WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

From this side of the glass, you can see, through the blue reflection, your face contorting. On the other side, he remains motionless. With his mouth open, you can count all the teeth in the various rows. Sharks have an average of 50 to 300 teeth. This one is entitled Death Denied (2008), a smaller version of the famous The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991). Damien Hirst usually presents his works with whimsical titles that overlay layers of meaning sometimes deeper than the visual representation of the work. The title is an intrinsic part as in any good conceptualist. Death has certainly been denied by itself, for the vivacity with which it seems to want to get out of the tank towards us is a matter that has to be mentally reviewed by the spectator in order to certify our own safety. Natural History, as the press release states, is the first exhibition dedicated to Hirst’s innovative works that use formaldehyde. The text goes on, with a focus on the slimy blue liquid and little attention on the animals, mentioned as materials in the captions of the works. Glass, painted steel, silicone, acrylic, cow, formaldehyde solution. The exhibition is little about environmentalism and animal rights and more about the intense triggering of emotions. Even in The Beheading of John The Baptist (2006), a slaughterhouse scene in which the cow’s head rests on a table while the rest of the body lies on the floor. Natural History invokes feelings of terror, disgust, sadness. It is a whirlwind of emotions. The will bifurcates in wanting and not wanting to look, where curiosity thrives in the total examination of the abnormally inert bodies. While the creatures float in their glass coffins, the awe-struck gaze shifts from disemboweled animal, to scalped, to genetically modified, to sausage. There is an uncomfortable comfort in the meat, the headless animals and the chops. It revolts me that it is out of habit, that the intact shark is a more terrifying image than a skinless sheep without head to be found. (I report that head was later found in Analgesics (1993). Glass, silicone, acrylic, sheep’s head, formaldehyde solution.) The whole situation is almost laughable, a description too nonsensical not to be real, the setting falls somewhere between a macabre laboratory and an antiseptic hell. Natural History, is a unique experience, but not for the faint hearted. My scattered curiosity led me to discover that parts are disassembled and separated for shipment each time they travel. First tank, then animal and finally highly toxic liquid that preserves corpses. Many of the pieces did not come from collections, which leads me to ask – Where is the storehouse of terrors that hosts such a collection? A modern-day Hades, Hirst reminds us that it is “stupid” not to look at the inevitable. “I was taught to confront things I can’t avoid. Death is one of those things.” The ephemerality of flowers gives them beauty, the ephemerality of life gives us will. In mainstream dialogue, the concept of the sublime is biased towards a positive feeling. However, in the eighteenth century aesthetics of Burke and Turner it is related to the awe of terror, vastness and the unknown when in safety. Hirst is a sublime contemporary artist, few are the present day visions that cause such visceral feelings, the shiver down the spine and the wrinkles on the forehead. The artist speaks of a “universal trigger”, an impossible indifference and the power of the universal. Life is also sublime. This exhibition is on view indefinitely at the Gagosian Gallery in London Originally published in Portuguese on Umbigo Magazine

Mould is not a condition of art, but it can be. Dust is not a condition of art, but it can be. The false is not a condition of art, but it can be. Art is not a condition of art. Several of these elements should not be integrated into art, but often are. The entire collection of the British Museum has approximately 8 million objects, about 1% on public display.[1] Out of an instance of expiration comes a perennial showing is Colombian artist Gala Porras-Kim’s first solo exhibition in London. In Gasworks, on the south side of the Thames, in two intimate rooms, lies a collection of faux artefacts. In one room, an aesthetic abstract composition, with greenish flecks and black circular shapes, occupies most of the wall just opposite the entrance. What appears to be an unframed canvas turns out to be a muslin fabric that has been breeding fungal spores from the British Museum archives – in other words, it’s mould. Mould with something Pollock-esque about it. While mentioning Pollock, there are also Warhol references that surface, perhaps to his lesser-known works, as the urine paintings which were concerned only with the process and accepted the impossibility of control over the outcome. Mould Extraction is a literal exercise in title and concept, in peace with its uncertainness, and strong in message. Strong as the cube of compressed dust collected at the Metropolitan Museum. In another room, stands a replica of a sarcophagus from the British Museum found at Giza, dating from 4500 BC. It is positioned on an arch with arrows suggesting a rotation. Egyptians were buried with their heads facing North in order to watch the sun rise and set. The artist suggests this rotation of the original artefact in the museum to give a more dignified afterlife to its occupant. This is just one of many suggestions. Alongside several works, there are letters that Porras-Kim wrote to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and the Gwangju National Museum in South Korea. In them, several concerns were expressed about the afterlife of the museum occupants, who could never imagine their physical remains were to be an element of study and an object for spectators. The artist says she tried to contact one of the deceased to understand where they would prefer their remains to be, by reading drawings