 
    Sarah Meyohas, detail of Interference #18 (2023). Photo: Lance Brewer. © Sarah Meyohas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
    With her latest diffraction gratings, she sought to create “pieces that are fundamentally optical, requiring your physical presence,” she noted, as opposed to work that could be “absorbed” by trending discussions of virtuality or generative A.I. 
    And Meyohas’s own engagement with holographic tech runs far deeper than those finely etched surfaces. While discussing the works, she excitedly detailed the technique of turning every pixel of her photographs into a value for the machine gratings, and the dilemma of whether or not to laminate the glass panes. “I get off on that,” she said of the rather nerdy process. 
    “I hope people will see the difference, but I’m not entirely sure that they will,” she added of her upscale holograms. “They’ll be like, ‘oh, it changes color, fun,’ you know? But it’s okay if they don’t because I just had to make it.”  
    “Sarah Meyohas” is on view at Marianne Boesky, 509 West 24th Street, New York, through June 30. 
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    Artist Trevor Paglen Sounds the Alarm on Our New Era of ‘Psy-Ops Capitalism’ in a Reality-Testing Show at Pace Gallery

    Remember “the dress” from 2015? For a few weeks that year, a low-res image of a random frock fomented a seemingly inescapable internet debate over whether its colors were blue and black or white and gold.  
    It all seemed like a bit of fun. Taylor Swift weighed in; so did every uncle with a Facebook account. Studies and peer-reviewed papers eventually got to the bottom of the science behind the split in interpretations, but by that point, most people were tired of talking about it. In the end, we were left with a simple fact: people can look at the same object and see different things. 
    But what if this basic physiological phenomenon could be weaponized against us in the name of spycraft or commerce? (The dress debate proved to be good business for social media platforms and media outlets—Buzzfeed even based its editorial strategy around it.)  
    For Trevor Paglen, an artist who has made a career of looking at the sly ways in which technology has shaped our view of the world around us, this is a question of when, not if.  
    “In the extremely near future,” the artist said, “you and I will watch what is ostensibly the same show on Netflix, but we will each see a different movie.” The streaming platform, he explained, “will be generating a different movie for us based on, one, the things we want to see; and two, what it thinks will be the most effective way to extract some kind of value from us.”   
    Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #85237 (Unclassified object near The Eastern Veil) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    The dress anecdote may seem like an odd place to start an article about Paglen’s new show at Pace Gallery, which has nothing to do with clothes or Netflix and is instead about a wide range of heady political topics like electronic warfare and the effects of military influence operations on American culture. But we begin here because, if there’s one central theme that ties this otherwise disparate exhibition together, it is, in Paglen’s words, that “perception is malleable.” 
    “You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYOPS” is the name of the show. Its title is taken from a phrase frequently found on challenge coins, which are small tokens made to commemorate special military and police units who use unconventional tactics of persuasion to achieve a particular objective—also known as psychological operations, or psy-ops. (Taking the form of currency, these mementos also make eerie metaphors for the military-industrial complex writ large.)
    If you’ve heard about psy-ops, chances are it was in the context of science fiction or conspiracy theory. But the phrase is about to become much more common in our collective lexicon, Paglen said. If the last decade was defined by “surveillance capitalism”—a term coined by scholar Shoshana Zuboff to connote the practice of corporations harvesting and selling our personal data—then we’re about to enter what Paglen calls the era of “psy-ops capitalism.” 
    Trevor Paglen, (PALLADIUM Variation #4) 2023. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Sure enough, a scary character features prominently in Paglen’s own version of a challenge coin, which is a centerpiece of the show. The sculpture, which is roughly 50 times the size of a coin, is made from steel, bullets, and resin; in the middle is a menacing skull with glowing red features. (Real challenge coins are inscribed with their units’ insignia—typically symbols of patriotism or violence. Skeletons and dragons are popular choices, Paglen pointed out.)
    Elsewhere in the show are several large-scale photographs of “unids,” or unidentified objects floating in orbit around the earth, which the artist imaged using infrared telescopes in remote locations. It can be hard to spot these unids, though. Paglen’s prints are also packed with stellar remnants, stars, and gaseous clouds. So much so, in fact, that the pictures could just as easily be read as musings on the vast mysteries of outer space.
