From simply looking at the cover photo of Myrmecophile, Ifti Nasim makes it clear that he is not here to hide any part of himself. The first image we have of him is a playful, subversive snapshot where he is decked out in full drag, donning a blonde wig, costume jewelry, pearls, and bangles. He … Read More
IV. Bengaluru, 2032 “Sometimes, Saturday has a lonely sound,” said the guy to the girl. A black-and- white from seventy years ago. That was the last line before the power cut out. Goddamned India. I guess some things never change. They nuked the grid to save the country, but the construction was rigged, crooked in … Read More
No one captures unrequited love like FLTY BRGR GRL. In their latest album Love You Forever, the Oslo-based garage pop duo not only highlights the heart-fluttering, adrenaline-pumping parts of crushing, but also the realizations that come once the fantasy of the crush has been shattered. They put music to the high school feeling of memorizing … Read More
In July 2020, when the pandemic was raging, and the uprisings were ongoing, Hrishikesh Hirway was missing his friends and family. Stuck at home with his wife and small dog, he expressed a yearning that struck a chord across the internet, tweeting, “I woke up with a small, specific sadness: I miss being on a … Read More
1+1=1, a footwear and handbag collection from Brooklyn-based Jaipur designer Saumya Sharma, is a study in functionality. The pieces, which Sharma made herself by hand, are at first art objects. They are unwearable until the viewer/wearer pulls the tab that unstitches the opening. From there they can continue to customize the fit and fall of … Read More
Contemporary artist Golnar Adili is playing with language. Specifically the shape of Persian. For the past 15 years she has been making art that revels in the physicality of her mother tongue. She has extracted individual letters from her father’s writing and recreated them in print and sculpture, designed her own Persian pixel typography, created … Read More
Released last month, Montreal-based singer Edwin Raphael’s single “Sights Like These” brings on a trance-state almost immediately. Hypnotic, circling vocals combine with guitarist Dhruv Visvanath’s instrumentals to create a sound bath for meditation. Reflecting on moving on from hurt, lyrics like “I’m fainting & you won’t turn around” and “I’m faking but you won’t figure … Read More
If you had to assign New York-based Pakistani artist Aiza Ahmed one color from the vast spectrum that exists, it would have to be rose pink. That’s not to say that Ahmed does not experiment with green washes or blue backgrounds or reds or oranges, but of all her work and multiple series spanning the … Read More
With my broken Urdu, I read Faiz/ Bloodstreams of Persian & Urdu ghazals run through your streets/ But Ghalib’s metaphors appear on my wounds/ And Iqbal’s verses purify my sins/ Mir’s wahshat is how I make sense of God/ I decipher each and every script/ I read blood/ I wear it like skin.
Randhir Singh’s photograph Sector 5 Saket captures a ubiquitous scene in South Asia: the neighborhood cricket match. A stack of bricks stand in for wickets, field boundaries are demarcated by random objects, and the players’ attire is a mismatched cacophony of color. However, the protagonist of Singh’s photograph is one of the match’s onlookers: the … Read More