of paint poured over a pool of water – of which an image is displayed. This exercise was unfortunately inconclusive… But the exhibition’s most striking piece serves as a backdrop to the sarcophagus. A huge sheet painted entirely in graphite represents the darkness of the temples’ interior. Mastaba scene is described as “not meant for the living”. It is a critique of the intrusion of modern men into the private and sacred spaces of the ancient Egyptians. This piece is the exhibition’s epitome. The defined graphite marks transcribe presence in deep darkness, a demonstration of strength, of the human hand’s existence where its intervention is questionable. The works are above all concerned with materiality. They are objects expressed by their physical features and the ideas they materialise. The artist’s work challenges the establishment of some museums in particular, questioning concepts of property, conservation, ethics and life after death, both for ancient civilisations and contemporary society. This remark makes us ask: what place will we have in future societies? Will we care? [1] Info from museum’s official website Originally published in Portuguese on Umbigo Magazine

The exhibition opens with a lift. With two steps forward and a leap backwards, I realise it won’t let me in, the wall bricks won’t allow me. Ceci n’est pas un ascenseur. Ceci is an image. A photograph, I think, a painting, I realise when I take a closer look. The urge to stretch out my arm to grasp its non-depth is intense, childish naughtiness boils up inside me. There would be no harm, after all it is only a lift… I look around, a window to a canal, pottery on the wall, a chicken crossing the road, why? One may only think it’s to get to the other side. As I walk through the rooms, I find it difficult to find the guiding thread that connects the works. If it weren’t for the unanimous expressiveness of the brushstrokes, I would say it was a collective exhibition. Few artists have such a diverse body of work, especially focused on painting. Named Artery, the first solo exhibition in London of Canadian artist Allison Katz is at the Camden Art Centre. The power of the word Artery takes up more room than its biological meaning. It sounds like militarised artistic behaviour, a certain modus operandi, in stark contrast to the ambiguity of the works. Arteries are doors to the outside of the heart. Artery is a manifestation from the inside of the artist. She refers the autobiographical character of these works created in the last two years. Needless to allude to the anomaly of this period, but the singularity of the works is inherent not to the time, but to the creator. Of Dalinian nature, the themes are blurred between windows to the soul, memories and screenshots from the blink of an eye. Artery is about the “non-order of things”, says Katz. All this amongst cabbages, chickens and mouths. The peculiarity of peculiarities is one of Katz’s favourite materials, not oil, not acrylic, but rice. In several paintings, when you look closely, you notice that the textured surface is more three-dimensional than it first seems. The differences in colour and the pointillism are a result of the shadows and reflections of the rice grains. I describe it as a visually tactile sensation, succumbing only in thought to the urge to flick the grains off the canvas. One of the concepts the artist likes to explore, thankfully assuaging the remorse of my childish instincts, is the idea of haptics. Touch and its relationship to painting. We’ve always heard that you cannot touch art. Katz is not giving us carte blanche to do so, but she is a master at creating that will in us. Armed with symbols, Katz does not do anything by chance. Her works have several underlying meanings. In one of the rooms, five-panel paintings confront us with their mouths open. On the back of each is a cabbage. These works are very biographical, as the artist allows us to take her place, from the inside out. The mouth is a symbol of creative power, like a frame, it is used to enclose what we can only presuppose as desires, memories, glimpses. In one image, between teeth, we see an exhibition of undulating pink walls, with several paintings by the author, an exhibition within the exhibition – this inception moment was Artery’s promotional image, which made me think it was the real event. In each corridor, I peered out of the corner of my eye, waiting for the pink immersion that sadly didn’t happen. I chuckled behind my mask as the illusion cleared up. Katz is a genius in the art of deception. Between tromp-l’oeil and surrealism, we see the rice again, this time on the roof of the mouth, open to show us a chicken. Katz says that one of the reasons she uses rice in her work is because of its symbolic charge when superimposed on other elements, at the base of the food chain or as a side dish. Or as a way to slow down the consumption of the image, making our eyes linger on the grains. All the images are extremely intimate. The feeling of such a close connection with the artist is invigorating. All the images seem to have a direct dialogue with the viewer, asking consecutive questions. Artery is of rare beauty. It reminds us of the reason of things or the need to ask why, causing the childlike gleam in our eyes to reborn. In the ambiguity of detail, we are left floating in the magic of art. Until March 25, at Camden Art Centre. Originally published in Portuguese on Umbigo Magazine