    To Paglen, they kind of are. “I think that space itself as a concept is kind of a psy-op,” he said, only half joking. Because of its radical unknowability, space becomes a backdrop onto which we project our fantasies, he said.
    Trevor Paglen, UNKNOWN #90007 (Classified object near Dreyer’s Nebula) (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Think about this idea in the gallery and you’ll begin to wonder: Can I trust anything on view, or is the artist employing the same techniques that he’s exploring? Am I seeing deception or am I being deceived?
    This question gets even knottier with the one video piece, Doty (2023). The 66-minute film features interviews with Richard Doty, a former member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who discusses his work recruiting spies, running surveillance operations, and spreading false information within UFO communities to cover up secret work conducted at New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force base, where he was stationed.  
    Whether or not Doty is a reliable narrator is never quite clear; nor is his agenda. For every moment when it feels like he’s whispering state secrets into our ears, there are others that feel like he’s spinning yarns that are just a little too neat to be true—a magician’s assistant distracting from the trick.
    Trevor Paglen, Doty (2023). © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Suspended above the gallery is the artist’s other sculpture in the show, the kite-like PALLADIUM Variation #4 (2023). It’s based on satellites designed by military and intelligence agencies to confuse enemy radars, but unlike those objects, which are ultra-sophisticated pieces of deception technology, Paglen’s imitation is primitive—just steel and foil. More than a weapon, it invokes the work of the mid-century minimalists, say, or Light and Space artists like Larry Bell. 
    The sculpture’s inutility leaves its meaning unclear. That’s the case with many of the artworks on view in the exhibition. Straightforward and spare—a printed photograph, a single-channel video—they exude none of the complexities of the systems they invoke. How they all fit together remains a mystery. The whole thing is fraught with ambiguity. 
    This, according to the artist, is intentional. The show asks viewers: “What is this ambiguity? How are we susceptible to being taken advantage of in these moments?”
    “Our impulse is to try to resolve that ambiguity, to make sense of it,” he went on. But for Paglen, the show is meant to remind us that our “inability to live with ambiguity might be a means by which we can be manipulated.” 
    “Trevor Paglen: You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYOPS” is on view now through July 22 at Pace in New York. 
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    in Exhibitions

    Is Art Better When You Can Touch It? We Tried an Offbeat Museum Tour That Lets You Get Up Close and Personal With the Exhibits

    Regular museum-goers are pretty au fait with the accepted rules: keep your distance from the exhibits, don’t touch anything, and try to be quiet. So what happens when an eccentric museum director expressly encourages you to break them? This is the strange proposition put forward by the Sainsbury Centre near Norfolk, England at its relaunch over the weekend.
    As part of the new program, visitors to the museum are invited to interact with the artworks in unprecedented ways, including hugging a Henry Moore or whispering secrets to a Giacometti.
    “We are the first museum to ever understand art as a living entity,” the center’s director Jago Cooper told Artnet News. “Great artists are people who have an ability to channel the uniqueness of the human soul into clay or onto a canvas, and materialize an aspect of their anima. At that moment, art captures the life force of the individual.”
    The “living art” concept is a passion project of Cooper’s, and the freedom to carry it out was the main condition behind his slightly surprising decision to leave a cushy senior role as Head of the Americas at the British Museum and join this comparatively provincial center in 2021. The idea sounded exciting, but how do these kinds of encounters with “living art” play out in practice? Artnet News decided to give the tour a go.

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    Step one was a battle with rural phone service providers to download Smartify, a free app offering curated information about museum exhibits somewhat like an audioguide. The first tour, “Living Art,” began with Henry Moore’s Mother and Child (1932). Cooper’s voice in my ear instructed me to embrace the statue, make eye contact with the mother, and then close my eyes and try to summon my earliest memory of being held as a child.
    While that memory evaded me, I was encouraged to gently caress the groove running up the sculpture’s back, which was pleasantly smooth and cool to the touch. This sensual moment was compared to Moore rubbing oil into his mother’s back as a child, which he often described as his earliest sculptural experience.
    The author hugging Henry Moore, Mother and Child at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
    “That feeling within you, that feeling of protection, is what Henry was trying to create with this work,” Cooper told me. “Open your eyes and look at this sculpture again, and understand that art isn’t a set of rules to be read, it’s an emotional state of mind to get into.”
