AG2025_1177610b or theatrum orbis terrarum


Edwidge Danticat joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Two Men Arrive in a Village,” by Zadie Smith. (New Yorker) (PRX)


Sarah Bejerano. Cargo. Rialta.

Casi al final del prefacio de su Atlas de islas remotas, Judith Schalansky escribe: Los cartógrafos deberían reivindicar su oficio como un verdadero arte poético y los atlas como un género literario de belleza máxima; en definitiva, su arte es digno merecedor de la primera denominación que recibieron los mapas: Theatrum orbis terrarum [Teatro del mundo]. Si hubiera un atlas del mundo en la fotografía cubana, sería la obra de Sarah Bejerano. Si hubiera un atlas de la poesía en la fotografía cubana, sería la obra de Sarah Bejerano:

—¿Hay música en tus fotos?

—Hay música en mi cabeza, todo el tiempo. No puedo vivir sin música. Normalmente organizo mi vida por canciones, y mis fotos son lo mismo. Todas las series que hago tienen bandas sonoras, que muchas veces se conforman a la hora de realizarlas y otras viene cuando las visualizo posteriormente. No podría enmarcarlas en un género musical u otro, porque mis listas de reproducciones van desde Irakere hasta Rammstein, desde Vivaldi hasta Elvis Manuel.

—¿Crees en Dios?

—No, ¡por Dios!

Legna Rodríguez Iglesias with Sara Bejerano, 2021.

AG2025_1177596a or Aquí confluimos hacia la única estrella


“Of course, I am not K, but I find myself uncannily identified with his predicament. For in the letter you have sent you and your offices have informed me only that you have sent “a file or report related to alleged antisemitic incidents” that includes my name. Two aspects of this communication stand out to anyone who has read Kafka’s work. The first is that you imply, without stating it, that I have been accused of antisemitism or that my name is associated with an incident of that kind. But you are also actually more careful since you say that the incident of antisemitic harassment or discrimination is “alleged,” which means simply that the allegation was neither reviewed nor adjudicated but left to stand on its own.”

Judith Butler to David Robinson, in response to the University of California, Berkeley informing 160 students, faculty, and staff that files containing their names were forwarded to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in connection to its investigation of antisemitism on college and university campuses. via The Nation.


Aquí confluimos hacia la única estrella.

Volquémonos amado mío,

dejemos caer los remos

hasta donde la noche no existe.

Here we converge toward the only star.

Let’s fall in, love of mine,

let’s drop our oars

down to where night doesn’t exist.

Lacao, Rosabetty Muñoz, translated By Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta

AG2025_1177596b


ECHO DELAY REVERB. Art américain et pensées francophones, Naomi Beckwith et Elvan Zabunyan (dir.), coéd. Palais de Tokyo (17 octobre 2025) Editions B42.


[Arundhati Roy] writes … on a paper napkin for her friend to hold on to, formulating with that rare and exultant combination of passion and rigor what success really means:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

via The Marginalian

Also. It was a sudden revelation (Woolf)


AG2024_1134128a or I’ve only ever seen effluents, seen wattage.


Whatever I care for, someone else loves it
more, deserves it more: the doe with her
whole mouth crushing the phlox or the seer
who adores my future, whereas I could
take it or leave it. I know I’ll disappear.
It won’t be glamorous. It won’t be like when
the Mona Lisa was stolen and the tourists all
lined up to pay their respects at the empty
spot on the wall of the Louvre.
I’ve never actually even seen the sky.
I’ve only ever seen effluents, seen wattage.
The only night I remember is the dinner
of neighbors at which a man I never
had met before said I don’t fear dying—
look at the past, people have been dying forever, and—
then he stopped and shook his head—
I drank too much. I was almost saying
that people have died forever and all
of them survived, but of course
—he made
a hard laugh—God, of course they didn’t survive.