My eyes wander over the hastily changing black squares, waiting to check the time. The mechanical ticking of the gears is comforting as if my boarding time is about to appear. I hold my breath in anticipation of the race to the platform. The spinning stops. “Is there something” Retorts the sign. “There surely is…,” I think. My expectations are shattered, were I in a train station and not in The Barbican Centre, I would even be worried. StilltheyknowwhatIdream generates a three-way dialogue between the two plates and the viewer. At times one seems to respond to the other, at others the words are dropped into the void waiting to be picked up by someone. The viewer can choose which role they play in the conversation, even if neither plate knows someone is listening to them. Shilpa Gupta makes us embark on a journey with no set time. The tempo is marked by dialogue, by silences, by words that someone once wished were forgotten. Sun at Night is an ode to the censored, a celebration of the voices of poets imprisoned by their beliefs and work. After the boarding platform, we are taken through the curved corridor punctuated with diptychs of drawings and texts among other sculptures. The exhibition is located in The Curve, a space commissioned by the Barbican for contemporary art, usually free of charge. Characteristically experimental, it is a half-circle, with an entrance and exit on opposite sides, leading the visitor intuitively through a corridor with no beginning or end. “Whether they’ll shoot me at that point when chaos starts And I’ll press with my trembling hands to the hole that was my heart And they’ll sew me a white legend, fitting in” One page reads. “Scratched on soap, memorized, washed away. Then written on cigarette papers, smuggled outside the prison,” Gupta adds. Next to it, a fine line drawing incarcerated in a wooden frame. Irina Ratushinaskaya wrote these words while imprisoned by the Soviet government for circulating her verses in opposition to the regime. The irony of perseverance. This story that seems so far removed from us today happened less than forty years ago, in 1983. This story, like all the others affixed on the walls, was or is still a reality that is perhaps not so far away. A tower of broken pencil tips, two books embedded in each other hanging from the ceiling, held together by a thread, barely, remind us of the fragility – of life, of physical freedom, and of freedom of expression – in a world where we take too much for granted. The exhibition gains intensity between the departure, the journey, and the farewell. In the last part, we are swept away by a chorus of a hundred voices of invisible poets. In the darkroom, the eyes take a while to make out the verses on paper pierced by iron spears that sprout from the floor like stalagmites and the microphones that fall from the ceiling above each one. Torn between the fallacy of mirror multiplication and reality, I quickly realize that in this exhibition there are no illusions, but exactly 100 of these specimens. In a gesture of solidarity, the voices are stronger together, singing in several languages on a note of hope for all those who have been silenced. However, sometimes they sound like ecclesiastical chanting or cosmic cursing, making it uncomfortable to be in the room. But I am safe in the knowledge that the feeling will pass, outside there is light, there is air and I can now write whatever I want. If only it could be like this for everyone. Shilpa Gupta’s exhibition Sun at Night can be visited at the Barbican Centre, London, until February 6, 2022. Originally published in Portuguese on Umbigo | 18th January 2022

Giacometti Lindbergh are greater than the sum of their parts. The MMIPO is showcasing a rare exhibition where the two artists have collaborated, until September 24th. The show is curated by Charlotte Crapts who, in incessant communication with the Giacometti Foundation, managed to get this exhibition to Porto. Sculptures, drawings and photographs are joined together in an adjacent atrium to a church. A myriad of representations of human-like beings. The fascination of an artist with another. Both setting and subject contribute to the feeling of staring at a pantheon of unknown deities, paying tribute to an antique culture which through their tokens lets you know they were not that different from us. "If someone were to ask me what the five most beautiful days of my life have been, that day with Giacometti's sculptures would be certainly in the top three”, said Lindberg when interviewed about his collection of photographs. Giacometti sculpts like he draws, the process is left on the bodies of his creations. There is something raw about his sculptures, as if he intently left his fingerprints on the malleable surface, just so an attentive spectator could later find them and share this little secret with him. On a room off the main atrium, there is a video shot of Giacometti at work in his studio, where with both thumbs he sculpts the face of one of his creations. In symmetric motion, he pushes the clay inward to accentuate the being’s features, as if caressing it. There is an innate desire to touch his work, to lay your fingers on his. Lindbergh lays it all flat. He takes away the process, the physicality, the submissiveness. The sculptures become people, entities of their own, giants even. Many of the photographs look like portraits, hinting at a backstory, a single moment that was captured in the whole of each of their lives. This idea of portraiture is interesting to tinker with because it pays homage to the museum's origins. The MMIPO was established as a space to flaunt portraits of people who had donated to the adjoining church. The bigger the sum, the bigger the portrait. And what big sums they must have been. The encompassing word coming out of this dialogue between sculpture and photograph is scale. Despite the object being the same, the way in which it is communicated is defining. By changing the size, the crude statues are either subdued to us or bigger than our reach. The play on scale was surprising even to Giacometti scholars as zooming in on the bodies allowed for a more scrutinised look at the sculptures, they saw details they had not noticed before. The invisible is seized, not only on the particulars indiscernible to the naked eye, but as well on Lindberg’s appreciation of Giacometti’s work. It is often hard to explain to another person how one interprets an artwork or what it might mean to them, Lindberg makes it all the more visible.