    I wondered that my actions might damage the sculpture, but Cooper explained that there was video footage of Moore himself telling one of the center’s founders that anyone who thinks they can understand his art without touching it doesn’t know anything about sculpture. Cooper did concede that the work is likely to acquire a patina over time, adding “but that for me is part of the ageing process. I’m not trying to preserve it in a pristine state.”
    “Of course, everything has to be done on a very careful, case-by-case basis,” he clarified. “Lots of works of art aren’t designed to touch, but for some things we feel we have clear evidence that it wants to be touched.”
    The author moving with three dancing female figures (c. 618-906) at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
    Next up were three Tang dynasty dancing figures. “These are not static ceramic vessels within a case, they’re living embodiments of movement and dance that has been going on for more than 1,200 years in China,” said Cooper.
    As evocative sounds filled my ears, I was encouraged to raise my hands and sway like no one was watching, although I couldn’t help stealing a few sideways glances to ensure that nobody, indeed, was.
    “It might feel strange to move like this in the gallery but it might liberate you from the restrictive ways that you’ve been told to engage with art,” promised Cooper. “By letting go of convention, you can open up and connect with art in a much more creative way.”
    The author getting close enough to see Francis Bacon’s hair on Study for a Portrait of P.L., no. 2 (1957) at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
    I sidled over to Francis Bacon’s Study for a Portrait of P.L., no. 2 (1957), depicting his violently abusive partner Peter Lacy. In rousing tones, Cooper established the vibes: “His workshop was a place of alcoholic haze, of cigarettes brushing against the canvas, of trauma and turmoil and angst. You can literally feel the energy within him transfer to the canvas.”
    At the audio’s bidding, I leaned in unusually close to the canvas to spot one of Bacon’s hairs on Lacy’s shoulder. Its the kind of detail that reminds us of the immediacy of art-making and that these works are vestiges of real lives lived.
    Another interesting aspect of the museum’s relaunch was a second audio tour proposing new ways to inform museum-goers about works in lieu of interpretative wall texts. Listeners can chose to hear from either a maker, an academic expert or someone with lived experience. In the case of a pair of snow goggles, for example, we can hear the perspective of contemporary artist Tarralik Duffy, about the process of carving bone, or from the Greenland hunter Aleqatsiaq Peary, about how the goggles are used.
    This tour, said Cooper, “is an attempt to say that the museum isn’t an authority through which the knowledge is given to you to understand art. These are living entities and there’s no right or wrong way to meet them.”
    The author viewed by art from within a display cabinet at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.

    A third tour offered yet more experiential encounters with art. “Quite a lot of people who go to galleries and museums don’t like to read lots of text, how do you get them to experience living art?” was the problem to which Cooper kept returning.
    Visitors are invited to write themselves a museum label and step into a glass case. Their audience? A crowd of intrigued artworks all staring back.
    The gimmick feels fun for a few moments, but what does it hope to achieve? “It is weird, because when you go in there you cannot help but activate your mind that these artworks are living and looking at you,” explained Cooper. “You become objectified and it reverses the agency of the relationship with art.”
    The author lying in a hammock and sharing secrets with a Giacometti portrait at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk, England. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
    Duly humbled, I snuck into a circular structure known as the silo, a dark, sequestered nook where a hammock swayed beneath a 1948 portrait by Giacometti of his brother Diego. I couldn’t see a text identifying the painting but, in lieu of a formal introduction, I spotted an ominous sign urging me to “tell it a secret you would never tell a human being.”
    “Some people will say art isn’t alive because it doesn’t talk. It’s not true, there is a two way communication,” explained Cooper, who hopes his new methods will help us all deepen the relationships we already form with our favorite pieces of art.
    Founded by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, of U.K. supermarket fame, to steward their trove of over 300 objects, the museum has always sought alternative ways to get visitors engaging with the art. In 2022, the visitor numbers rose to roughly 105,000, an improvement on the pre-pandemic average of 95,000, but it is clear that Cooper is keen to do whatever he can to boost footfall.
    To that end, a series of provocative new temporary exhibitions are already in the works that promise to address life’s biggest questions. First up, this fall, is “how do we adapt to a transforming world?” In time, visitors can look forward to asking “what is truth?”, “why do humans still kill each other?” and “what is the meaning of life?” It is clear that Cooper is keen to keep surprising his audiences, how well they will respond remains to be seen.
