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.

Yu Ji’s Democratic Play

Yu Ji's solo exhibition at PPOW, New York, titled "Origin of the Tiger," presents sculptures and collages created after a residency she organized in Phnom Penh that offered art education to children. The show features works like reed mats with snail shells, a Sony Trinitron looping video, collaged drawings incorporating Cambodian children's art, and composite sculptures such as chairs with concrete knee casts and a figure inspired by a misattributed sixth-century Krishna statue. The exhibition draws on a Khmer folktale about transformation and includes audio of children reciting the story, though the children appear more as muses than collaborators.

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.

The Black American Artists Who Dazzled Post-War Paris

An exhibition titled "Paris in Black: Internationalism and the Black Renaissance" at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Chicago celebrates the Black American artists, writers, and performers who moved to Paris after World War II to escape American racism. Curated by Danny Dunson, the show features over 100 artworks from the museum's permanent collection, including paintings by Archibald J. Motley Jr., sculptures by Richmond Barthé, Augusta Savage, and William Artis, and ephemera related to Josephine Baker. It traces the global influence of the Harlem Renaissance and the cross-pollination between Paris and U.S. cities like Chicago.

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.