I Will Keep A Light Burning

Artwork: Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, I Will Keep A Light Burning, Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, May 23 2026

On May 23 this year, French artist Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil participated in the European Night of Museums at Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection in Paris. He recreated an artwork originally commissioned for an exhibition titled Arduna at ALULA Contemporary Art Museum, Saudi Arabia, co-curated in partnership with Centre Pompidou (1 January-15 April 2026). The artwork I Will Keep A Light Burning, featured hundreds of candles lit gradually over the course of the evening, replicating a constellation of the future: a vast circular installation beneath the glass rotunda mirroring a map of the Paris sky one hundred years from now. In one night, the candles reflect this celestial star map only to burn out. An ephemeral experience melding the present time with a distant future.

Notes for Radical Living

British actress Tilda Swinton published her first book last year, Ongoing, and in this video, she reads a poem she wrote featured in the book, Notes for Radical Living. I’ve included Tilda’s handwritten version from the book. Simple, yet profound.

Unfinished

Artwork: Yoshitomo Nara, Unfinished painting, 2016

Yoshitomo Nara recently wrote this about his unfinished painting from 2016:

“I’ve only recently started thinking it’s okay to stop right here. I love that moment just before it’s fully finished—the point where it suddenly feels like the soul has entered the painting. From now on, I want to do more pieces where I put down my brush in that state.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

Nosferatu!

Artwork: Paste-up by @eraquario, Nosferatu, London, UK

Hilarious! This is a glammed up Max Schreck by @eraquario, the ultimate vampire as Count Orlock from the F.W Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922). One of my all-time favourite vamp films!

Nurturing a heart II

Artwork: Mural by OAK OAK, Nurturing a heart, Paris, 2026

In February I posted OAK OAK’s mural featuring a boy watering a vine-shaped heart, and now, it has bloomed! The appearance of leaves has evolved the work beautifully.

Akira Kurosawa on writing

Image: Akira Kurosawa

Renowned Japanese filmmaker, screenwriter and director Akira Kurosawa (select films Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Ran) said this about the process of writing creatively, and it resonates: “When you go mountain climbing, the first thing you’re told is not to look at the peak, but to keep your eyes on the ground as you climb. You just keep climbing patiently, one step at a time. If you keep looking at the top, you’ll get frustrated. I think writing is similar. You need to get used to the task of writing. You must make an effort to learn to regard it not as something painful but routine.”  

Blind patriotism

Artwork: Banksy, Untitled, Westminster, London, 2026

Well, Banksy just put up this statue in Westminster, London, and it’s getting heaps of feedback, as usual. The guy in a suit waving a flag, his sight obscured, and about to step off the pedestal sums it up really: blind patriotism, nationalism and stepping blindly into the abyss. A cautionary artwork, that one commentator wrote, “Quiet at first, then impossible to unsee.”

Abetare

Artwork: Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (un giorno a scuola), Radis (seconda edizione), Dogliani, 2025

Petrit Halilaj’s public installation in Dogliani (Cuneo), Italy, commissioned by the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, is part of an ongoing series of works created since 2015 titled Abetare. The title for the Kosovar artist is significant as “abetare” is an alphabet primer for schools in Kosovo, and the inspiration for this work are the doodles on school desks Halilaj found in Dogliani and the Balkans. Drawing becomes sculpture through the bent, twisted steel tubes. This specific iteration is titled, Abetare (un giorno a scuola), where Halilaj creates an imaginary school house featuring the writing, creatures and symbols from the school desks. It is a fantastical work grounded in reality, but also a space of freedom, joy and play for children everywhere.

Halilaj is best known for his work delving into memory, displacement, war and childhood, having been a child refugee during the Kosovo/Serbian war, with his family home ruined and forced into a refugee camp in Albania. It was here in the camp that Halilaj met psychologist Giacomo “Angelo” Poli who was working for the UN and providing art materials for the children to express themselves. It was a pivotal experience shaping Halilaj’s future as an artist and the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Poli left the camp after two weeks but took many of Halilaj’s drawings with him, and Halilaj recounts: “Back in Italy he [Poli] showed my drawings, alongside those of other kids, and persuaded his municipality to give me a grant to go to the only art high school in Kosovo after the war. Eventually, Angelo and his wife hosted me for three years when I was at university [the Brera Academy in Milan]. They became my second family.”

Halilaj’s art often features materials from his homeland such as earth, wood, fabric and found objects, creating installations that reconstruct his childhood experiences of loss and survival and collective histories. Halilaj’s work transforms the trauma of conflict and violence into poetic reflections on heritage, identity, belonging, resilience and the pivotal role of human creativity.

I wrote an art story for Petrit Halilaj’s installation Dreaming on, fast asleep, your face came to my mind. When I opened my eyes, I was nowhere to be found, (2018) which you can read here.  

Her hand

Artwork: Stencil by Cake$, Little Palestinian Girl from Gaza Writing Love With Her Hands, near Bethlehem University, West Bank, 2023

 

Poem with the words of a Palestinian girl in Gaza who lost a limb:

she lost her hand
and cannot play
as she could once
before
she cannot clap
with the other children
and she prays—
”Dear God, please 
put kind people 
in my path”—
but what can
overcome her grief
at such a loss?