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    in Exhibitions

    For His First European Institutional Show in a Decade, Art Star Yoshitomo Nara Brings All of His ‘Little Worlds’ to a Major Museum in Vienna

    For three years in a row, Albertina Modern, the young museum of modern and contemporary art in Vienna, Austria has been presenting major solo exhibitions of top Asian artists on continental Europe. Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki was the star of 2021; Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei took the center stage last year; now, the spotlight is on Yoshitomo Nara, the beloved Japanese artist, international art market darling, and a crowd favorite around the world.
    Best known for his childlike depiction of cute and contemplative “angry girls,” the 63-year-old artist has amassed a huge following over the past three decades, and has become a market star in recent years. Nara’s paintings often commend millions of dollars at auctions—his auction record stands at $24.9 million (HK$196 million, including fees) for the sale of his iconic 2000 painting Knife Behind Back at a 2019 Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale.
    Drawings, however, are the star of Albertina Modern’s “All My Little Worlds” Nara’s first European institutional exhibition in a decade. The show features more than 400 pieces of works, including some 390 drawings, 15 paintings, and three sculptures, objects, and installations. Works range from early experimental pieces to recent offerings that are immediately recognizable. Drawings that seemed like they were created spontaneously on paper slips, envelops, flyers, and cardboards are on display in a manner arranged by Nara himself.
    There is no lack of his signature wide-eyed characters. Some appear to be indignant while others seem to be sinking into deep thoughts. But they go beyond the surface of kawaii. The body of work on show collectively alleges a rebellious attitude and inquisitiveness that is often found among children, qualities that gradually fade away as they grow into adults.
    Some works on view also reflect on a range of Nara’s influences, from music to pop culture, touching also on sociopolitical issues and global affairs. His anti-war stance is especially prominent in this selection of works on display.
    One of the key highlights is the installation My Drawing Room from 2008, a cabin posing as a retreat for the artist where he can work in solitude. Works on paper, cultural objects, and even toys are scattered across the room, which Nara created out of his imagination. The artist also created a Spotify playlist of some of his favorite songs to accompany the viewing experience of this installation—inviting the visitors to immerse themselves in the artist’s world.
    “All My Little Worlds” runs until November 1. See images of the exhibition below.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Yoshitomo Nara. Exhibition view: My Drawing Room 2008 (exterior view), bedroom included, (2008). Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery | © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: © Sandro E. E. Yoshitomo Nara, exhibition view: My Drawing Room (2008) (exterior view), bedroom included. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery | © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: © Sandro E. E. Zanzinger
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna (10.5. – 1.11.2023) Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Installation view of “Yoshitomo Nara: All my little words” at Albertina Modern, Vienna. Photo: eSeL.at – Lorenz Seidler. Courtesy of Albertina Modern.
    Yoshitomo Nara, work for Dream to Dream (2001). Acrylic and colored pencil on paperCollection of the artist | Courtesy Pace Gallery © Yoshitomo Nara | Photo: Yoshitomo Nara
    Yoshitomo Nara, Fuck U (2015). Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery ©Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara.
    Yoshitomo Nara, Cup Kid (2000). Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery © Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara
    Yoshitomo Nara, With the Knife (2018). Colored pencil on paper. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Keizo Kioku.
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    A Sculpture Depicting King Tut as a Black Man Is Sparking International Outrage

    What did the ancient Egyptians look like? A new exhibition at National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, has sparked controversy by including a contemporary artwork that appears to depict the Pharaoh Tutankhamun as Black.
    “Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” pairs Egyptian antiquities from the museum’s collection with work inspired by ancient Egyptian culture by created by musicians of the African diaspora, including Miles Davis, Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.
    The Leiden exhibition acknowledges that while generations of Black musicians have drawn strength and empowerment from ancient Egyptian culture, the racial identity of ancient Egyptians has been a topic of spirited debate for decades.
    The show’s title comes from the ancient Egyptians’ name for their homeland, Kemet, which means “black land.” But, the exhibition explains, the color referenced the rich, dark soil of the Nile river valley, rather than the people’s skin tone. The museum also discounts the theory that the noses on many ancient Egyptian statues were broken off in modern times in order to disguise visibly African features.
