Ya Teleen

Tunisian-American singer Emel Mathlouthi shared this incredibly beautiful recording on Instagram of a song she sung in a church in Cairo called Ya Teleen (To those who are climbing the mountain). The folk song is believed to be from Galilee, possibly during the time of British occupation, and it’s said that Palestinian women used to sing this song, often changing words to encrypt messages, to their loved ones who were in prison.

Continuum

Artwork: eL Seed, Continuum, Diriyah, Riyadh, 2025

French/Tunisian artist eL Seed’s recent project Continuum involves 7 artworks spread around Diriyah, Riyadh shaped by his signature “calligraffiti”. Central to the project is eL Seed’s exploration of the nature of identity, especially what he terms “Third Culture” individuals who constantly navigate a journey of rediscovery; of straddling the past and present, tradition and evolution, where identity is this dynamic thread, a journey rather than fixed state of being. In eL Seed’s view the walls he paints tell stories of “resilience, while sculptural additions symbolize fluidity, presenting identity as both rooted and ever-expanding”. In a short film about the project eL Seed had this to say:

 “Continuum. This is a continuity of something. You know, it’s about identity. All of us, we’re complete in a certain way, but there is a layer of your identity that is not expressed. You know, because of circumstances. And then you reach a place, or a moment in your life that makes you express it. And I think me as a ‘third-culture’ kid, I felt this, you know, my Arabic culture was something that I started expressing only when I became a teenager, you know when I started learning how to read and write Arabic. I hope that a lot of people will find a reflection into this project as well. It’s a combination of different stuff. So, we have this project in the street and I created an installation in my space in JAX. The pieces in the street and the piece in the studio are related, which is like another interpretation of this concept I’m doing, mixing painting and sculpture. So, super exciting.”

Koo Jeong A's skateparks

Artwork: Koo Jeon A, OooOooO, skatepark installation, Milano, 2020

In 2015 South Korean artist Koo Jeong A was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial to create an artwork, and the result was a skatepark sculptural installation. In consultation for over a year with skaters, kids at Shewsy Youth Club and locals who helped shape the design process, the site-specific installation was constructed at Everton in Liverpool and named Wheel’s Park. A key feature is that it was painted to glow in the dark, creating an added experiential dimension for skaters, giving them the chance to skate at night with no additional lighting. One skater said skating at night felt “like you are floating.” Jeong A’s work has previously been described as “poetry built with physical materials instead of words”. This was the second skatepark Jeong A created in an ongoing series, the first was OTRO made in rural France in 2008. Part of her inspiration was to create an artwork to reach out to a younger audience who wouldn’t usually engage with a public art installation that combines beauty and practicality. In 2020 Jeong A designed another glow-in-the-dark skatepark, this time indoors, for the Triennale Milano called OooOooO. The installation was part of an exhibition curated by Julia Peyton-Jones and Lorenza Baroncelli titled Year of Play, exploring the importance of physical interaction in an increasingly digital world.

Maybe

Artwork: Spray art by Banksy

Poem by Nour Elassy, Gaza, 2025:

Maybe years
from now
history will tell
our story.

Maybe people
will read about
the night Gaza 
was promised 
peace, but given 
death.

Maybe they will 
say they did not 
know.

But we will know 
the truth:

They knew.

They all knew.

And they chose 
to look away.

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is a short surf film that’s pure adrenaline. Filmed over five days at Jaws aka Peahi, this big wave went crazy for five consecutive days of epic swell, and cinematographer Tom Wooding and others shot footage of surfers Albee Layer, Torrey Meister, Russell Bierke, Tyler Larronde, and Wilem Banks having the time of their lives. Check it out.

AI + Art

Image: Hayao Miyazaki creating in his studio

The issue of AI generated “art” across various mediums whether animation, visual art, film, books and music, has been coming up a lot lately. Recently a number of authors through the Author’s Guild US have filed a lawsuit against Meta for sucking up vast numbers of books from platforms featuring pirated books for their large language model AI Llama (the metaphor of AI being a parasite or soulless vampire is deliberate!). This has been done with no consideration of legal permissions, intellectual copyright, or compensation to authors. I felt ill reading about how this made author’s feel about their life’s work and creative efforts. Then there has been the inundation across social media of Ghibli AI inspired images that blatantly rips off the aesthetic cultivated over years of creative work of Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli Studio animators. An interaction has resurfaced as a result from a 2016 documentary on his life, where Miyazaki is shown an AI generated animation of a creepy monster/zombie dragging itself by its head, with the presenter extolling that AI could “present us grotesque movements that we humans can’t imagine”. In response Miyazaki told a story of his friend who has a disability where it was hard for him to raise his arm, so that he found he couldn’t watch this kind of imagery. Miyazaki went on to say: “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted…I strongly feel this is an insult to life itself.” Miyazaki’s art is deeply human, dealing with universal human concerns, which raises the issue of AI and the very issue of what it means to be human. The brilliant researchers and film makers Aaron and Melissa Dykes at Truthstream Media recently put out a video examining this very nexus of AI, art and human consciousness, What Lies Beyond the Image of Our Humanity?, (click on title to view). I encourage anyone interested in this issue, or is directly impacted by their creative work being sucked into AI models for training or commercial purposes, to watch this and consider the very serious implications of what is happening as AI intersects with human created art.

