Hulda Guzmán review – lizards and ghosts gather for an art freakout in the rainforest

Hulda Guzmán's first institutional exhibition in Europe, "Please Awake – Asked Nature Kindly," is on view at Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK. The show features the Dominican artist's ultra-colorful, psychedelic jungle paintings that blend art historical references—from Japanese ukiyo-e prints to pointillism and symbolism—with personal mythology, demons, spirits, and lush tropical landscapes. The works are drawn from her life in the Dominican rainforest, where she lives and works in a studio built by her architect father.

Marianna Simnett’s Furry Friends

Marianna Simnett’s exhibition at Société, Berlin, features a provocative mix of film, painting, and sculpture that revels in grotesque, erotic, and fantastical transformations. Works like *Hyena and Swan in the Midst of Sexual Congress* (2019) and the films *Leda was a Swan* (2025) and *Blue Moon* (2022) reimagine classical myths and fairy tales through a feminist, body-horror lens, using AI-assisted visuals and stop-motion to explore themes of animality, abjection, and pleasure. The show includes taxidermy-inspired animations, BDSM-inflected live-action shorts, and sculptures that ensnare human figures in animal forms.

Review of the Italian Pavilion by Chiara Camoni and its relationship with the Biennale

La recensione del Padiglione Italia di Chiara Camoni e la sua relazione con la Biennale

Chiara Camoni's Italian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, titled "Con te con tutto," is reviewed in relation to Koyo Kouoh's central exhibition "In Minor Keys." Camoni's installation features a crowd of female figures sculpted in clay and natural materials, described as "donne tronco" (trunk women), which evoke growth, transformation, and the intuitive, manual gestures that Kouoh champions. The review highlights how Camoni's work dialogues with Kouoh's curatorial emphasis on drawing, painting, and craft as intuitive practices, moving away from conceptual art. It also notes a performance by Magdalena Campos Pons at the Tese theatre, which includes a portrait of Toni Morrison and Kouoh, accompanied by music by Kamal Malak.

Leonora in the Morning Light review – pioneering British artist who fled convention for the surrealists

A new biopic titled *Leonora in the Morning Light* chronicles the life of British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who fled her aristocratic upbringing in London to join the surrealist circle in Paris. The film, adapted from Elena Poniatowska's biographical novel, follows Carrington from her affair with the older Max Ernst through her mental health crisis in Spain and eventual settlement in Mexico, where she created art on her own terms. Olivia Vinall portrays Carrington with a fierce, uncompromising spirit, though the film is criticized for uneven storytelling and clunky dialogue.

Karla Knight’s Cosmic Conspiracies

Karla Knight's exhibition "Orbit" at Andrew Edlin Gallery presents her game-like paintings and tapestries filled with cryptic symbols, cosmic diagrams, and celestial imagery. Works such as "Orbiter 2" (2024–25) and "Feelers" (2025–26) feature irregular black devices, floating spheres, and rows of arcane script, inviting viewers to decode what appear to be blueprints for extraterrestrial systems or maps of hidden dimensions. Knight employs meticulous grids, bold primary colors, and textile techniques to render the paranormal as strangely normal.

Death as Performance

Der Tod als Performance

The article reviews Maria Martínez Bayona's debut sci-fi comedy film "The End of It," which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows Claire, a 250-year-old artist who, in a future where medical advances have eliminated death, decides to stage her own suicide as a radical art performance. The story critiques a world obsessed with synthetic rejuvenation and explores themes of mortality, authenticity, and the commodification of art.

The In-Between Worlds of Larissa Borteh

Hyperallergic reviews Larissa Borteh's solo exhibition "In the Wind" at Devening Projects in Chicago, featuring a dozen oil paintings that blur the line between still life and ethereal abstraction. The works, including "Glass House" (2025) and "Tending and Receiving" (2026), use thinned, viscous oil paint to create tactile surfaces that evoke plants in decay, ghosts, deities, or dreamlike visions. The review highlights Borteh's distinctive merging of image and elongated mark, reminiscent of fingerpainting, and her exploration of the spectrum between legibility and opacity.