    David Cortes, I Am Hip Hop (2019). Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.
    “This is a very difficult topic and that is the thing with this exhibition: I think you really have to give it a chance,” Daniel Soliman, museum’s Egyptian and Nubian curator, told The Art Newspaper. “There are Egyptians, or Egyptians in the diaspora, who believe that the pharaonic heritage is exclusively their own. The topic of the imagination of ancient Egypt in music, predominantly from the African diaspora, Black artists in different styles, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, had long been ignored.”
    Nevertheless, the exhibition’s thesis has led to backlash, particularly due to the David Cortes statue, I Am Hip Hop. The 2019 sculpture is based on the 1999 Nas album I Am…, in which the African American rapper was photographed to look like the famed mask of King Tut.
    An outraged article titled “Dutch museum claims Tutankhamun was Black” in the Egypt Independent cited a complaint from Egyptian antiquities expert Abd al-Rahim Rihan. Not only does the statue inaccurately depict King Tut’s race, he claimed, the artist has actually created an unauthorized copy of an Egyptian antiquity, which can only be produced by the nation’s Supreme Council of Antiquities under Article 39 of the Protection of Antiquities Law No. 117 of 1983.
    The claim has reportedly prompted an official inquiry from Ahmed Bilal al-Burlusy, a member House of Representatives, as to whether Cortes violated Egyptian law. (The piece is a contemporary artwork, not a replica, the museum said in a statement.)
    But the exhibition has also fueled long-running arguments about racial identity and cultural appropriation, including on the Facebook group Egyptian History Defenders, which describes itself “defending Egyptian history and heritage against Afrocentric culture vultures.”
    There has also been a rash of one-star reviews for the museum on Google, calling it a “woke museum with zero scientific references and heavily under the influence of afrocentrism” who “are forgers who steal the history of Egyptian civilization and attribute it to black African[s].”
    “The exhibition does not claim the ancient Egyptians were Black, but explores music by Black artists who refer to ancient Egypt and Nubia in their work: music videos, covers of record albums, photos, and contemporary artworks,” museum director Wim Weijland said. “The exhibition also acknowledges that the music can be perceived as cultural appropriation, and recognizes that large groups of contemporary Egyptians feel that the pharaonic past is exclusively their heritage.”
    Adele James, a Black British actress, plays Cleopatra in Queen Cleopatra. Photo courtesy of Netflix.
    The question of the race of ancient Egyptians also led to an uproar over the new Jada Pinkett-Smith-produced Netflix documentary-drama series African Queens: Queen Cleopatra and its depiction of the famed ruler by the Black actress Adele James. (An Egyptian lawyer even pushed to block the airing of the series in the African nation, and an Egyptian network has announced plans for its own documentary starring a light-skinned Cleopatra.)
    “Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is Black,” former Egyptian antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper. “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not Black.”
    Cleopatra was the last rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek-ruled kingdom descended from Macedonians—but her family had been in Egypt for 300 years, and nothing is known about her maternal ancestry.
    “While shooting, I became the target of a huge online hate campaign. Egyptians accused me of ‘blackwashing’ and ‘stealing’ their history,” series director Tina Gharavi wrote in Variety, arguing that James was probably more accurate casting than the white Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played the queen in 1963.
    “Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?” Gharavi asked. “Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians, it seems to really matter.”
    “Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” is on view at the National Museum of Antiquities, Rapenburg 28, 2311 EW Leiden, Netherlands, April 22, 2023–September 3, 2023.
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    Street Artist and Keith Haring Collaborator Angel Ortiz’s New Graffiti-Inspired Works Bottle the Vibe of 1980s New York. See Them Here

    On the makeshift dance floor inside Chase Contemporary gallery, the ’80s are in full swing. Gloria Gaynor is blasting out of the DJ booth, producing hip gyrations reminiscent of a time when a Soho party meant something altogether different. Someone is draped in a boa, to what degree of irony it’s hard to tell.
    The gathering is here to celebrate the latest installment of Angel Ortiz’s comeback, “Ode 2 NYC,” a collection of new works on show through June 18. And in case any young stragglers are unaware of whose party they’re crashing, it’s proclaimed in a giant black-and-white photo that hangs over the champagne bar: Ortiz (aka LA II) stood alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. “You’re in the presence of New York street art royalty,” goes the message.