Miyazaki on creating

Artwork: Drawing by Hayao Miyazaki for My Neighbour Totoro

As a fan of the work of Hayao Miyazaki, his words about creating resonated: "Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul."

Chasing Light new cover!

I finally had a new cover done for my YA novel, Chasing Light. It features stencil artwork from French street artist Christian Guemy (C215), titled, Love is in the Air (2103, Vitry, France). I’m super happy as I’ve loved this artwork for a long time!

You can check out the Chasing Light synopsis and a few chapters here, and the various stores it’s available for purchase.

OwlKitty does Twilight!

After a long break where OwlKitty’s (aka Lizzie) parents had a child, they’ve come back and produced this: OwlKitty does Twilight! It’s brilliant and hilarious! Check it out.

Ange Fragile

Artwork: Ender, Ange Fragile, 2020

I’ve always found French street artist Ender’s (@ender.artiste) angels moving. This particular paste-up Ange Fragile (2020) perfectly captures a sense of despair or pain, and I featured it alongside my story The Beginning of Something Else (check it out, here). Whether the angel has fallen from grace or is living in disguise among humans, the pathos resonates because it feels so contemporary. I post this today simply because a fragile peace in a small land has been broken, and an already beleaguered people are being terrorised once more. And words never seem enough…

Where have all the flowers gone

Artwork: Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2025

Two major exhibitions centered on Anselm Kiefer’s art are currently showing at the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The title of both, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, comes from the 1955 protest song Where have all the flowers gone by American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger. Kiefer commented that “The most important sentence in this song is ‘When will we ever learn.’ The rest of the song is a little bit kitschy, but this is a deeper thing. We don’t know why things repeat all the time. We have a situation now like in 1933 in Germany, it’s horrible.” The two exhibitions feature twenty-five works by Kiefer, including a major new painting installation at the Stedelijk Museum that combines oxidized copper, paint, clay, army uniforms, dried rose petals and gold, symbolising the cycle of life, death, the human condition and the nature of war.

Kiefer’s affinity with Vincent van Gogh dates back to 1963 when Kiefer won a travel scholarship and chose to follow the route taken by Van Gogh, from his birthplace in the Netherlands, through Belgium and then on to southern France. Kiefer stayed for a few months in Fourques, near Arles, where Van Gogh painted much of his best-known works, such as the Sunflowers series. Regarding Van Gogh, Kiefer said provocatively, “He worked very hard, because he had no talent, you know. The last two years he did all for what he’s now famous. That’s because he didn’t stop. He kept painting and painting.” The exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum presents seven key works by Van Gogh, such as his Wheatfield With Crows (1890), with previously unseen paintings and thirteen early drawings by Kiefer inspired by the themes of Van Gogh’s art, such as natural phenomenon, landscape, seasons, memory and light.

The exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum focuses on Kiefer’s close ties to the Netherlands, specifically the artist’s connection with the museum, which early in Kiefer’s career acquired Märkischer Sand (1982) and Innenraum (1981), a painting which features a view of the skylit chamber of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin where Adolf Hitler once met with members of his military to map out his destruction and seizure of Europe. The reference to World War II was a challenging—even taboo—subject in post-war Germany at the time it was created, and follows on from earlier work by Kiefer such as the Occupations performance piece created when he was a 24-year-old art student and traveled across Europe posing at significant historic sites performing the Nazi salute.

Given that the exhibitions coincide with Kiefer’s 80th birthday, as well as the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, the subject of his earlier artwork confronting Germany’s Nazi past and the themes of history, memory, silence, time, metaphysics and humanity is a palpable reminder of the need not to forget the trauma and horror of war. While Kiefer said that the new work for this major show isn’t meant to depict politics or any specific world event, he does keep informed about current geopolitics and the escalation for war in Europe. Kiefer references this as he spoke about the process inherent in his art, “When I paint, I don’t paint with my head, it’s with my body,” and that given his knowledge of war, “It’s logical that it comes through. It’s me, my body, that brings it onto the canvas. It’s not intended to warn people, but I do hope it’s a warning.”

Kelly Akashi at Lisson Gallery

Artwork: Sculpture by Kelly Akashi, Lisson Gallery solo exhibition, February 2025

Kelly Akashi’s inaugural exhibition with Lisson Gallery in Los Angeles was tragically intervened by the Los Angeles fires where Akashi’s studio and house were destroyed, alongside so many other Angelenos. The devastating loss did not deter Akashi from going ahead with the exhibition rescheduled a month later in February. Reaching out to locals Akashi was able to crowdsource materials and studio spaces to complete the work, refiguring her sculptures that feature glass, earth, stone and bronze elements. Akashi was able to save some bronze cast and borosilicate pieces from her burnt studio, incorporating these works with their altered patina; a sombre reminder of so much loss, the pieces transformed by fire.