The Sky, Natalie Shapero

AG2023_1033830a or calm down; this is very rare


Some people say the devil is beating
his wife. Some people say the devil
is pawing his wife. Some people say
the devil is doubling down on an overall
attitude of entitlement toward
the body of his wife. Some people
say the devil won’t need to be sorry,
as the devil believes that nothing
comes after this life. Some people say
that in spite of the devil’s public,
long-standing, and meticulously
logged disdain for the health
and wholeness of his wife, the devil
spends all day, every day, insisting
grandly and gleefully on his general
pro-woman ethos, that the devil truly
considers himself to be an unswayed
crusader: effortlessly magnetic,
scrupulous, gracious, and, in spite of
the devil’s several advanced degrees,
a luminous autodidact. Some people
say calm down; this is commonplace.
Some people say calm down;
this is very rare. Some people say
the sun is washing her face. Some
people say in Hell, they’re having a fair.

Sunshower, Natalie Shapero

I am ashamed to keep thinking of death
as a chute that connects to the garbage. I know
I should picture it more like the pneumatic tubes

at banks of the past: you put in your name
and your paper and up you go. I know a bank

should be the operative metaphor
for every facet of existence, every time. I’m sorry

I haven’t more regularly made reference
to a bank. When I fail to liken something to a bank,
that’s how I can tell I’m tired. That’s not me,

I assure everybody. That’s the long week talking. Time
for bed. Time for the window, the hectoring sky,

the streetlight bright as the bright saved people
see before they die, but I don’t die.

Long Week Talking, Natalie Shapero

AG2025_1177640a


Monuments, [c]o-organized and co-presented by MOCA and The Brick, MONUMENTS marks the recent wave of monument removals as a historic
moment. The exhibition reflects on the histories and legacies of
post-Civil War America as they continue to resonate today, bringing
together a selection of decommissioned monuments, many of which are
Confederate, with contemporary artworks borrowed and newly created for
the occasion. Removed from their original outdoor public context, the
monuments in the exhibition will be shown in their varying states of
transformation, from unmarred to heavily vandalized.Co-curated by Hamza Walker, Director of The Brick; Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator at MOCA; and Kara Walker, artist; with Hannah
Burstein, Curatorial Associate at The Brick; and Paula Kroll, Curatorial
Assistant at MOCA, MONUMENTS considers the ways public monuments have
shaped national identity, historical memory, and current events.   Following the racially motivated mass shooting at Mother
Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC (2015) and the deadly ‘Unite the
Right’ rally organized by white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA
(2017), alongside Bree Newsome’s powerful removal of the Confederate
flag at the South Carolina Statehouse (2015), the United States
witnessed the decommissioning of nearly 200 monuments. These removals
prompted a national debate that remains ongoing. MONUMENTS aims to
historicize these discussions in our current moment and provide a space
for crucial discourse and active engagements about challenging topics.  MONUMENTS features newly commissioned artworks by
contemporary artists Bethany Collins, Abigail DeVille, Karon Davis, Stan
Douglas, Kahlil Robert Irving, Cauleen Smith, Kevin Jerome Everson,
Walter Price, Monument Lab, Davóne Tines and Julie Dash, and Kara
Walker. Additional artworks by Leonardo Drew, Torkwase Dyson, Nona
Faustine, Jon Henry, Hugh Mangum, Martin Puryear, Andres Serrano, and
Hank Willis Thomas, are borrowed from private collectors and
institutions. The exhibition presents decommissioned monuments borrowed
from the City of Baltimore, Maryland; the City of Montgomery, Alabama;
The Jefferson School for African American Heritage, Charlottesville,
Virginia; the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia,
Richmond; the Valentine, Richmond, Virginia; and The Daniels Family
Charitable Foundation, Raleigh, North Carolina. By juxtaposing these
objects with contemporary works, the exhibition expands the context in
which they are understood and highlights the gaps and omissions in
popular narratives of American history.
 MONUMENTS will be accompanied by a scholarly publication and a robust slate of public and educational programming.


Siddhartha Mitter On Kara Walker in NYTimes.