Artist Alexandre Singh and art historian Natalie Musteata won an Academy Award for their short film "Two People Exchanging Saliva" at the 2026 Oscars. The film tied for first place in the live action short category with Sam Davis's "The Singers," marking a rare seventh tie in Oscar history.
Artists Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata have won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for their dystopian French-language short, "Two People Exchanging Saliva." In a rare occurrence for the Oscars, the category resulted in a tie with Sam Davis’s musical comedy "The Singers." Singh and Musteata’s film depicts a near-future Paris where physical intimacy is a capital offense and commerce is conducted through ritualized physical violence.
Michele Oka Doner, an 80-year-old artist known for her public installations, is preparing to unveil "Talisman," a new work composed of 300 illuminated heads that will create a sacred grove on the Park Avenue Mall at 66th Street in New York this spring. In an interview with CULTURED, she discusses the engineering challenges of the project, including weight limits imposed by the MTA due to the tunnel beneath the mall, and reflects on her earlier public works such as the mile-long floor installation at Miami International Airport and "Radiant Site" at the Herald Square subway station, which she won a national competition for in 1987.