Issei Suda. Oume, 1977, 1977; gelatin silver print; 8.8 x 8.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York.

Using a medium-format camera, Issei Suda’s square-shaped black-and-white portraits capture the liminal moments between posed and candid situations to elevate otherwise mundane moments of daily life in 1970s Tokyo. The exhibition Issei Suda: Life in Flower 1971–1977 at the Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York, includes stylized images from two series: Fushi Kaden (“The Flowering Spirit,” 1978) and Waga Tokyo 100 (“My Tokyo 100,” 1979). More than thirty years since each series was taken, Suda’s photographs produce a sense of nostalgia, and are a reminder of Japan’s rapidly changing cultural landscape.

In Oume, 1977 (1977) and Yokohama Sankei-en, Umematsuri, 1977 (1977), Suda gestures toward an adoration of youth and purity conveyed by the innocence and charm of two young girls. In Oume, 1977,a girl stands beneath a cherry-blossom tree weighed down by its flowering branches. The tree forms a large, delicate white halo around her head, beatifying her presence. Meanwhile, the photograph Yokohama Sankei-en, Umematsuri, February 13, 1977 (1977) depicts an unsuspecting child with large, bow-shaped white ribbons in her hair and a black-and-white, polka-dotted kimono. Caught mid-blink, the child remains in a perpetual state of girlhood within the photograph. The emotional tonality and profundity of Suda’s work emerges from the very indeterminacy between the attentive and unmindful.

In more mystifying photographs that prompt feelings of surprise, one can discern the influence that traditional Japanese theater bears on Suda’s work. In Gunma Ota, June 8, 1975 (1975), a kimono-clad child is awkwardly posed, the rigidity of her body evident despite the large folds of fabric that cloak her small frame. Perhaps more visually discomforting is Yamagata Ginzan Onsen, August 28, 1976 (1976). Theimage depicts a seemingly distressed goat gnawing at the rope that binds it to a tree. Caught in moments that suggest restraint and displeasure, flight and fantasy, these photographs capture a cryptic juncture replete with numerous possibilities. Yet both subjects, apparently trapped in their circumstances, present a strikingly different scenario than photographs Yushima, 1977 (1977) and Toyama Shirobata, 1977. In the first image, four young girls jumping off a ledge exhibit a carefree spirit and unrestricted mobility, despite their traditional attire. And in Toyama Shirobata, September 15, 1977 (1977), a woman stands poised beside a wall of jagged boulders, her refined elegance made apparent by her unaffected stance. The fragility of the flowers on her kimono deeply contrasts with the sheer ruggedness of the rocky background.

Suda’s deft manipulation of light and shadow, and closely cropped compositions, enhances the enigmatic nature of his subjects. Showcasing a culture imbued with grace and elegance, Suda’s panoply of photographs exact specific moments in Tokyo’s history.

Issei Suda: Life in Flower 1971–1977 is on view at Miyako Yoshinaga, New York City, through October 18, 2014.

Bansie Vasvani is an art critic and writer based in New York City.

Ranjani Shettar. Tuntoroo, 2014; hand‐molded wax beads, cotton thread, wooden beads, and pigments; 131 x 188 x 135 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Talwar Gallery, New York and New Delhi.

Indian sculptor Ranjani Shettar’s seventh solo exhibition Night Skies and Daydreams at Talwar Gallery, New York, showcases the artist’s enchanting ability to use organic materials to create new, distinctive evocations of nature. For Shettar, handcrafting and the use of natural materials are endemic to her practice. Inspired by a childhood spent in small Indian towns observing rural artisans’ sensitivity to craftsmanship, materials, color, and texture, Shettar’s choice of nature as a source from which nontraditional shapes and elements are drawn upon is a natural one.

Made of coffee-tree wood, Flight of the Butterfly (2014) is an entanglement of branches painted a bright guppy-green. Though an unexpected combination, the simple organic material and jarring artificial automobile paint enhance the piece’s allure. Thickened like elbows at the corners, the branches twist and turn freely, taking flight in different directions. Perfectly poised to recall nature’s exquisiteness, Flight of the Butterfly lives where balance emerges from random and asymmetrical formations.

Suspended from the ceiling, Fire in the Belly (2007) comprises numerous pieces of acacia shaped to resemble an array of small, fluorescent green-gold water organisms. The floating creatures shimmer in the room to create a sensation akin to being underwater. By creating the illusion of weightlessness, Shettar transforms these rigid materials to appear light and pliable. As cracks and shrinkage in the wood are made visible on the glossy surface of each specimen, one is immediately reminded of the material Shettar uses, and the relationship she maintains with nature in the rural South Indian location of her studio and practice.

Tuntoroo (2014) is the embodiment of Shettar’s remarkable ability to prod one’s imagination while staying eminently immersed in her communion and inspiration from nature. Displayed in the back room of the gallery, the sensational intertwining of thread and hand-molded beads captures nature’s delicacy and evanescent characteristics to great effect. Red and yellow beads of wax and wood are strung in intricate geometric patterns to create taught, diaphanous webs. Hung diagonally across the room from the wall to the floor, these fragile strings appear like darting shards of light from a comet that lingers precariously between the sky and the earth.

