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Reaching the heights: Martin Chambi’s pioneering photos of Andean people
The Peruvian photographer Martin Chambi is not a household name like his famous compatriot, Mario Testino, but his pioneering photographs of indigenous people were ahead of their time. Martin Chambi transcended his impoverished start in life to become one of the Andean country’s most prized photographers. Martin Chambi was born in 1891 into a Quechua-speaking peasant family in one of Peru’s poorest regions, Puno....
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Painting the inner life of nature: the beguiling work of Hilma af Klint
The elusive Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), the subject of a new exhibition at London’s Serpentine Galleries, is finally bursting into the limelight. The artist, today considered a pioneer of abstract art, was an obscure figure in the art world until very recently. But this was partly of the artist’s own doing – she herself stipulated that her abstract work should be kept...
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An anthropologist from the future: Kapwani Kiwanga breaks with the ordinary
Canadian-born Kapwani Kiwanga was the Commissioned Artist for this year’s Armory Show in New York. Her on-site installation, The Secretary’s Suite, is an interactive installation that investigates the complexities of gift economies. The artist’s visit to the United Nations’ art collection last year inspired the piece. The Secretary’s Suite is composed of a single-channel video and a viewing environment inspired by the 1961 office of...
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Defining a nation
Olya Ivanova photographed some of Russia’s most traditional people for her evocative Village Day II series of photographs. She travelled to the small and remote Vologda region in Northern Russia to carry out the project. The photographer, born in Moscow in 1981, is interested in articulating Russia’s modern-day cultural identity, especially in the country’s remote towns and villages. Village Day takes place every year...
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Eggcentricity
The Argentine artist Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos (1939 – 1992) and his famous egg sculpture are examined in a new exhibition at the MALBA, La Era Metabolica (The Metabolic Era). The sculpture, known as Nosotros afuera (Us Outside) and originally made in 1965, has been specially reconstructed for the show. Peralta Ramos was one of the country’s most eccentric artists. At the vanguard of modern...
