Tag: latest art news

Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-born photographer acclaimed for her fearless self-portraits and incisive explorations of American history, has died at 48. The Brooklyn Museum, which hosted her first institutional solo show in 2024, confirmed her passing. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed.

Faustine’s practice centered on reclaiming visibility for Black women in the United States. Often working with self-portraiture, she used images of her own body to address legacies of slavery, gendered oppression, and historical omission. “I live in a city and a country that are filled with monuments and icons of all sorts—mostly to white men,” Faustine told Artsy in 2016. “They convey their history. It’s a one-sided legacy.” Her work demanded recognition of the stories often left out of public memory.

Her best-known body of work, the series “White Shoes,” began in 2012. In these images, Faustine photographed herself nude except for white heels at former slave auction sites and burial grounds across New York City, including Wall Street and Harlem. The series was directly inspired by Sarah Baartman, a South African woman exhibited in 19th-century Europe as a spectacle, and sought to draw attention to the overlooked role of slavery in the city’s development. The 2024 Brooklyn Museum exhibition brought together works from this series for the first time at an institutional level.

Fragment of Evidence, 2019
Nona Faustine

Two Palms

Faustine often focused her lens on national landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument, cropping or obscuring them to question the dominant historical narratives they represent. “It seemed as if freedom, in that picture, was disappearing,” she said of one image taken of the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry.

Born in 1977 and raised in Crown Heights, Faustine was immersed in photography from an early age thanks to her father and uncle, both hobbyists. She earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1997 and later an MFA from the International Center of Photography at Bard College. Her early works, such as the series “Mitochondria,” centered on the women in her family and their intergenerational narratives. Later projects took on broader histories, including the series “Say Her Name” (2016), a tribute to Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in a jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop.

Faustine was recently in residence at the American Academy in Rome, where she was the 2025 Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellow in visual arts. Her work at the residency explored the African presence in ancient Roman society.

The show will debut at SFMOMA in September before traveling to Minneapolis and Boston.

From swimming guillemots to sun-dappled Scots pines, the winners of this year’s contest celebrate the diversity of Great Britain’s animal life.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Feral Pigeons and a Feisty Fox Take Top Honors in the 2025 British Wildlife Photography Awards appeared first on Colossal.

“POOR BUT SEXY” takes its title from the iconic phrase former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit coined. Originally designed to rebrand post-Wall Berlin as a raw, seductive destination for the West—defined by its low-cost labor and vast infrastructure—the slogan also serves as an emblem of how, from a pro-Western perspective, the fate of the East after

The designer announced his departure from Loewe last week.

The post Jaqueline Vanek: Unveiling the Shadows of the Self appeared first on AATONAU.

The Minneapolis-based artist creates sprawling scenes from large, single sheets.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Delicate Ecosystems Converge in Sonja Peterson’s Intricate Cut Paper Compositions appeared first on Colossal.

Here’s what we’re reading this morning.

Pharrell Williams has dropped a new hit in Paris, and this time, it’s not a single, but an art exhibition titled “FEMMES” at Perrotin. Curated by the Grammy award–winning musician, the exhibition features nearly 40 artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Nina Chanel Abney, and Todd Gray. The show, which includes a range of Black artists, aims to spotlight the influence and narrative of Black womanhood. The exhibition will be on view until April 19th.

The exhibition follows Pharrell’s first showcase with Perrotin, “G I R L,” in 2014, coinciding with his album of the same name. This first showcase paid tribute to femininity, featuring work from 37 artists. “FEMMES,” on the other hand, focuses primarily on the experiences of Black women.

Williams told Euronews, “Women have been such a force in my life from my grandmothers to my mother, to my wife, my daughter, my nieces, my cousins, people on my team, and people on our extended bench. Women are an amazing force for good in the world.”

“FEMMES” includes works that reflect the complex narratives of Black women. It includes several works of textile art, a field historically tied to women’s labor, by Haitian artist Kathia St. Hilaire and Zimbabwean artist Georgina Maxim. Elsewhere, Williams has selected dynamic portraiture by artists such as South African artist Zanele Muholi, and American artist Kenturah Davis, that confronts and redefines Black identity. The exhibition also shows several works of collage emphasizing the visual language of pop culture, with works by American artists Mickalene Thomas and Tschabalala Self.

Seven of Perrotin’s artists have contributed work to the exhibition. Alongside St. Hilaire and Abney, participating artists include Leslie Hewitt, Alex Gardner, Tavares Strachan, Chiffon Thomas, and Zéh Palito.

“FEMMES” also showcases other notable Black artists, including South African artist Esther Mahlangu and American Betye Saar, as well as rising talents Emma Prempeh and Gabriel Moses.

For the ancient Greeks, Mnemosyne, mother of the nine muses and Goddess of memory, symbolized the preservation of knowledge, experiences, and emotions. Memory is encapsulated in our lifetime and all that goes beyond it turn into History. This is a reason why, perhaps, we started looking again at other cultures and traditions and at their