It is hard for me to write this, as the following story is very personal. What started as a simple assignment on acknowledging that something is wrong and needs to be spoken about, quickly became so much more. It infuriated me. Saddened me. I have made it my mission to make this story heard. What is your first thought when you hear the word ‘Yemen’? If it’s ‘15 Yemen Road, Yemen’, I’ll let you go with a warning, because at least the series Friends acknowledged the existence of this country - a country which otherwise has become forgotten despite facing one of the biggest humanitarian crises of all time. I sat down in virtual conversation with Sudanese-born but Yemeni-raised, Sameh. The setting was everything but formal - we started with the traditional ‘how are you doing?’, ‘how’s work?” moved on to “omg have you watched this new show?” and “yes, grandma and grandpa are coming over next week”. This conversation happened to be with my uncle. In 2013, my aunt Milena travelled to Yemen for the first time, and the rest is history, as they say. Or as I say, it could be a 1000 page novel or a Hollywood blockbuster. “For me if there was an option to go [back], I’d take it. It’s home.” this was said by my uncle. In 2018 he went on a quest for love, battled embassies, slayed borders and was almost burnt by the fire-spitting people who kept telling him ‘no’. Battling a dragon would have been easier. My aunt went to Yemen once. She went a second time, claiming it was to visit the friend(s) she made there - *cough* *cough* please drop the ‘s’, ladies and gentlemen. Later, the war broke. The country closed. Questions were asked, a ring was mailed by DHL (that later had to be cleared by customs), documents were signed and a promise was made. In 2018, Sameh reached Lisbon to see his wife, Milena, for the first time after having not seen the woman he loved for more than 3 years. I had talked to him a few times through FaceTime before I met him. The first thing he told me when we hugged was ‘you’re not a screen anymore!’. My heart sank and a tear almost dropped. Three years later, here we are again shape-shifting back into screens and having this conversation. Sameh says it’s a very intense feeling that intrinsically connects him to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, something he can’t explain.. He smiles and tells me that, back home, he was known to love his city. “[Sana’a] is a lady and should be treated with class”. The situation has been better for the past two or three years, he says, “but war is war, it’s hard, it’s got to be”. “Europeans don’t know the basic concept of war. It’s not missiles and people constantly dying in front of you” that’s what the American fantasy market sells us. “Of course it happens, I’ve seen it. War is when you long for yogurt or cold water and you can’t find it. When you want to watch a Real Madrid game and you don’t have electricity. Or not being able to take a shower”. Sameh recalls and describes to me the specific technique of showering with a single water bottle, when he could find one. He makes it sound like a child’s game, constantly smiling, almost assuring me it was okay. “We would sleep in the car for three days to get gas. No, it’s not worth it but you had to do it because you can’t just leave [the cars] there.” The cars ran on their last gallon to get to the gas station queue and then he explains he would pair up with six or seven of his friends so they could take shifts, pushing each car as the queue moved inch by inch. “55 million people live like this every day. Missiles and fire are the least of their concerns”. Sameh counts with his fingers the conflicts he has lived through, “the war of 88… the 94 conflict… 98 with Iraq… Arab Spring and now, since 2015”. Every five years or so there’s something. “One year it’s okay, but 5 years and we are on the road to being like Syria”. The first time he saw the black ISIS flag was when he travelled to the coast to embark on his transatlantic love quest. “It was real. They are there. [My] country is fading away. Unless a miracle happens this is not getting better”. Yemenis are losing hope. After a pause, I asked him what he misses the most, to which he smiled endearingly, “my mom”. “Arabs in general and Yemenis in particular hate their country every day until they leave. It’s part of you, a love/ hate relationship”. “Personally, this is the happiest moment of my life, I’m more complete. Not because I live in peace, but because I have Milena”. He tells me he is happy because he knows the reason behind it. He looks me in the eyes and tells me that you are only happy when you know why you are happy. “The plan was never to live here [Lisbon]” but circumstances changed their plans and now Lisbon is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, he says while stumbling on his Portuguese. Speaking of Portuguese, this was at this point when my aunt Milena joined our conversation. I asked her what made her go to Yemen in the first place. “She’s crazy” laughed Sameh. She smiled, “the architecture and heritage” is what she said. She’s an architect after all. “Sana’a is part of the UNESCO world heritage. It’s the most beautiful city I have seen in my life”. Yemen’s capital is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, dating back 4000 years ago. Buildings made out of mud, seven to eight floors high, still stand today since four centuries ago. The city is said to have been founded by Shem, son of Noah. Other important figures like Queen Sheba in the Hebrew Bible and the Three Wise man of the New Testament are traditionally linked to Yemen. Although the first time we showed the nativity scene to my uncle, on Christmas, he asked who the “three dudes with presents” were, and “why is only one of them black?” - that’s a very good question... If this is one of the first times you are reading about Yemen, chances are you are still familiar with one of its most famous ports and say it regularly on your Starbucks order. The