As with previous exhibitions, Akashi’s hands are cast in bronze, holding various objects, or a partial cast of her face features sprouting a natural form, in this case glass branches or horns. Elements from nature such as twigs, seed pods and flowers are reformed in bronze or glass, where organic and inorganic substances are shaped to speak to a poetic, complex and delicate interaction. Akashi also included in this project a number of lace doilies that belonged to her grandmother, heirlooms suggesting her family lineage and the passing down through time not simply of objects but shared memories and experiences of Akashi’s personal history.

Out of tragedy, Akashi triumphed with this exhibition which showcased the alchemical transformation of matter in her art, and of the regenerative potential in nature and life itself.

Rojas at Kanazawa, Japan

Artwork: Adrián Villar Rojas, The End of Imagination I (2022) The Theater of Disappearance (2017), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, 2025

Adrián Villar Rojas’s current installation in the group exhibition Dancing with All: The Ecology of Empathy at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, is an amalgam of two series of works, The Theater of Disappearance from 2017, which had various iterations in Athens, Bregenz and Los Angeles, and the 2020-22 projects, The End of Imagination (I wrote a blog post about the Paris 2020 exhibition).

The element from The Theater of Disappearance series is a large format image of Piero della Francesca’s painting Madonna del Parto (1450-75). The reproduction, depicts a pregnant Madonna, and was originally displayed on the floor at Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2017. It is positioned above a large-scale sculptural element from Rojas’s series entitled The End of Imagination, a chaotic amalgamation of software systems collectively described as the “Time Engine” and created to generate a series of digital worlds, a conflation of the virtual and physical. The sculpture’s state of decay implies environmental and social collapses across time.

Themes of extinction, disappearance, organic and inorganic forms, and time meld with ruminations on human imagination, the nature of art, language and systems of representation. With regards to the Theater of Disappearance and The End of Imagination projects, Rojas made a statement that encapsulates both (as well as other works such as Poems for Earthlings, Paris, 2011) in terms of conception and strategy: "In 2010, I proposed a hypothesis: What if, in the final moments of humanity, the last of the species decided they wanted to make an artwork? It would be the last human artwork, together with all the logical implications unfolded by this fact. The end of art, end of the world and end of language are then one and the same thing: the same end. In my fabulations, reaching the shores of art created a vacuum, a silence that gave space for me to explore nonhuman perspectives. This is when I placed a new metaphor of an alien into this terminal landscape. What I call the ‘alien gaze’ expresses this impossible paradox: a subjectivity without culture."

In the Classroom

Artwork: Painting by Seth, The reader, Qalandiya, 2022, Occupied Palestinian territories

The teacher lifts the chalk—

it snaps

A child flinches,

breath held,

waiting.

 

Outside, the sky groans.

The windows do not shatter—

not yet.

 

A boy at the back

engraving words

on his wooden desk.

His name.

His brother’s name.

A name he won’t say out loud.

 

The fan creaks, slow and tired.

A flicker of light.

A dry mouth.

Only the hush of moving lips—

 

Then—

a distant boom.

The room stops breathing.

 

The teacher drops the chalk,

her hands trembling.

The boy runs his hand over the carving,

dust settling in the grooves.

And weeps, soundless.

 

Somewhere beyond these walls,

silence breaks again.

No one came to help.

 

Poem by Mohammed Arafat, February 26th, 2025

Guayacán

Artwork: Mural by Millo, Guayacán, Medellín, Columbia, 2025

Artist Millo has created yet another wonderful mural for the Medellín Streetart Festival in Columbia. The mural is titled Guayacán, which is an amazing tree found in Medellín, and he wrote this about the project and its inspiration:

“Medellín, is a bustling metropolis, nestled amidst breathtaking natural beauty, I would say an extraordinary urban jungle, where the tropical flora and fauna intertwine with the city’s rhythm, creating a truly one-of-a-kind environment. 
Among these natural wonders, the Guayacán tree stands out, holding a a special place in the Medellín people’s hearts : it’s blooming, lived as a cherished event, it’s a symbol of hope and renewal. 
During my time in the city, I was struck by the numerous stories shared with me about this magnificent tree, each person I met had a personal connection to it, a memory or anecdote that highlighted its significance in their lives. 
My mural artwork aims to celebrate Medellín’s unique way of loving and living in harmony with nature, their profound and fascinating connection, something that I feel sometimes almost lost in this other side of the world.”

Bird on Wires

Artwork: Robin Rhode, Bird on Wires, film still of performance, Berlin, 2025

Contemporary artist Robin Rhode recently did one of his wall drawing, performance installations called Bird on Wires in Berlin, Germany, where he currently lives. Made me think of Leonard Cohen’s song Bird on the Wire. So here are Leonard’s lyrics paired with Rhode’s artwork.

Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.

Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

are you happy?

Artwork: Paste-up by Megumi Nemo, Ae You Happy?, Paris 4e

The whimsical and joyful work of French street artist Megumi Nemo, Are You Happy? The puppy helps!