LastWords
Half a Day in the Life of Angel Martinez
Contributor
M. Joseph IrwinM. Joseph Irwin is the editor of an alt-weekly, Planet Jackson Hole, and an M.F.A. recipient from San Diego State University.
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The still life painting—that most quotidian of art genres—is given a modern makeover in Hauser & Wirth’s latest exhibition
Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes's The Sweet Flypaper of Life
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Gina Beavers: The Life I Deserve
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The lighting for Gina Beavers’s exhibit The Life I Deserve is Instagram perfect. That seems only fitting for paintings based on social media posts and aware that they will return there as #art #museum #artselfie or even, in a potential throwback to 2015, #museumselfie. The artist’s #Foodporn series from 2014 gets particular attention, though the newer series based on makeup tutorials had some snapping pics as well. All this begs the question, what are we looking at?
Tavia Nyong’o's Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life
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Tavia Nyong’o’s timely new book, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life, opens with an introduction to the legendary New York City drag queen Crystal LaBeija. Nyong’o describes a scene from the 1968 documentary The Queen in which LaBeija expresses her frustration at the drag pageant’s judging systems, which favor her young white competitor. LaBeija engages in what Nyong’o terms “afro-fabulation;” she performs “for and against the camera” in order to undermine a system that “disparages the black femme glamour she finds beautiful in herself and others,” powerfully undermining the ways in which she is represented.
