“It’s shocking how hard you have to work to make it look like you’re not working that hard,” Rae Abunahla, better known by his DJ name Bootycornfed, tells me.
CULTURE
Reflecting on a life lived through music: In-Conversation with Simon Raymonde on ‘In One Ear’
Some artists spend their lives mythologized by others. Few take the risk of narrating their story themselves. Simon Raymonde has always been the quiet engine behind some of the most influential sounds of the late twentieth century, shaping entire textures of dream pop through his work with Cocteau Twins and shepherding new voices into the world as the founder of Bella Union.
Kahlil Joseph on BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions — Rewriting the Rules of Black Storytelling
Kahlil Joseph is no novice when it comes to pushing boundaries in art. Known for his evocative and complex work on Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album and his short feature for Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D
Exposure Culture: Inside Egghead Republic’s Apocalypse of Ambition
Egghead Republic is a surreal satire set in a reimagined 2004, where the Cold War culminated in an atomic bomb being dropped on Soviet Kazakhstan.
Notes on the ‘Whorearchy’: Andrea Werhun and Nicole Bazuin on Modern Whore
“I want them to like me.” I twist nervously in the desk chair as I wait to be called in for my interview with writer, performer, and Sex Worker Andrea Werhun, and director, photo-illustrator Nicole Bazuin.
Trashy Clothing is Carrying Micheal and Hushi’s Satirical Torch
In the early 2000s, the frenzy around capturing Osama bin Laden and punishing the Islamic world for 9/11 had major repercussions for the lives of innocent Middle Eastern civilians, in both the Middle East and America.
Couture at TIFF 2025: Alice Wincour’s Intimate Portrait of Fashion’s Hidden Seams
In a year where fashion’s collapse and reinvention are unfolding in real time, Alice Wincour’s Couture premiered at TIFF this past week like an unpinned hem: loose, fraying, yet undeniably alive.
A new Lynchian wave is sweeping through contemporary art
Anyone attuned with the contemporary oil painting scene may have noticed a trend in its figurative work: artists seem increasingly fascinated with a new kind of still life, one that injects household items such as curtains, chandeliers or human hair with twilight eeriness.
My Genes Are Blue: How American Eagle and Dunkin’ Are Selling Whiteness
Something uncanny has procured itself in the cultural consciousness of American media in the past week, a tonal shift that, although unsurprising given the current political climate, feels jarringly regressive and reactionary; the tipping point, undoubtedly, being American Eagle’s latest campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney as the white all-American temptress clad in denim.
Mugler, Alaia and Worth: The Fashion Exhibits to See in Paris Before Summer Ends
It’s rare to find a story of friendship as the binding force behind an exhibition, as is on full display in Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler 1980/1990: Two Decades of Artistic Affinities.