Criminal review – homelessness show delivers a rage-making punch in the gut

The article reviews "Criminal: An Untold Story of Homelessness, Resistance and Survival," an installation at London's Museum of Homelessness. The show features works by Romany Gypsy poet and artist Gemma Lees, including a caravan installation with china decorated with hostile Sun newspaper headlines about Gypsy and Traveller encampments, and festive bunting printed with historical state proscriptions against nomadic communities dating from the Egyptians Act of 1530 to the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. The exhibition, set largely in the garden of the museum's new home at Finsbury Park's Manor House Lodge, explores how homeless people and nomadic communities have been criminalized over 400 years.

Performance Cuts Through the Noise at the Venice Biennale

Florentina Holzinger and Miet Warlop have transformed the Austrian and Belgian pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale into immersive, performance-driven spectacles. Holzinger's "SEA WORLD VENICE" floods the Austrian pavilion with water and urine, featuring jet-skiing, suspended performers, and participatory toilets, while Warlop's "IT NEVER SSST" turns the Belgian pavilion into a chaotic arena of tile-throwing, chanting, and dancing. Both works demand sustained attention amid a fraught Biennale marked by the death of artistic director Koyo Kouoh, canceled pavilions, boycotts, and a jury resignation.

“Show 8. Tributary: Margherita Raso and Michael Ray-Von” at Autokomanda, Belgrade

The article reviews "Show 8. Tributary: Margherita Raso and Michael Ray-Von" at Autokomanda in Belgrade, a two-person exhibition that draws on the ecological and sensory experience of riverside environments. The text opens with a poetic description of gnats and fertile ecosystems near a river, using water as a central metaphor to frame the artists' work.

Joan Semmel Roars at The Jewish Museum

The article reviews Joan Semmel: In the Flesh, a retrospective exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York (December 2025 – May 2026). The author describes an initial discomfort with Semmel's graphic nude paintings of aging female bodies, but after researching the artist's significance in feminist art, comes to appreciate her unapologetic honesty. The show is arranged chronologically, tracing Semmel's evolution from works like Erotic Yellow (1973) to later paintings that grow in confidence and freedom, all while maintaining a focus on female embodiment and pleasure from a female perspective.

Un grand spectacle, un petit récit

The article reviews the latest immersive exhibition at the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, titled "Renaissance. De Vinci, Raphaël, Michel-Ange." Set in a former foundry, the show uses 360-degree projections, lasers, and artificial fog to create a technically impressive visual spectacle. However, the narrative focuses solely on three Renaissance masters—Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo—leaving the historical and artistic context underexplored. The critic notes that the 50-minute presentation includes long contemplative pauses without commentary, which weakens its educational potential.

Ghosts in a Postcard Idyll

Geister im Postkartenidyll

Kôji Fukada's film "Nagi Notes" premieres in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, following Yoriko (Takako Matsu), a sculptor and farmer living a quiet, self-sufficient life in the rural Japanese town of Nagi. Her routine is disrupted when her old friend Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect, arrives to model for a sculpture, stirring buried emotions and past conflicts. The film explores the slow, delicate process of creating art and the psychological tensions between the two women, set against the backdrop of Nagi's idyllic but symbolically flat landscape.

Vegas, your merciless universe

Vegas, ton univers impitoyable

The article reviews a performance titled "Showgirl" by the duo Marlène Saldana and Jonathan Drillet, staged at the Carreau du Temple in Paris on July 2-3, 2026. The show draws irreverent inspiration from Paul Verhoeven's 1995 cult film "Showgirls," using its plot and the fate of its lead actress to critique the objectification of women. Through kitschy costumes, bold sets, and humorous numbers, the performers subvert patriarchal narratives, with music by Rebeka Warrior amplifying the feminist revenge theme.