 

© Angela Jooste

An Offering to Athens

Artwork: Mural by PichiAvo, An Offering to Athens, Psiri, Greece, 2026

Duo urban artists from Valencia, Spain, PichiAvo, have just created a new mural at Pallados street in Psiri, Greece, titled An Offering to Athens. As so much of their work has been inspired by classical Greek art and mythology, PichiAvo devised a self-produced project to give something back to Athens and the culture and history that has influenced much of their art. The project took two years to make happen, and the result is a stunning mural featuring their signature style of fusing classical art and graffiti. PichiAvo said this about the mural: “According to Greek mythology, Athens was born from a contest between Athena and Poseidon. While he offered salt water, she gave something lasting and protective: the olive tree, a symbol of abundance, peace, and prosperity. The citizens chose Athena, naming the city in her honor, and from this offering comes the inspiration for our first project in Greece.”

Meeting on the Turret Stairs

Artwork: Frederic William Burton, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864), National Gallery of Ireland

In the National Gallery of Ireland there is a painting that can only be viewed twice a week because of the need to limit its exposure to light. The luminous watercolour and gouache work on paper, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) is by nineteenth century Irish artist Frederic William Burton, and it depicts a moment from a medieval Danish ballad (author unknown), Hellalyle and Hildebrand, translated in 1855 by Burton’s friend, Whitley Stokes for Fraser’s Magazine. The ballad is told in the princess Hellilel’s voice, where she recounts that her father, the King, assigned twelve guards to protect her, and one of them, Hildebrand, became her lover. When the King discovered their forbidden love, he sent his seven sons to kill Hildebrand. He proved a formidable adversary, killing six of the brothers, and as he fought the last brother, Hellelil intervened to save the life of her surviving sibling. Tragically, Hildebrand let his guard down and at that moment, the last brother dealt a mortal blow. Hellelil survived his death, but her brother punished her cruelly, banishing her to a tower as an exile, where she eventually died, brokenhearted.

 The moment Burton captures is deeply intimate. It shows Hellelil and Hildebrand in a turret staircase, just as the knight is going down the stairs to meet his fate. That moment in the ballad is captured thus: He kissed me then mine eyes above/ "Say never my name, thou darling love." It is a moment in between: before their ultimate separation and the ensuing violence, suspended by a gesture of love, of holding on to each other, but also of parting where Hildebrand kisses Hellelil’s arm, while she faces away from him as if overwhelmed. On seeing the painting, British author George Eliot commented that it revealed, “the highest pitch of refined emotion,” and “the face of the knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament.” Without knowing the tragic end of the story, this scene alone is captivating because of the suspended moment of such intense emotion, and yet, knowing the entire tale gives the painting even greater poignancy.

Endless Deathless

British musician Daniel Avery’s remix of Just Mustard’s Endless Deathless is my absolute favourite track since its release last week. Also check out Daniel Avery’s awesome album released last year Tremor, especially the Midnight Version which can be found on SoundCloud (here).

ENDLESS DEATHLESS (Daniel Avery Remix)
Just Mustard

Juntos is warmer

Artwork: Mural by Andrés de la Bastida, Juntos is warmer, Barcelona, 2026

Gorgeous mural by Barcelona-based artist Andrés de la Bastida (@kst.ec), Juntos is warmer, created for Barcelona Boro Fest. Simply heartwarming.

Rocco Racoon

Artwork: Paste-ups by Tianoo the Cat and LIZ ART BERLIN, Dresden, 2026

So, some astronauts circled the moon and came back to earth this past weekend. Maybe one of them was Rocco Racoon??? Great paste-up by Tianoo the Cat (@tianoo_the_cat), with a guest appearance by LIZ ART BERLIN with one of her cats peeking around!!! Made me smile 😊 🚀

Exposing an Inner Universe

Artwork: Chiharu Shiota, Exposing an Inner Universe, Madrid, Spain, 2026

Chiharu Shiota’s recent exhibition, Exposing an Inner Universe, at NF/Nieves Fernández in Madrid, Spain, features smaller scaled artworks, yet with her signature use of red and black threads which symbolise blood, and the invisible connections and ties between people and places, forming complex networks and associations. Themes of memory, imagination, identity, the nature of existence, consciousness and the individual’s lifespan are core to this and many past installations. Shiota wrote this about the central artwork of a sculptural rendering of a chair and desk amid an explosion of shaped yarn spreading across the wall spaces:   

“I imagine a person sitting at the table, writing or sketching. Their thoughts and feelings spilling out of their head, spreading from the table, moving up the wall, their imagination has no limits, forming a landscape of emotions that connects their inner world with the outside. The landscape is like its own universe, a different planet, organic yet alien. This inner universe seems vast and structured, full of complexity, unresolved conflicts, and hidden harmony. It represents who they truly are beyond social roles, nationality, culture, religion, and other constructs that seem natural like the shape of the wire, but at the same time restricts their true self.”

The exhibition ends April 25, 2026.

Just a child

Video still of a child in Gaza carrying water, 2026

Poem based on a video of a small child in Gaza. Have to admit, finding the words these days is hard:

just a child
carrying
two containers
of water
alone
the world should
break
at such a sight

© Angela Jooste

Till the end of the world...

Artwork: Kenny Random, Till the end of the world…and beyond, 2026

Poignant artwork by Italian artist Kenny Random, Till the end of the world…and beyond.

Power can't see

Artwork: Alice Pasquini, Power can’t see, Crotone, Italy, 2026

New mural by artist Alice Pasquini for Urban Project in Crotone, Italy, Power can’t see. Or maybe, it depends on who in power is truly pulling the strings, because I think they see pretty clearly (and I’m not talking about politicians!).