Free Alaa
Alaa was effervescent — jumping around, waving his arms, protesting with his whole body.
Lina Attalah
The Garden
No, my apartment wasn’t dirty. Nature is clean. It’s civilization that’s dirty.
Yasmin Zaher
The Home Front: On Rahmaneh Rabani and Bahman Kiarostami’s Impasse
Come on! Let them go. Let them go to hell. It’s none of your business.
Media Farzin
Fractures in the Medium: Kaveh Akbar and Anahid Nersessian in Conversation
I’m trying to describe a cloud from inside the cloud, and you have to be on the ground to see that it’s a giraffe.
Anahid Nersessian, Kaveh Akbar
Hash Is a Vegetable
Our folk music is slow, like a soft ocean wave.
Fatima Al Qadiri, Meriem Bennani, Negar Azimi, Tiffany Malakooti
A Private Ocean: Iman Mersal and Maru Pabón in Conversation
Why should I add to this archive of nostalgic poems? It would be like grabbing the first fruit in the tree.
Maru Pabón, Iman Mersal
Days of Grief: Iran Diary 2
Honestly, I was more than happy to freeze.
S*
Anger Piled Atop Anger: Iran Diary
It’s not entirely clear to me when it all began.
S*
Girl on a Train: Getting Real with Fatima Daas
How do you sit with your ass between two chairs?
Momtaza Mehri
Laughter Was Our Inheritance: A Beirut Diary
On February 14, 2005, the day Rafik Hariri was assassinated, I was sent to confession for the first time.
Edwin Nasr
Spirit Riders: A Conversation with Mati Diop and Fatima Al Qadiri
In Dakar, the spirits ride at dusk.
Mati Diop, Fatima Al Qadiri, Negar Azimi, Babak Radboy
Trump Cocktail
Hello, I’m Hadi and this is my art.
Hadi Fallahpisheh
Rude Pieties: Six Glimpses of Hervé Guibert
A possible epitaph? Better to remain hungry than to renounce appetite.
Moyra Davey, Lia Gangitano, Bruce Hainley, Hedi El Kholti, Wayne Koestenbaum, Christine Pichini, Janique Vigier
#25
#25, Summer 2011
A rather brief moment in time.
Phoneme Riot: A Conversation with Nour Mobarak
The work of Los Angeles–based artist Nour Mobarak can be understood as an open-ended engagement with the promiscuous and constitutive power of words.
Jace Clayton
General Behavior
When two gooms get each other.
Farah Al Qasimi
South of Nothing: The Photographs of Soham Gupta
When life’s hard, time’s a motherfucker.
Sukhdev Sandhu
Exhibitions
Reza Abdoh
Presented at MoMA PS1 and KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Abdoh’s theatrical works — produced by an artist literally racing against time while dying of AIDS — never shied from the hard things.