Sara Roffino
Sara Roffino is an ArtSeen editor.
For this issue, we have asked a group of mostly Brazilian artists and thinkers to consider the significance and meaning of Anthropofagia in a contemporary context, on the cusp of the movement’s one hundredth anniversary.
Sara Roffino meets with photographer Graciela Iturbide after the opening of her exhibition Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico at the National Museum of Women in the Arts to talk about intuition, time, and playing with death.
Since learning how to make films in a basement at Spelman College (where she was not enrolled), Tiona Nekkia McClodden has found her way from the editing room to the studio, making work that has garnered her both a Guggenheim grant and a place in the 2019 Whitney Biennial—for which she won the exhibition’s top honor, the Bucksbaum Award.
“You must work, always work,” were the words of advice Auguste Rodin shared with Rainer Maria Rilke in 1902, days after the struggling young poet arrived in Paris to write an essay on the sculptor. Desperate to figure out how an artist should be, Rilke lived by these words—but it would take until 1914 before he would truly understand their meaning.
“He’s like a magician,” replied the artist N. Dash, when I mentioned I was interviewing B. Wurtz. Her response was typical of the enthusiasm and joy Wurtz and his work elicit among artists.
For twenty years, Rainer Ganahl has captured images of speakers and their publics during seminars and lectures for his ongoing series “Seminars/Lectures” (S/L). Other presentations of the S/L series include the Venice Biennale (2007), Wallach Gallery at Columbia University (2005), the Generali Foundation (1997), and at Max Protetch Gallery (1999). Sara Roffino caught up with Ganahl several times throughout the run of his current exhibition, Artists: Recent photographs from my S/L series, on view at Kai Matsumiya through October 25.
May 2015ArtSeen
RAMIN HAERIZADEH, ROKNI HAERIZADEH, and HESAM RAHMANIAN I won't wait for grey hairs and worldly cares to soften my views
Iranian, Dubai-based artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian’s first show in New York, I won’t wait for grey hairs and worldly cares to soften my views is a vociferous installation spanning a multitude of genres, places, times, and languages.
If one were to glance briefly at Williams’s works, the bright palette and carnivalesque scenes might belie the violence depicted.
Yael Bartana’s current exhibition at Petzel Gallery presents two recent films: True Finn (2014) and Inferno (2013). Just before the exhibition opened to the public Bartana met with Rail managing editor Sara Roffino to discuss rising nationalism, utopic visions, and Avinu Malkeinu.
Adam Helms has spent much of his career exploring the performativity of violence. Using Internet-sourced depictions of militants and rebel soldiers, Helms often works in charcoal and ink to create, compile, degrade, or archive images in ways that have drawn reference to Aby Warburg and Gerhard Richter.
Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal met in Beirut in the 1970s. They have since lived between Paris, Beirut, and northern California, working in different media—Adnan is a poet and painter while Fattal is a sculptor and the founder and publisher of the Post-Apollo Press—to explore and reconfigure notions of history, politics, freedom, and feminism.
Teresita Fernández recently invited Rail Managing Editor Sara Roffino to her Brooklyn studio. Over the whir of fans on one of the hottest days of early summer, the two discussed Fernández’s current show, As Above So Below, on view at Mass MOCA.
Long recognized for her grotesque representations of colonialism, her ability to evoke a constancy between past and present, and her anthropologically inspired explorations of race, Adriana Varejão’s latest exhibition, Polvo, feels contemplative, even hopeful—especially for an artist who has spent much of her career lamenting historical atrocities, tragedies, and disparities.
Growing up in the rural Swiss village of Winterthur, Heidi Bucher (1926 – 93) was expected to marry a man who would carry on the family construction business. She rebelled.
Over 1,000 Americans will be receiving good news in the mail soon, in the form of letters advising them that at least some of their debt has been abolished.













