Director Antimo Campanile has created a short film The Art of Typography encapsulating the art of Naples typographer Carmine Cervone (@tipografiamuseo). Working in the city’s historic centre with original 20th century printing machines, Carmine’s practice is as much about creating, preserving and reinterpreting this analog graphic art form, as living surrounded by the materials of his craft, and transforming a nearby abandoned church into a wonderful museum of typography, Tipografia Museo. A brief and beautiful exploration of Cervone’s unique vision and work.
Please draw me a flower
Artwork: Paste-up and drawing by ENDER, Please draw me a flower says the hummingbird…, Little Guinea, Guadeloupe, June, 2026
Lovely paste-up and wall drawing by artist ENDER (@ender.artiste) in a neighbourhood in Little Guinea, Guadeloupe, for the FMR 971 Festival, Please draw me a flower says the hummingbird…
small stories: how lonely
Artwork: Mural by Crea, Alessandria, Italy, 2024
in a city of lights
with so many others,
how lonely
can I truly feel?
© Angela Jooste
Requiem
I just watched documentary filmmakers Aaron and Melissa Dykes’ new short-doco We're Already Living in an Alien Invasion Movie, about where we’re at with AI and its impact on humanity. It’s insightful, highly disturbing and also entertaining (you can watch it here). I’ve written about the issue around AI and art before (here), also citing another of the Dykes’ films on this topic, and over time, the same concerns around creativity, imagination, critical thinking, language and research skills keep coming up. Basically, there is a serious erosion of people’s abilities in these areas who use AI regularly, and aren’t discerning in their use of it. I’m kind of over the hype around it, while acknowledging, this is an epic problem. But when I hear tech tycoons like Jeff Bezos say he’s disinterested in music of any kind; or Elon Musk say he thinks empathy is Western civilization’s fundamental weakness; or Sam Altman say intelligence should be a utility like electricity that OpenAI will sell to its customers, and horrifyingly when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei goes on a podcast tour trying to justify and also shift responsibility for Claude (AI) being used by the Israeli/US military to target the Minab school in Iran killing around 110 children at the beginning of the Iran/Israel/US war this year (around 168 civilians in total), a war crime, frankly, I question these people and their humanity.
Stories, music and art have been foundational for my life. Being creative, using my imagination is like breathing. Thinking, reading, researching and writing is what I do every day. It’s about living, being fulfilled and purposeful. Recently I listened to Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D minor. My father trained as a classical pianist, and while he didn’t pursue a performance career, he passed on his love of classical and jazz music to me. The story of the Requiem is that in 1791 Mozart composed it on his deathbed, passing away before the composition could be completed. The mass was commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg for a requiem service to commemorate the first anniversary of his wife’s death. The composition was completed however by composer and conductor, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. I’m including here the performance of the movement from the Requiem, the Lacrimosa, by the Berliner Philharmoniker and conducted by Claudio Abbado (1999) in Salzburg Cathedral. Music that can bring you to tears, while simultaneously being uplifting, and composed by an ill, impoverished, flawed and brilliant man who created a masterpiece that in my opinion, bridges the human with the divine. A true gift to humanity.
Melted into the Sun
Uzbekistan artist Saodat Ismailova’s short film Melted into the Sun (2024, 35 minutes) features a veiled figure with silver fingertips navigating a desert landscape with a group of devout followers. The voice of this mystical figure Al-Muqanna, also known as The Veiled Prophet, whispers in Uzebek, speaking to the followers and viewers. Al-Muqanna was an eighth-century mystic and revolutionary from Khorasan who challenged the central and hierarchical power of his time, as well as resource extraction and its effect on the environment. Seen as a charlatan by some, and significant by others, during the Soviet era he was interpreted to be a proto-socialist. Ismailova discovered him in Soviet history books of Uzbekistan: “Back then, every discipline was manipulated and shaped according to the narrative of the center—which, for us, back then was Moscow. He was presented as a kind of proto-socialist, as if socialism had originated in bigger Central Asia.”
Ismailova was born at the end of this Soviet era in Central Asia. She remembers how the shift from one societal structure to a less-defined and indeterminate one was disorienting and fragile. As the film unfolds, a colossal sculpture of Vladamir Lenin appears, built into the Kirov Dam, and the solar furnace of Uzbekistan, which was an early solar technology, also features as a symbol of sun worship. The film travels along the banks of Amu Darya river, to the round burial ground of Chillpiq, and the city of Bukhara, all significant sites for having been touched by the prophet. The shifts in landscape parallel this sense of disorientation in societal and temporal changes specific to this region. The figure of Al-Muqanna was resurrected in the post-Soviet era as people sought alternative spiritual guides in a time of ideological collapse. Ismailova says of Al-Muqanna: “I think this film was a very complex one for me. I was working with a character who left behind an uncertain and contradictory legacy—there is nothing concrete written about him. His story exists like an echo upon an echo, reverberating through time…he was a dyer, an alchemist, an optical illusionist, a preacher, a prophet, and interpreted sometimes as the first revolutionary figure. The moment I realized the direction I wanted to take was when I asked myself how I could connect his story to recent times—to the context I was born and raised in.”
The Uzbek poet Jontemir Jondor was invited by Ismailova to perform the character of Al-Muqanna in the film, preaching and journeying with his followers. The film features his followers holding mirrors to both manipulate and reflect light. The symbolism of light as a means to see and the veiled faces of the followers whose sight is obfuscated, also extends to the viewer whose own sight is disrupted by the glinting sunlight from the polished surfaces. The idea of seeing and unseeing extends the notion of a present and future that is known and unknown, constantly shifting.
Ismailova is both an artist and a researcher. Wanting to explore the history and collective memories of her region in a post-Soviet world, she brought together other artists and researchers in 2021 to form DAVRA, as a way to reimagine Central Asian cultural heritage by working with “lost” knowledge and archives. Working at the crossroads between Europe and Central Asia, Ismailova’s art navigates the terrain of this region’s anxiety amid the societal and ideological collapse of the Soviet era, the political upheaval that ensued and how then to survive in this new landscape, with the possibility of hope and liberation.
Lemon
Just released, Daniel Avery’s track Lemon is a stratospheric adrenaline hit 🚀 On repeat, just love it. Check it out!
Baalbek
Artwork: Print by Millo, Baalbek, 2026
Italian mural artist Millo recently created a print featuring a Roman temple from the Baalbek complex in Lebanon in the Beqaa Valley, east of the Litani River. It is a civilisational wonder with Phoenician roots and is a UNESCO World Heritage site, known especially for the Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of Bacchus. The central focus is the placing of a heart in one of the Baalbek temples amidst his signature cityscape with aeroplanes and clouds. Given the focus on the war in Lebanon right now, especially the south, Millo’s artwork is timely and moving.
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Artwork: Yoshitomo Nara, Crackers, paint marker on paper, 2026
Some days I feel just like this…crackers.
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).