port of Mocha was famous for being the world trading point for coffee, as Yemen was one of the first and biggest world coffee producers. At one point during the ancient civilizations, Yemen was doing so well, the Romans called it ‘Arabia Felix’ meaning flourishing or happy Arabia. Why has no one ever heard about this? “What made you go back a second time?”, I continued the interview. “My good luck” winks Sameh. “It was actually a book by Nadia Al-Kokabany, a novel about Sana’a and its architecture”, said Milena. “I wanted to go back to Sana’a and visit other cities around like Shibam, called Manhattan of the Desert for its impressive high buildings all made out of mud! I was not allowed unfortunately, they said it was too dangerous, I almost cried.” “I have written to [Nadia Al-Kokabany] to thank her for giving me the chance to meet my wife, but she never answered”, noted Sameh. And Milena intervened: “She wrote back to me, I asked if she had any more content in english and she sent me two stories”. They looked at each other quizzically. Yemen is a big part of the world history and it is central to Islamic and Arabic culture. It is said that the first Arabs who crossed the borders to Europe were from Yemen. Heritage is something we should all fight to preserve. To preserve it, we should first learn about it. It's sad that the ‘world history’ we learn in school in Europe leaves so much out, hardly mentioning Asia and Africa. Gertrude Bell, a writer and archeologist, one of the first women to go to Oxford, said that after discovering the Middle East, Greece and Rome were nothing in terms of richness of civilizations and anthropological depth. We can learn a lot from these archeological treasures if we can manage to save them from imploding before our eyes. All of this information drives a sense of rage within me. It makes me feel powerless and hopeless. Why is the world so unfair? One thing we can all do is “acknowledge it exists. Sometimes I am asked where am I from, and when I answer ‘Yemen’ the other person says ‘Yemen…?’” with a dumbfounded look on their face, not even knowing it’s a country. To solve a problem, we must first acknowledge its existence. “It’s that [Yemen] is associated with Al-Qaeda, unfortunately that is what reaches us”, says Milena who claims, there are barely any news about the Middle East in the media, only when it affects some Western country does it become newsworthy. When in 2015 Paris suffered big terrorist attacks “the world went ballistic on how muslims were terrorists. We [Muslims] suffer from terrorist attacks too, we are not the attackers. They are not us. Tell people about how in the middle east we have had the worst experience with terrorism. News doesn't reach the west, no one cares, no one talks about it”. The attacks have become so commonplace, they are hardly headlines anywhere in the world. “We have tried creating an association to open a bakery [in Yemen] to help feed the population but it’s very difficult to send money there”, my aunt recalls., “Almost no European bank allows transfers to Yemen because they are afraid you are financing terrorist groups”. This is the sad reality, as is the prohibition of some countries to Yemeni visitors. My uncle is not allowed to visit me in the UK. We are filled with ignorance. One of the best things we can do is research and spread the word out, learn how to learn, and listen to what others have to say, other voices, other points of view and other values. You may not agree or you may not relate but you cannot deny existence, ignoring is not an option. Sometimes it’s hard to get down from our pedestal to acknowledge something deeply engraved within us may need to be broken down into pieces only to be glued back together in a different way. If you are unaware of what is happening in Yemen, you can start here by watching this video. “I just want it to stop. Sure, donate to associations, but it’s not money they need, they need it to stop”. “If you had almighty power and only one wish what would it be?”, I asked. Sameh wondered, “take it back to 2009, before the Arab spring, Yemen was on the brink of being something. It was a first step in the right direction”. “Just make them go back home”, Milena said, this is a war between two countries using Yemen as their playfield. “We have lost too much to stop, there’s no way out” “Khalas?” “Khalas”, I concluded. Published June 2020 on the defunct The Hynt Magazine

Mixing It Up: Painting Today | November 2021 Women walk around naked, smoking, resting, working, observing. One looks in the mirror as if taking her own measurements preparing a self-portrait, another pours paint onto canvas, a cat looks curiously at it dripping. They are their own muses and authors. In Lisa Brice’s Smoke and Mirrors, despite the female nudity, there is a clear absence of the male gaze, before reading the label, it can be asserted it was painted by a woman. The characters are independent, confident, in no way sexualised, alluding to a first wave feminism in the modernist era, both in theme and style. This picture opens the show, ironically or very purposefully so depicting painting within a painting. As your eyes travel through the room, you can clearly tell which works belong to the same artist. Reminiscent of an art fair, each painter has their own curated ensemble creating a fortified argument as to why they are representative of painting today. 