    Angel Ortiz, Shazbot (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Ortiz is hunched over a folding table by the door, tagging posters, t-shirts, hats, and quite frankly anything he can work a fat marker into. He shoulders a tattered backpack the almost entire time, as though at any moment he might scurry off and find something more interesting to do. This appears unlikely. He’s surrounded by longtime friends and fans, seemingly enjoying his reemergence into the spotlight. But then again, it wouldn’t be entirely out of character given Ortiz’s line of work.
    Ortiz was barely a teenager when he broke onto the city’s street art scene in a much-worked over legend that goes something like this: the Lower East Side native and his graffiti crew, the Non Stoppers, had been spray-painting the area for years when Ortiz’s densely packed lines caught the attention of Keith Haring, then a School of Visual Arts student. Haring was relentless in his search of the LA II tag creator, eventually finding “Little Angel” and beginning a long-lasting collaborative partnership. It was mutually beneficial, with Haring granted local street access and acceptability, and Ortiz thrust into an international art market that was developing a sudden taste for street art.
    Keith Haring and Angel Ortiz standing in front of a work they collaborated on. Photo courtesy of the artist.
    The narrative of Ortiz’s success is so entwined with Haring that it would be understandable if, 40 years on, the Puerto Rican felt frustrated by the tie, as though it diminishes the merits of his own art. Not so. Ortiz remains glowing about his relationship with Haring. He’s also clear-eyed that it was Haring who approached him and asked for help (and, it seems, took inspiration from LA II’s bold line work).
    “My relationship with Keith has always been about friendship first and the artistic aspect was and will always be secondary,” Ortiz told Artnet News. “Keith sought my guidance on how to accentuate his isolated figures and make them have a more complex environment to come to life visually. The collaborations artistically were magical and will never be duplicated.”
    Angel Ortiz, Hudson (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Ortiz’s latest collection follows a sold-out show at London’s D’Stassi Gallery in 2022 and sees him continue to transfer his distinctive tags, symbols, and icons from the city’s surface onto canvas. To view Ortiz’s current work is to enter a maze of arrows, lines to nowhere, half-formed letters, calligraphic flourishes, bold outlines, and negative spaces. Oftentimes, Ortiz orients his works around his formative motifs: the heart, the crown, the cat, the taxi cab (a nod, perhaps, to Ortiz’s first collaboration with Haring on a taxi hood), and the spray can, which, onsite in Soho, grows arm and legs that extend onto the gallery wall.
    In “Ode 2 NYC,” as in London, Ortiz also reaches more often for the paintbrush than the spray can. “I feel differently depending on which medium I use and feel most artistically free when I have a spray can in my hand,” Ortiz said. “When I use a paintbrush on canvas, it is artistically the most unforgiving of all my weapons of choice.”
    Ortiz’s expertise with a marker compensates for any lingering uncertainty he may have with more traditional artistic tools. In works like Big Apple (2023) and Gotham (2023), the movement of thick and thin lines create the context in which painted symbols sits.
    Angel Ortiz at the opening of “Ode 2 NYC”. Photo: courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    But there’s a contradiction at play here. Although Ortiz’s lines and motifs echo the era in which they were born, such is the intricacy, polish, and arrangement of his works that are conveniently presented on canvas that they lose urgency, that connection with the surface of the city. And this is fine: artists are forever evolving, retooling, reframing. It just feels more jarring in the context of graffiti.
    It’s a shift Ortiz himself acknowledges. “The 1980s graffiti was free of social media and the thought of building a brand,” he said. “Today’s graffiti is not bad; it is just different. It is like comparing professional sports in the 80’s to now. Same sport fundamentally, just a completely different game.”
    See more images of the show below.
    Angel Ortiz at opening of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Installation view of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Angel Ortiz, Walter (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Angel Ortiz, Untitled (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Installation view of “Ode 2 NYC.” Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    Angel Ortiz, Subway (2023). Photo courtesy Chase Contemporary.
    “Ode 2 NYC” is on view at Chase Contemporary, 413-415 West Broadway, New York, through June 18.
