Articles

The Shit

Not from the pensive, personable face she’d always imagined but from the thick bovine features of a bald troll.

Youssef Rakha

Free Alaa

Alaa was effervescent — jumping around, waving his arms, protesting with his whole body.

Lina Attalah

The Garden

No, my apartment wasn’t dirty. Nature is clean. It’s civilization that’s dirty.

Yasmin Zaher

The Home Front: On Rahmaneh Rabani and Bahman Kiarostami’s Impasse

Come on! Let them go. Let them go to hell. It’s none of your business.

Media Farzin

Fractures in the Medium: Kaveh Akbar and Anahid Nersessian in Conversation

I’m trying to describe a cloud from inside the cloud, and you have to be on the ground to see that it’s a giraffe.

Anahid Nersessian, Kaveh Akbar

Hash Is a Vegetable

Our folk music is slow, like a soft ocean wave.

Negar Azimi, Fatima Al Qadiri, Meriem Bennani, Tiffany Malakooti

A Private Ocean: Iman Mersal and Maru Pabón in Conversation

Why should I add to this archive of nostalgic poems? It would be like grabbing the first fruit in the tree.

Maru Pabón, Iman Mersal

Days of Grief: Iran Diary 2

Honestly, I was more than happy to freeze.

S*

Anger Piled Atop Anger: Iran Diary

It’s not entirely clear to me when it all began.

S*

Girl on a Train: Getting Real with Fatima Daas

How do you sit with your ass between two chairs?

Momtaza Mehri

Laughter Was Our Inheritance: A Beirut Diary

On February 14, 2005, the day Rafik Hariri was assassinated, I was sent to confession for the first time.

Edwin Nasr

Spirit Riders: A Conversation with Mati Diop and Fatima Al Qadiri

In Dakar, the spirits ride at dusk.

Negar Azimi, Fatima Al Qadiri, Babak Radboy, Mati Diop

Trump Cocktail

Hello, I’m Hadi and this is my art.

Hadi Fallahpisheh

Rude Pieties: Six Glimpses of Hervé Guibert

A possible epitaph? Better to remain hungry than to renounce appetite.

Bruce Hainley, Moyra Davey, Wayne Koestenbaum, Lia Gangitano, Christine Pichini, Hedi El Kholti, Janique Vigier

Phoneme Riot: A Conversation with Nour Mobarak

The work of Los Angeles–based artist Nour Mobarak can be understood as an open-ended engagement with the promiscuous and constitutive power of words.

Jace Clayton

General Behavior

When two gooms get each other.

Farah Al Qasimi

South of Nothing: The Photographs of Soham Gupta

When life’s hard, time’s a motherfucker.

Sukhdev Sandhu

Blasted: On Reza Abdoh’s Tight Right White

He ate camp and shat punk, his style a fizzing intestine stuffed with culture’s slime and scraps.

Tobi Haslett

We Are The Lines of Control: Unraveling Naeem Mohaiemen

Like a kite catching thermal winds.

Skye Arundhati Thomas

Matter and Mind

As a child in Tehran, the artist Shirin Sabahi took weekly painting classes not far from Park-e Laleh, or tulip park, in the sprawling city center.

Shirin Sabahi