31 UK-based artists make up the show, stress on “based” as the selection is far from all-white and British, mirroring the multiculturalism of the city of London, crisscrossing the globe, adjoining Zambia to Colombia. Sophie von Hellerman focuses on the fruition of dream images from past events, her foggy paintings resemble watercolours in the sweeping strikes of pure pigments onto the laying canvas. Her delicate, noncommittal brushstrokes are light and heavenly in contrast to Mohammed Sami’s almost colour blocking works despite both depicting horror stories. Slightly above are works by the rising star Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, two people embracing, a family portrait, a silkscreened photo of the artist with her father. Needless to say the works are partly autobiographical, dealing with themes of identity, culture and displacement, as perfectly captured in Bira, “where a man in Western business clothing drinks from a traditional African vessel”. Hwami’s juxtapositions are beautifully orchestrated and her brushstrokes pure, unafraid. Frightening however is the realism of some of Jonathan Wateridge’s portraits. What might seem like casual snapshots of everyday life, are in truth highly planned and overdone scenes with actors in studios. The artist however has since moved on from hyperrealism and developed a more loose and expressive style whilst being still an adept of portraiture. On an adjacent room, there is still space for somewhat surrealism, whether it is on Allison Katz’s work where both subject and materials tend to follow “Dalinian” convention, or as you read Issy Wood’s labels and stop to think if Oil on Velvet might be a typo. As you go upstairs, the first room is striking, evoking American Abstract Expressionism in the megalomanic size of the canvases. This is the first allusion to abstraction in the show with the notorious inclusion of contemporary giant Oscar Murillo. While the lower floor is consistently figurative, at times revivalist or traditional, the stairs make a good transition into another approach to painting, every so often boundary-breaking as in the work of Samara Scott. Murillo’s larger than life works evoke the likes of Gerhard Richter but while the German artist’s mark making consists mostly of scratching, Murillo tends to add to the canvases he himself assembles from patches, creating impasto-like textures through the use of letters in different languages, imbuing the works with additional layers of meaning. Scott’s “paintings”, on the other hand, use mostly anything but paint. Mixing up household items, from detergents to plastic bags, if you look closely you might even find an iPhone charger as you look through to the buildings across the river. Samara Scott is a brilliant tongue-in-cheek inclusion, more than being a celebration of fascinating work, it is a chance for viewers to hinder they own conceptions of painting and break down the elements that have gotten it included in the curation. There’s figurative, there’s abstract and there’s something in between. There’s linen, there’s velvet, there are windows and concrete boxes. There is oil, there’s rice and there are household items, to look through, to look at and to squint into. The curation is surprisingly comprehensive covering all aspects of painting from size to approach to subject. From naïf to hyperrealism, from fading brushstrokes to spray cans and colour blocking. From established, to reemerged, to emerging artists. This exhibition might be the closing argument on the point gallery director Ralph Rugoff has been making. Rugoff argues painting “may in fact be the medium that accommodates the most conceptually adventurous thinking.” (Quoted from catalogue). While disputable, Mixing It Up doesn’t fall short on the task of encapsulating painting for the 20s, far from defining a movement but very on point on celebrating the medium, its diversity and globalisation.

Pitched and accepted by GARAGE Magazine before it closed down. “I like my fashion like I like my cheese: old and mature.”; who has made such an iconic statement? Absolutely no one, ever. Despite having reached old age decades ago, the fashion industry has now finally started to uncover the veil and to look itself in the mirror, only to realize it is not young anymore. Yes, we live in an era of radical and often absurd transformation, some botox here and a bit of lifting there. What was wrinkled is now stretched and what once sagged has strangely doubled in size and got back into place. Isn’t it wonderful to have these magical powers? Sometimes it’s hard to live up to the expectations created by the magical fountain of youth. The constant replacement for a newer and shinier model becomes expensive and tiresome. Is it such a crazy idea to allow things to run their natural course? After all, what is this whole worship of youth if not an invention of a consumer society short of new ideas? The year: 2019. The idea: older doesn’t mean uglier. Diversity has been a buzzword for some time now, and great changes have been made in a wide range of areas, but one of the faces of diversity we might have overlooked is age. It would be highly incoherent to say that only this year we woke up to that possibility, although it feels only now it has started to be normalized. And don’t get me wrong, I did say “started”, this is only the beginning, we are far from a healthy relationship with wrinkles. But let’s keep our hopes up; we have also been closer to trying to press our necks with clothing irons. The term ‘Greynnaisance’ has been traced by trend forecasters to 2015, when Céline signed writer Joan Didion, 80, for their advertising campaign. Innovative? Yes. Trend-setting? Maybe. Celebratory? On one hand, yes, on the other… The icon was only featured on the accessories campaign. As much as this campaign was praised, it also received substantial backlash for having possibly condemned older models unworthy of promoting clothing, and being better off as accessories mannequins, for the sole purpose of selling overpriced sunglasses. Anyhow, it was a starting point, but since then we have seen a lot more of ‘renaissance’ frills than ‘grey’ hairs. Early in 2018, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria, presented an exhibition entitled Aging Pride on how aging is perceived by contemporary art in said era of the “Cult of Youth” (the cover image was one of the pieces exhibited). With over 200 works from photography and video to painting, the aging body is seen in a variety of perspectives with all its intrinsic