Venice Biennale 2024 aims to deconstruct the Eurocentric gaze
With its storied history dating back to 1895 and a scenic setting for the thought-provoking art it showcases (although La Serenissima has been overrun by selfie-seekers lately), the Venice Biennale is a gift that keeps giving. This year’s landmark 60th edition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere” (April 20-November 24, 2024), curated
Interview with Amal Allana on the biography of her father, theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi
The March 22 launch in New Delhi of the theatre director and art gallery owner Amal Allana’s biography of her father, the multifaceted Ebrahim Alkazi (1925-2020), was unusual in many ways. Allana organised a reading of passages from the biography (titled Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive) in a kind of partial
‘Sanitary Panels would not have been possible without the Internet’: Rachita Taneja, creator of the webcomic and co-winner of the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award
Cartoonist Rachita Taneja. The Bengaluru-based artist was recently honoured with the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award, alongside Hong Kong’s Zunzi. | Photo Credit: Rachita Taneja Rachita Taneja uploaded the very first strip of her now celebrated cartoon, Sanitary Panels, on Facebook in 2014—it was about the newly sworn-in Narendra
2024 Women’s Prizes: V.V. Ganeshananthan wins Fiction award for ‘Brotherless Night’; Naomi Klein takes inaugural non-fiction honours for ‘Doppelganger’
The Sri Lankan Tamil-origin author’s novel highlights the “epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war”. American writer V.V. Ganeshananthan won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction on June 13 for her novel Brotherless Night, about a family torn apart by Sri Lanka’s long civil war. Its sister award, the
The exhibition “Past Disquiet” traces the histories of political engagement and solidarity of artists in the face of imperialism
“The question is not whether a given being is living or not, nor whether the being in question has the status of a ‘person’; it is, rather, whether the social conditions of persistence and flourishing are or are not possible…. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does
Gangster: A Marathi story in translation
He pounded the ribcage of the staircase, his footsteps thumping as he walked. He struck the door with a powerful fist. The door took the blow and opened. Peace evaporated from the room behind it; it began to darken with fear. Seeing the angry demon standing there, the Bohri treasurer
Saikat Majumdar: ‘The scariest thing is the chance to live by your own convictions’
aikat Majumdar is one of the most talked about writers in India today. The author of critically acclaimed novels such as Silver Fish, The Firebird, The Scent of God, and The Middle Finger as well as important non-fiction works like College: Pathways of Possibility and Prose of the World, Majumdar
50 Years of ‘Manthan’: How Shyam Benegal’s Landmark Film Offers An Opportunity To Revisit Caste-Class Dialect
Any discussion of Shyam Benegal’s classic Manthan (1976) often focusses on the fact that the film was crowdfunded by half a million milk producers of rural Gujarat and that it narrates the inspirational story of Verghese Kurien, the maverick persona behind India’s “White Revolution”. On the film’s 50th anniversary, when it
Tribute | Ismail Kadare (1936-2024): A writer who used metaphor and irony to reveal nature of tyranny
Novelist Ismail Kadare, who has died aged 88, used his pen as a stealth weapon to survive Albania’s paranoid communist dictator Enver Hoxha. His sophisticated storytelling—often likened to that of George Orwell or Franz Kafka—used metaphor and irony to reveal the nature of tyranny under Hoxha, who ruled Albania from
Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg: The Revolutionary Missionary Who Fought Caste Discrimination in Tamil Nadu
In the latest Assembly session, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin unveiled plans for a memorial hall in Tharangambadi (formerly Tranquebar) to honour Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, the founder of the Protestant mission in India. This memorial will celebrate his remarkable contributions to Tamil literature, ensuring his legacy endures for generations to