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 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 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....
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...
Chaekgeori, the Scholar’s Accoutrements. Late 18th to early 19th-century Korea, The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea. Some time ago, while searching for Korean art history I...
For more than a year now, I have been regularly watching an unusually prolific Indian YouTuber named Ranveer Allahbadia (@BeerBiceps) and enjoying his conversations with guests who may be...
Recently, I resolved to add “Decluttering” to my daily task list, meaning that every single day I discard something I do not need or organise better something I do need....
When I think of African art in the broadest sense, I immediately imagine masks—belonging to old communities living upon scorched earth or in dense jungles, masks used in rituals...
“Alchemy” is a term I first discovered as a teenager via the bestselling novel The Alchemist (1988) by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The book itself, a mystical fable about...
In my September 2020 article on how artists could circumvent the elitism of the art world, I highlighted the importance of networking (without hard-selling), that is, introducing yourself to...
Art fascinates. In a sense, spontaneity and intuition trumps intellect and I am drawn to the pioneers in art who threw away the rulebook. They wrote new stories. Paul Cézanne...