virtues and fragilities. Although this exhibition may have been quite low-key and lacking in praise, it may have marked a milestone to where we are headed. In an increasingly and worryingly aging society in the western part of the world at least, it feels more important than ever to look at the future, ironically enough. People over 50 will amount to be the largest consumer segment in the market and they will feel the need for better representation across all its breadth, especially in fashion (data retrieved from Stratfor Worldview). In a world where the average inhabitant is 18 years old, this year started off promising, with some older models pacing the catwalks for AW19 in the first fashion weeks of the year. Designers like Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors and Elie Tahari took the lead in showing off some almost wrinkly faces in a fashion history tribute to the golden age of the supermodel. Christie Brinkley (65), Veronica Webb (53), Patti Hansen (62) and Christy Turlington (50) returned to catwalks, for what hopefully won’t be a last time, on the Western side of the Atlantic. As well as around the other side, where brands follow suit with Stella Tennant (48) walking for Burberry, Guinevere Van Seenus (41) making a return at Erdem and the champion of age diversity, Simone Rocha, who has been trail blazing the catwalks with ‘unconventional’ models since her SS17 collection, once again empowering women of all ages. The normalization of aging has been reinforced by the Inditex group with brands Mango and Zara showing advertising campaigns with 40 year old models - who even though condemned as ‘old’ by the ridiculous standards upheld by the fashion industry, managed to elegantly present the clothes as well or maybe even more realistically beautifully than their infant peers. The group started introducing this concept in 2017, but faced controversy when associating the words ‘old’ and ‘ugly’, yet, over the years it managed to pull through and deliver the right idea along with the right execution. When bringing undisclosed themes into the spotlight in such a big, complex and deep-rooted industry, it is only natural for there to be paradoxical opinions on how to approach and settle on some concepts. Although fashion is praised to be innovative and open-minded, because everyone in the industry has to think one year in advance thanks to the fashion system, change is hard to achieve. When things are done for the fist time, no one knows how to proceed. It’s trial and error, like anything really, and people, especially in this world, are so rushed to condemn what could have been done differently, it’s inevitable these pioneering examples have suffered so much backlash. But the important thing is: they kept trying and evolving. Not only in the clothing business, but as well in the cosmetics department, aging has started to be depicted as celebratory. No more anti-aging, just beauty-enhancing. MAC’s #WhatsYourThing campaign shows incredibly diverse women, of all ages, including Anna Klevhag (50) and Jan de Villeneuve (75), glowy and airbrush-free, elegantly portraying what all of us only hope to reach at that age. Warning: No wrinkles were deleted nor grey hairs dyed in the making of this advertisement. Feedback has been over-the-top for this campaign, now that the industry starts to understand how to deal with the subject at hand. It seems everything makes sense and is accepted when Vogue magazine does it. Although they are never to take risks and pioneer a new movement, British Vogue’s May Issue was sold with a special edition called the Non-Issue. Where a no-more-than-60 Jane Fonda confidently looks directly at us as she ‘comes of age’ and tells us she’s 81. This was developed in partnership with L’Óreal Paris, here asserting that age is no longer an issue. Independently of how realistic this is or isn’t, the popular magazine is recognizing the demographic problem and spreading it to the wider audience, claiming the need and right for representability. The size of a problem can be measured by how big its coverage is, and it is important for what started as a niche change in some more progressive fashion brands is now expanding to mass consumed products not only industry-focused. Representability comes a long way in the path for acceptance. Feeling confident in one’s skin becomes easier when we feel there is a space for us in the world, when we can see ourselves in the media, because the media is now the world. This is why we are living in the era of influencers. Instagram is the natural habitat for these mythical creatures who have the eyes of society on them, but these platforms also seem to have unwritten age restrictions. The technology barrier may keep some people away - the ones who have not been born through a wifi connection. Nevertheless, incredible woman are creating a new sector of influencers over 60, demonstrating style has no age, nor does Instagram. From the New York socialite directly to the world, Iris Apfel created a name for herself through the way she expresses her own personality by means of clothing, her style has even earned her a MET exhibition in 2005. More recently she has adhered to Instagram (@iris.apfel) where, at 98 years old, she engages with an audience of 1.4 million followers. Apfel is probably one of the most well-known older icons in the fashion industry inspiring women of all ages not only on style but also on her exuberant approach to life, that make her so unique. Her biographical documentary from 2014 is an ode to the joy of living. Alike Iris Apfel, Ari Seth Cohen (@advancedstyle) has been developing her own platform, Advanced Style, where through a collection of books and a documentary she empowers stylish women deemed too old for fashion, who could not care less about it. The inspiring stories she shares of herself and others destroy all age stigmas ever imposed by our young-focused society. This is again so delightful to watch, that leaves you