I was aware that Meta AI had entered Instagram DMs long ago but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I started using it by accident. A friend overseas was...
The Joy of Reading Illustrated Classics I remember when, years ago, looking for Dante’s Divine Comedy, I found myself choosing not recent editions with detailed and easy commentaries but...
Art and Design at Airports I think that airports are an underappreciated wonder of our contemporary world. They are structured and operate in the exact same way across geographies, climates,...
Thinking Inside the Box: Learning from Ik-Joong Kang One of the most fascinating events in contemporary art is the annual “Forever is Now” exhibition at the Pyramids of Giza. Organised...
The Patience of Ordinary Things It is a kind of love, is it not? / How the cup holds the tea, / How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare, /...
The Art of Fin de siècle There are few terms in cultural history that I have found more challenging to understand than “fin de siècle”. It has a strong component...
The Impact of Travel Documentaries on the Creative Imagination Last year, I discovered the YouTube channel TRACKS – Travel Documentaries that covers it all “from the freezing ice caps...
The Aesthetics and purpose of Cities I think it was in 2016 that I first began thinking of “cities”—by then I had lived in and briefly visited multiple, very different...
Cultivating Empathy in Children through Cultural Education Recently, I found myself getting extremely disturbed by two pieces of news related to children and adolescents. Generally, we feel bad...
Contemporary Art from the Caucasus Art from the Caucasus. Descriptions of the Caucasus—the region including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and a bit of Russia—frequently mention the word “crossroads”…of civilisations, of empires....
The Ghosts of Japanese Folklore A close friend of mine, whom I met in Bangkok, has always been too interested in ghosts—their stories, also in mysterious techniques by which contact...
Masculine and Feminine Energies in Self and Society I have spent a lot of time reflecting on “the masculine” and “the feminine”—and several YouTubers have given me valuable insights on...
Medieval European Artistic Objects While swiftly going through Western art history in college, I found that different periods—ancient, medieval, Renaissance, modern and contemporary—made certain immediate and general impressions on...
Last year, I wrote about the importance of decluttering—how it gives you a sense of control over your environment. This January, I found myself taking the practice to another level....
A few years ago, I came across a Haitian art exhibition titled “Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou” (from 2012-2013) at Nottingham Contemporary, UK, and was instantly drawn to the strangeness...
Many of us are aware of the Soviet Union’s space programme, and have probably heard the names of Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova and Laika. A richly illustrated book of Soviet...
I stumbled upon the work of Detroit based artist Marcus Glenn last month and was instantly drawn to his paintings of people viewing paintings in art galleries. I liked how...
Too Many Ideas Syndrome” (TMIS) is supposedly a real phenomenon and the subject of many discussions online. (Credit: Pixabay) When I was 13, my mum bought me an amazing thesaurus...