JOKE (published by Mack Books) is the latest collection of works by artist Talia Chetrit. The book contains recent photography alongside image’s from Chetrit’s archive. Works span across still life, Chetrit’s teenage archive, self-portraits, family photos, and street photography. The book includes an essay by poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir. JOKE explores the power dynamics inherent, but also explicitly surfaced, between photographer and subject through humor.

Talia Chetrit (b. 1982, Washington, DC) is an artist living and working in New York. Her photographic and video work explores questions of performance, identity, artifice, and sexuality, oscillating between the realms of personal and private, planned and candid. Chetrit has had recent solo exhibitions at Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2021); Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles (2021); Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2019); MAXXI, Rome (2018); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2018); as well as numerous group exhibitions worldwide. Chetrit’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Sculpture Center, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others. Her last book, Showcaller (2019), was received with critical acclaim and is now sold out.

La Voltereta (The Somersault), by Mar Reykjavik, is a film comprised of nine acts and a circular sculpture composed of a wooden rod. The nine acts are comprised of town being the impulse, or digital, and the return, as in the analogical. The latter takes on a material form understood as a recollection of the given while the former is premised as an intention that assumes its consequences that are then disturbed through variability. This forming of the return is structured as a somersault giving way to more complex structures. The characters on the film attempt to do a turning exercise while sustaining physical contact. The projector screening the film attempts a similar motion of expanding beyond its carousels towards the somersault movement/position. A work on presence and presence-ing, it is what happens in the in-between of when a body ceased to be on its axis until a recovery. Thought, action and, to an extent, subjectivity is thought through the gaps in such movement or non-movement. A spiritual dimension of thought—of the present—then is formed in the somersault—the ceaseless moving forward that is backwards, impulse and the return, propulsion and consequence and so forth.

The installation was most recently exhibited at Ángels Barcelona.

Soft Material is a group exhibition organized by Nan Collymore and Celia Lesh at the Berkeley Art Center. The exhibition features works by Sherrie Aradanas, Ricky Bearghost, Raven Harper, Gail Lewis, Elmeater Morton, and Shantae Robinson.

The Soft Material project began at the onset of the pandemic. Artists like Aradanas, Bearghost, Harper, Lewis, Morton, and Robinson rely heavily on studio spaces at art centers like NIAD for connection and community integration. With shelter-in-place orders in effect, Collymore and Lesh facilitated online programs for artists across organizations including NIAD, Creative Growth, and Elbow Room to continue virtual workshops for collaborative exploration through garment construction. This exhibition at Berkeley Art Center features works from NIAD artists.

Soft Material orchestrates a confluence of the artists’ interests in the body and performativity. Skillfully constructed, each work provides the viewer with satisfying evidence of each artist’s hand. Elmeater Morton & Shantae Robinson’s A Dress, My Dress, balances softness and intensity with its neon-orange tulle and gently embroidered neckline embellishments. Gail Lewis & Sherrie Aradanas’ Number 1 Meow Meow connects the structure of a sleeved shirt with a tuft of fur and exceptional embroidery. Gail Lewis’ Kimono Dress is a beautiful occupying presence in the gallery, with vibrant color blocks that suggest beauty and comfort. In weaving these personal and joyful threads together in one place, Soft Material becomes a site of captivating convergence of inspiration, self-expression, and wonder.

SirKhane DARKROOM is a mobile darkroom in Southeastern Turkey bordering Syria. The darkroom travels from village to village teaching children how to shoot, develop, and print their own photographs. Led by Serbest Salih, a young photographer and Syrian refugee, the darkroom is founded on a fundamental belief in photography as a universal and therapeutic language, and encourages children living in the area — many of whom are themselves refugees from Syria and Iraq — to experiment with the medium as both a form of play and a means of understanding the world around them.

i saw the air fly is a photo book of these photographs from various students of SirKhane DARKROOM. Proceeds from this publication will go to the Her Yerde Sanat-Sirkhane charity.

SirKhane DARKROOM’s photography featured in the “Do you love me?” issue of the Quarterly Journal.