with a weird feeling of wanting to jump straight to your sixties. The love these women have for clothing and dressing is hugely inspiring, their unconventional style needs to reach a bigger audience to show people what life should be about, always, independently of your age: feeling amazing about yourself. Personal style can also be about following trends, the two are not mutually exclusive, and @iconaccidental is a great example of that. As she writes on her blog, she realized there was a gap in the blog market for platforms ‘that offered an urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic but also spoke to women who live what I call “interesting but ordinary lives” in cities’. On her description page and Instagram profile not once is the word ‘age’ mentioned, because it is simply not an issue, it is not a defining characteristic of who she is, it’s irrelevant - and that is the way it should be. Why should we ever have to subscribe to something that only identifies us if we pay too much attention to it? Headlines announcing ‘the most fashion diverse year yet’ have been filling the news as we reach the final months of 2019, but we can only hope that either these titles appear at the end of each year from now on, or that they cease to exist completely. Forecasting reports for upcoming seasons are also starting to flood the fashion journals, and what appears to be on trend for 2020 and 2021 are witty puns on how high time it is for age diversity. It’s the true ‘age of greynassance’ - they say. Which sounds very encouraging and innovative: making something inevitable trendy. Honestly, mind-blowing… Hopefully, we will compare this moment in time to trousers for women rather than to the croc fad. When diversity becomes the new normal we won’t need to shout out to the world what we take for granted. Why did we take so long to acknowledge that time passes? Maybe it’s the fear of death, maybe it’s the fear of ugliness, but why have we ever considered old age to be the antagonism of beauty? Fantasy is created because reality isn’t good enough. Humans keep wanting to achieve the unachievable, live in the unreal and believe in the unconceivable, it’s inherent to our species. This need is then transposed into fashion, into the ideal look - which in terms of age translates into being 20. In a time when the life expectancy for women is around 82 years of age, why do we think our maximum potential has been left at only a quarter down the line? We keep cutting ourselves short, because we’re told every day we are not good enough if we have crows-feet. We should just let the birds come and step wherever. It is not their footprint that should dictate what we are or are not eligible to wear. Style is non-demographic and it is only ridiculous we ever made it so. Soon enough we’ll discover that what drives desirability might not be being young but confidence in being - something that only develops with maturity. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera dwells on how lightness makes things ephemeral, unimportant and to disappear within time, while strength and density give them value, content and history. Airbrushed perfect bodies are light, maybe now we’re ready to delve into wrinkles of matter with stories to tell. I think about this when I look at pictures of Peggy Guggenheim and only wish to be her one day. Finally, what else could be said that would make more of a compelling argument than this picture of Ellen Mirren in a bathtub, just telling us being sexy is not only for younger people.

Written in May 2020 With his feet in 2003 and his eyes on the future (possibly the Met in distant 2019), John Galliano wraps again an unparalleled catwalk show. This season the designer seems to have scavenged his library, found Susan Sontag and made a pop-up show out of Notes on Camp, as the collection encompasses everything the book defines. If personified, this show would be a 1940s high society lady unwinding until she finds herself in lingerie, gradually feeling more confident with her sexuality and so, dressing back up, dreams of becoming a Hollywood star. In the upbeat Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy world of Galliano there is an evident celebration of the 30s and 40s as well as of pin-up culture during the brief lingerie moment. The zeitgeist is transmitted not only through the design, but through the music and even in the cheeky Carmen Miranda reference in one of the looks. Light transparent fabrics meet chunky knitwear cover-ups while feathered textures, exaggerated frills and over-the-top draping are flaunted down the catwalk. Movement and volume are the key pieces of the collection. Sharply tailored suits bursting through their seams with flourishes and pleats, increasingly gain fluidity and cling to the models bodies in shiny asymmetrical shapes of satin. Halter tops reminisce the 30s and the nude tones of the lingerie accent the sensuality of the moment. Cleavages become bigger and bolder and push-ups are unashamed - and so are patterns that contrast with the solid colors of the beginning of the show. Hats are lost in the Hollywood glamour and might I dare say a splash of the 80s is thrown in? The unconventional shapes of the clothes, the ostentatious styling and the mannerism of the models are reassurance enough this is a Galliano catwalk. The show is a performance. The models seem to be unaware they are walking down a real runway, emulating their 4-year-old selves exaggerating fashion walks in their bedrooms. Their eyes are penetrating, you unequivocally are locked in their gaze, in the outrageous makeup and pasted cartoon eyebrows and lashes, mischievously wondering when one is going to fall off. Although the femininity of the clothing is undeniable, the faces might suggest quite the opposite. As if the models were men pretending to be woman, building up the theatricality of the moment. Might this have been the gender fluid nod from the early 2000s, announcing the age of drag?