Светлана Сараева

When a bomb falls on a building or a town, it exposes all its guts,” said Mohamad Hafez. His elaborate models of annihilated streetscapes and ruined buildings replicate the devastation of the war in Syria, where Hafez was born. In October 2016, I entered his studio in the Westville neighborhood of New Haven during the annual City-Wide Open Studios event. The walls were covered with his sculptural structures, intricate pieces depicting exposed rebar and protruding electrical wiring. Hafez—by day...

Meriem Bennani’s new artwork, Your Year by Fardaous Funjab, features the most recent hijab in the artist’s fictional line of high fashion headscarves. This thirty-second video, part of the Public Art Fund’s Commercial Break series, features an ever-evolving hijab that can be worn throughout the year. One headcovering commemorates various Islamic holidays as well as secular events. As the seasons change, the hijab morphs on the Barclays Center’s “Oculus” screen into eight distinct versions, ranging from generic autumnal attire to a headscarf for Ramadan...

Nick Cave created his first Soundsuit after the Rodney King beating in 1992. Cave was sitting in a park, feeling vulnerable and cast aside, when he saw a discarded twig on the ground. Later he fabricated a symbolic suit of armor, using hundreds of collected twigs. The Soundsuits became integral parts of Cave’s practice, and this original experience also awakened a sense of civic responsibility in the artist. The buoyant appearance of the Soundsuits, composed of kitschy materials such as beads and plastic tchotchkes, belies their serious connotations...

The artist and writer Dushko Petrovich was walking home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, when he thought of a title for a new publication: The Daily Gentrifier. Petrovich had been on the road, doing interviews for Adjunct Commuter Weekly, a magazine he edited and published that catered to the interests of higher education’s growing population of adjunct professors. With The Daily Gentrifier, Petrovich—who is now a tenure-track professor at School of the Art Institute of...

The Brooklyn-based artist Jesse Chun was living with her family in Hong Kong as an expatriate when the handover took place, in 1997: one flag was lowered and another one was raised, a symbolic event marking the end of British rule over the country and the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China. When I met Chun to talk about her work in September 2016, the artist said, “I didn’t move, but the country changed over night.” This shift in power and feeling of displacement without...

For the “New Kids on the Block” column in the “Exposed” issue, acclaimed art-world self-help author Howard Moseley, PhD, answers readers’ questions about gallery representation, the nature of creativity, and commissioned works. Q: I am very upset by the haughty, superior attitudes of gallery owners in my area. I want to get my art into a gallery, but do I need to crawl on my knees to get someone to show my work? A: Galleries are often difficult to approach, and their owners can be cold and even hostile to the public...

In July 2015, when I encountered the installation by the New York–based artist Saya Woolfalk in the Disguise: Masks and Global African Art exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, I felt like I’d entered an ecstatic, sci-fi world inhabited by cyborgs and unfathomable technology. In a darkened room, mandalas painted on the walls flickered while rainbow-patterned mannequins wore elaborate, fantastical costumes with glittery, butterfly-like embellishments, skirts with triangular pieces of fabric layered like reptilian scales, and headdresses topped with small chimeras...

In July 2011, the artist Gina siepel paddled down the Bronx River with four strangers. This series of excursions in the northernmost borough of New York City, along with four similar trips led by siepel in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, were part of a performance called cacophony...

Imagine a sky full of birds. But these are not ordinary birds: these birds carry rocks, and the rocks are on fire. These extraordinary birds use their fiery stones to repel the army of an enemy encroaching on a sacred space. Over many centuries, the birds of this myth have been imagined as the heroes of the religion of Islam. Narratives such as this are the subjects of a series, El-Zohra Was Not Born in a Day, by the Lebanese artist Randa Mirza. Using a contemporary and personal voice, Mirza retells ancient Arabian stories that have been obscured over time and muted by outside forces...

Caitlin Berrigan’s Unfinished State is an ongoing project and the title of a book encompassing postcards, photographs, and writings. The book’s contents explore how conflict has affected the real estate development, property distribution, and landscape of the country of Lebanon. Spanning several decades, the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) produced an abundance of buildings throughout the country that are stuck in the beginning stages of development: concrete armatures of unfinished structures, forming a web of ghost architecture fixed in time...

Rob Pruitt’s “The Church,” Trevor Paglen’s Flag, and Joan Jonas’s Tate Modern Retrospective The Church is not only Rob Pruitt’s current solo exhibition but also an interactive community space—Kunsthalle Zürich has morphed from a gallery to an educational and spiritual venue. The show combines Pruitt’s work from 1999 to 2017 with educational resources and community events, such as Sunday services organized by the Theological Seminary of University Zürich and theoretical discussions on Theory Tuesdays led by Zurich-based artist Philip Matesic...

Black panthers cover the walls and are now inked on the bodies of visitors to Doreen Garner’s pop-up shop, Invisible Man Tattoo at Recess Assembly. The subject of the blockbuster Marvel movie and symbol of the 1960s socialist party is one of many flash tattoos created by Garner with designer Donte Neal. Through March 3, visitors who identify as Black can receive free flash tattoos, and more elaborate tattoos are available for purchase for all visitors regardless of self-identification...