Culture

By Anna Zhila, art and music critic The Cartography of a Worldly Sound In our increasingly borderless world, a new kind of artist is emerging. They are not defined by a single place, a single culture, or a single sound. Their identity is a fluid, dynamic thing, a map drawn from a multitude of sources.…

At seventeen he already has an International Emmy, Disney blockbusters and prestige television behind him. On his turn in the A24 horror film Bring Her Back.

By Anna Zhila, art and music critic The Joyful Armor of Sophie Thatcher Every so often, an artist arrives on the scene who seems to operate on a different frequency. They are not defined by the polished, impenetrable confidence of a typical rising star, but by a kind of radiant, unapologetic vulnerability. Sophie Thatcher is…

She trained for years at Scottish Ballet, then walked away. How that decision shapes the actor she became, and why her performances are haunted by the lives she did not live.

By Anna Zhila It was not a subtle crime. It was a declaration. A hole blasted through the pre-dawn silence of a Dutch city, a brutal act of modern violence in service of an ancient greed. The theft of four priceless Romanian gold artifacts from the Drents Museum in Assen this past January was more…

By Anna Zhila, art and music critic The Beautiful Sickness of Viagra Boys There is a particular kind of energy that radiates from the music of Viagra Boys. It is the sound of a fever dream, of a bar fight breaking out in a philosophy department. It is the squall of a saxophone colliding with…

By Anna Zhila, art and music critic The Quiet Violence of Lara Peake There is a certain kind of performance that does not announce itself. It is a quiet, almost forensic, examination of a character’s inner life, one that reveals itself not in grand gestures, but in the subtle flicker of an eye, the tense…

By Michael Mittelman There is a certain kind of cultural artefact that lodges itself in the public imagination, not as a masterpiece, but as a memory. The 2003 Disney comedy Freaky Friday is such an artefact. It is a film that is, by any objective measure, a piece of light, and largely forgettable, entertainment. And yet, for…

An actor and model who has worked for Miu Miu and Stella McCartney since she was sixteen, and what it takes to refuse the story that binds women's pleasure to shame.

By Yulia Tulegenova Why We Confuse Nitter with Natter There is a strange and revealing confusion that has crept into our digital language. It is the confusion between two words that sound alike, that feel alike, but that come from two entirely different worlds. The words are “nitter” and “natter.” One is a piece of…

By Maria Bregman, writer, art and literary critic The Unsettling Calm of Walden Pond There are certain books that function less as stories and more as mirrors. They sit on the shelf for years, gathering dust and cultural baggage, until one day you pick them up and find, with a startling and uncomfortable clarity, that…

By Yulia Tulegenova, artist and film critic The Glorious, Empty Violence of Saltburn There is a certain kind of film that arrives like a beautifully wrapped gift box, promising a familiar, elegant pleasure. Emerald Fennell's Saltburn was marketed as just such a gift. We were led to expect a sun-drenched, homoerotic drama, a story of two beautiful young…

Hector Barbour broke through in 2015 with It's Only Real. On instinct over polish, and how a decade of club records built an argument for a different kind of artistry.

By Anna Zhila, artist, art and music critic A visitor to a French museum has eaten a well-known piece of art: a fresh banana taped to a wall. The work, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is titled “Comedian.” The incident happened at the Centre-Pompidou Metz in eastern France on July 12th. A Calm Reaction According…

By Yulia Tulegenova, artist, literary and art critic The Art of the In-Between: Jwan Yosef’s Beautiful Duality There is a certain kind of artist whose work is forged not in a single, stable identity, but in the unsettled space between two worlds. Their art is born from a state of permanent negotiation, of never quite…