09.29
Growing pains for Beijing’s Contemporary Art Scene
by Kyle Chayka | October 8, 2009
BEIJING– The Chinese artist Lu Lin leans back into a sectioned couch in the corner of his hangar-like studio in Song Zhuang, a traditional village turned artist community to the East of Beijing. The figure of the artist is dwarfed by the towering canvases around the open room: dramatic, mixed media works that mingle traditional Chinese painting formats with total abstraction and sweeps of bright color. It is clear from his studio that Lu does well by his art. Yet, “When people ask me what Chinese contemporary art is like,” the artist says, narrowing his eyes, “I say that China has no contemporary art.”
Night Fishing on Lake Victoria
By Ian MacLellan | June 27th, 2009
KISUMU– I was working as a a photojournalist in Western Kenya, following Christian Legal Education Aid and Research and International Bridges to Justice projects, when I first visited this remote town on the shore of Lake Victoria. After finishing the documentation of the legal program my friends were working on, I decided to take a stroll around town while I waited for the van going back to the city to fill up. I walked down to the beach and saw dozens of slender wooden boats and huge nets laid out on the grass. I immediately knew I wanted to go out with the fishermen because it all looked so peaceful, but I was unaware of what fishing really was.
Primitive Luxury: The Affront of Dubai
by Sean P. Smith | September 29, 2009
DUBAI– Dubai is the desert paradox. It’s a wondrous beacon to the bored and privileged; dizzle-dazzling like diamonds it’s of no worth in itself, but held of great value by those with the power and wealth to make it so. Born to impress and aged to intimidate, it’s dying of wants it can’t have – like culture. The city is a glittering success story of labor extortion. Built with unfathomable speed to even less probable scale, like the Wall in China its foundations are filled with the corpses of those that couldn’t keep up. The streets are clean, sterile, filthy and virus-ridden with the rot of the trampled on its way to the top. Buildings and banks taller than the rest, they can’t crest a village. Heedless and haughty, it’s a sycophant with an inferiority complex to the West. They wrought God of gold then melted God for a fancy dinner. An international city, with no nationality, full of the newest cars, the highest high-rises, the most luxurious apartments and most pathbreaking real estate, Dubai is the emptiest town I’ve ever seen.
Pabbo Camp
by Tim Fitzsimons | September 1, 2009
GULU– You can hear darkness coming at Pabbo. By 7 pm, life there slowly lowers to a whisper as the sound of crickets grows and distant thunder thuds dully across the plains. When darkness falls, the women—tired from spending their day hunched over their washing, cooking, and cleaning—retire to their round huts where they sleep side by side with their children.