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    In Pictures: Vilnius’s Modern Art Museum Marks the 700th Anniversary of the Lithuanian Capital With a Show on Post-Soviet Psychology

    As part of city-wide celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Vilnius, the MO Museum—the Lithuanian capital’s modern art hub—has put on a special showcase of contemporary art that invites audiences to time travel to the 1980s and trace Vilnius’s transformation since the late Soviet era.
    This show brings together 150 works, ranging from visual art to text and sound, to immerse visitors in the creative vision of theater director Oskaras Koršunovas and set designer Gintaras Makarevičius.
    The exhibition is named after and inspired by Ričardas Gavelis’s oppressive 1989 novel Vilnius Poker, a masterpiece of Lithuanian literature that takes the city as its protagonist at a time when its citizens are dealing with the psychological fallout from a collapsing Soviet system. Its publication was a turning point for the country’s creative and cultural liberation, and now this exhibition explores the developments of the decades since and the evolving identity of Vilnius today and tomorrow.
    The range of work on show includes pieces from the 1960s up to the present moment that reflect on the novel’s evergreen themes of freedom, identity and memory.
    “The novel depicts Vilnius as an intricate, chaotic, dream-like city with nothing specific or real. This was the starting point in creating the exhibition, which is designed like a universal tale, not limited to a specific place or time period,” explained the museum director Milda Ivanauskienė.
    “Vilnius Poker” runs at MO Museum until January 28, 2024. Check out some of the works from the exhibition below.
    Rūta Spelskytė-Liberienė, Mountain Stag Beetle (2019) in the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
    Installation view of “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
    Installation view of “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania showing Nerijus Erminas, That Which Is Unseen (2013). Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
    Installation view of Vytautas Tomaševičius, Trajectory (2020) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
    Rimantas Milkintas, Too Long (2017) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
    Mindaugas Skudutis, Vilnius Poker (2022) at the “Vilnius Poker” exhibition at the MO Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Go Vilnius.
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    In Pictures: The Museum of Arts and Design’s ‘Funk You Too!’ Exhibition Traces the Irreverent Roots of the Contemporary Clay Craze

    The new show “Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture,” at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), articulates the links between groups of artists working in a once-neglected, now-valorized medium. It unites artists from the Funk generation, an anti-establishment movement that emerged on the West Coast in the 1960s, with artists carrying on their subversive spirit in clay today.
    Comprising some 50 artworks, the show “arrives at a moment when clay as a sculptural medium is receiving unprecedented attention from the art world,” said Elissa Auther, MAD’s deputy director of curatorial affairs and chief curator, in a press release. “Taking advantage of MAD’s significant collection of historical Funk ceramics, ‘Funk You Too!’ examines the critical contexts that gave rise to the prominence of humor in ceramic sculpture and advocates for the ongoing relevance of Funk ceramics to a new generation of artists.” 
    Artists of the Funk generation from the 1960s to the 1980s, such as “father of Funk art” Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, and Patti Warashina, are juxtaposed with up-and-coming younger artists who also express humor in clay. The younger figures include Genesis Belanger (the subject of a recent New Museum exhibition), Ruby Neri (lately highlighted in the New York Times’ T Magazine), and Woody De Othello (who had a breakout moment at Art Basel Miami Beach a few years back).
    Alake Shilling, Baby Bear Loves Alake (2021). Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    While the original Funk artists toiled in a medium that was relegated to craft status, clay today is on a much more equal footing with other media. Ceramic artists such as Betty Woodman, Ron Nagle, and Ken Price are enjoying museum retrospectives and buzzy markets, as the rigid boundaries between art and craft have become more porous, if not entirely eliminated.
    “Many of the contemporary artists in the exhibition have attracted widespread critical attention,” said Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, independent curator, writer, and curator of the exhibition, in a press release. “Yet, their work has rarely been contextualized in relation to the history of ceramics, craft and the broader history of Funk art.”
    “Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture” is on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, through August 27. See more images below.
    Genesis Belanger, You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get (2021). Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Lista Para Volar (2022). Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    Installation view of “Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture” at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    Viola Frey, Group Series: Questioning Woman 1 (1988). Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    Patti Warashina, Pitter-Podder (1968). Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    Installation view of “Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture” at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
    David Gilhooly, Bread Frog as a Coffee Break (1981–82). Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
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