BACURAU
2022 Sci-fi weirdo Brazilian western.
Brazilian writers / directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Filho take on race and class in their 2019 bizarro sci-fi Western flick “Bacurau”. The film bends genres and realities whilst following a small town and eccentric set of characters in the Brazilian outback; the town’s inner quarrels are exploded by an insidious existential threat. For sure, a heavy dose of psychedelic storytelling layered with criticism of Brazilian politics and Western economic imperialism. Available on prime video premium and other platforms if you’re willing to pay a small fee. 🇧🇷
N.APRIS LES DES
1971 avant garde shock and awe film . Adults only.
French experimental film writer/ director, Alaine Robbe Grillet presents a remix of his own work, “Eden and After”, taking subversion to a whole new level, confronting the viewer with surreal collages of potent carnal imagery. Plot is secondary. Strap on your seat belt for a sensory overload.: “N. Took the Dice”. Full film linked below. ADULTS ONLY.
Christian Boltanski
meditations on memory
This week’s art post features the work of French conceptual artist Christian Boltanski (1944-2021). Boltanski’s work has a contemplative, poetic, ethnological quality. Absence, the remains and impact of war, the silenced subject, and the power of memory all are investigated, as is a quiet celebration of the dignity and poetics inherent in the mundane.
“His work was rich in visual and aural impact, and open-ended in its invitation to the viewer to contemplate the past and partake in the present moment — for what has been lost and what endures.”
Photo Credit:
MetaLocus, BOLTANSKI AT IVAM: DÉPART - ARRIVÉE
Jupiter Art, CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI:THEATRE D'OMBRES
Art Dex, Memory and Mortality: Christian Boltanski
Art Review, The Spectres of Christian Boltanski
Nowness Asia, Everyone and No One, The Art of Christian Boltanski
Merrian Goodman Gallery, Depart-Arrive
Merrian Goodman Gallery, Christian Boltanski Selected Works
Portrait Credit: Art Dex, Memory and Mortality: Christian Boltanski
Shirin Aliabadi
iranian subversion
This week’s art post features the work of Shirin Aliabadi (1973-2018). Aliabadi’s work focused on Iranian women and their unique relationship to Western culture. Not singularly a critique of Western capitalism, the work explores secular transgression, body image and female identity under a repressive religious regime.
“Shirin will always be remembered for her kind soul, the depth of her work and the mark she left on the world. The female protagonists of her best-known series presented themselves as a radical counter-design to the officially propagated image of women, and displayed a young generation’s ways of breaking free from regulations.””
Photo Credit:
Universes Art, Operation Supermarket
Phillips.com, Shirin Aliabadi
Art Fund, Shirin Aliabadi
Aperture, She captured the modern face of Iran
Portrait: The Art Newspaper, Shirin Aliabadi, known for depicting rebellious Iranian women, has died
Annette Lemieux
ideological minimalism
This week’s art post features the great work of Annette Lemieux. She works in a variety of media and works in a theater of memory, examining aporias in accepted, dominant narratives. Check her work at her website.
“She’s looked at archetypical images from art — 20th century art history, but also film — and edited them and tweaked them to give them new meaning, whether that’s cheeky or critical, She’s always taking something from the world and turning it on its head to give it new meaning.”
Photo Credit:
Mitchell Inns & Nash, Annette Lemieux
Whitney Museum, Annette Lemieux
Quote and Portrait Credit: WBUR, Annette Lemieux, Whose Art Addresses History And Politics, Wins MFA’s $10K Prize