On the Cover:
Suchitra Mattai, beholden, 2023. Worn saris, broom, feathers, and vintage chair, 54 x 44 x 36 in. Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno.
Editor’s Letter:
Like a fantastic food court, the current issue presents a smorgasbord of aesthetic flavors while demonstrating the vibrancy of the international scene. Carlos Herrera, an Argentinian artist interviewed here, often employs dying or dead material in his installations and performances. The aim is to “remake,” not recycle, the material into something charged with memory and emotion. In her recent sculptural efforts—bronze partitions on which she has drawn the faces of women, often from pornography—Ghada Amer, who was born in Egypt, explores female desire, as she did in her widely known stitched paintings. Suchitra Mattai, a Guyanese American of South Asian descent, uses old saris to produce extraordinary monuments to “adaptation and transformation.” A Brazilian, Valeska Soares, whose work has been exhibited and acclaimed for some 30 years, seeks to complicate the ordinary. In her interview here, she talks about, among many other things, how she “started imbuing materials with narrative. That has remained an important part of my practice ever since. I have always had a fondness for black humor and irony.” Narrative also figures prominently in Jorge Satorre’s practice. A recent permanent installation in an industrial manufacturing facility mimics machines while gathering notes on which rejected suggestions from workers have been written; in another project, Satorre cast fragments of lovers’ bodies in concrete. All of these artists draw from their unique cultural backgrounds to create things redolent of them and yet unique—together, they make this issue one to savor. —Daniel Kunitz, Editor-in-Chief