Shettar’s ability to constantly surprise the viewer by readapting natural materials is key to her art. The artist’s triumph is in conceiving works that are refreshing for their ingenuity, artistry, and dedication to the natural world.

Night Skies and Daydreams is on view at Talwar Gallery in New York City through August 1, 2014.

Bansie Vasvani is an art historian and critic who lives in New York.

Etel Adnan. Untitled, 2012; oil on canvas; 9.5 x 11.75 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, New York.

On the heels of Etel Adnan’s inclusion in Documenta 2012, and concurrent to her inclusion in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the octogenarian painter, poet, and playwright’s solo exhibition at Callicoon Fine Arts in New York offers exhilarating insight into her abstract works dating back to the 1960s. Etel Adnan highlights the characterization of Adnan’s work as “a study in displacement and alienation.”[i] In fact, the Lebanese-born artist, who has lived in the Middle East, the United States, and France, and who is well versed in French, Turkish, Arabic, and English, has often referred to the inadequacy of language to express her thoughts, and to her use of abstract signs and symbols in her paintings to communicate her experiences.

Adnan’s accordion-folded painting Late Afternoon Poem (1968), displayed in a glass vitrine in the gallery, unfolds as an engrossing and highly emotive response to the Vietnam War. Her diluted pastel palette and evanescent watercolor brushstrokes appear aimless and fleeting, yet aptly evoke war’s pointless destruction and capture the impermanence of a place, time, and feeling. Late Afternoon Poem—inscribed with hand-painted verses such as “Why is a newsman caught in a crossfire while reporting something he does not care to know?”—lies compressed with unspoken and often inaccessible emotions.

The artist’s black-and-white symbols in an untitled work from 1973, which is also folded like an accordion, are the work of a semiotic virtuoso. Like the early 20th-century painter Joan Miró, Adnan’s biomorphic forms attain maximum intensity with minimum lines. For example, The Bay on the Bay (1986) is composed of signs and symbols that resemble doodles and squiggles. Yet her combination of color and stray shapes re-create the Northern Californian landscape and the glory of its mountains, water, and flora. Repeatedly, Adnan’s strange shapes and symbols are sentimental components tempered only by their technical acuity, richness, and originality.

For Adnan, place is paramount to her work. The unspeakable beauty of the Bay Area, and specifically the city of Sausalito where she lives, is captured in her block-like compositions. Two vibrant, untitled oil paintings from 2012 express the urban topography and light of the landscape through her exuberant application of pigments. Adnan stresses shapes and planar masses that often appear as painterly gestures and non-rectilinear structures. Through her eloquently minimalist configurations and inventive technique, Adnan fortifies her place as a master of abstraction.

Etel Adnan is on view at Callicoon Fine Arts through May 23, 2014.

Bansie Vasvani is an art historian and critic who lives in New York.

[i] The Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Volume 28, Number 4 (Winter 2003).

 at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York City

Yee I-Lann’s solo exhibition Picturing Power at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York, is an emphatic act of subversion. Her black-and-white photomontages, made from two centuries of archival images of the Dutch and British colonization of Malaysia, present a reengagement with reality through a new language of alterity. For Yee, the exposure and visibility of the past create a vocabulary that focuses on emancipation and justice.

In Picturing Power: Wherein one surreptitiously performs reconnaissance to collect views and freeze points of view to be reflective of one’s own kind (2013), shrouded black figures posed as 19th-century photographers are juxtaposed with a comic scene of colonizers standing below large, overturned tables. Set against a stark white background, these incongruous figures symbolize colonial suppression. In Yee’s work, recurring images of tables represent transactions, power, and control. The inversion of these objects becomes a strong metaphor for the reversion of power from centuries of repression. More importantly, the dark, haunting, ghost-like figures appear to be voyeurs looking into the past and upending memories of hard times and the subjugation of the colonized. Here the artist’s language demands a heightened level of representation that is both humorous and a clearly articulated negative critique.

In Picturing Power: Wherein one nods with political sympathy and says I understand you better than you understand yourself, I’m just here to help you help yourself (2013), hundreds of native Malaysians line up in quiet acquiescence behind one of their oppressors, portraying life in the colonies at the time. Yee’s ironic titles, dripping with sarcasm, compel the viewer to visualize an era of dogmatic coersion. Picturing Power: Wherein one cultivates cultural codes, the noble endeavors of mankind and thereby puts them in their place (2013) presents the native woman whose long tresses transform her into the stereotypical mythological enchantress. Seated against a backdrop of spice plantations, which were the most lucrative colonial trade, the figure—with her lengthy, unruly hair—is symbolic of the classic temptress who had to be controlled.

While the eight images from Picturing Power use historical mimesis to expose colonial inequities as a constructive expunging exercise, Tabled (2013), from a previous exhibition titled Suspended Histories, has a conciliatory tone. Images of current life in Malaysia, representing entrepreneurship, freedom, and mobility, are printed on dinner plates referencing blue China from the Dutch and British colonial periods. Neon-colored outlines of embracing figures in The Sun will rise in the East and deliver us from this long night (2012) seem to suggest reconciliation as the best path toward retribution. At the end, the viewer is left with the indelible mark of history on Malaysia and the strength of its people to move on.

Yee I-Lann: Picturing Power runs through April 13 at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York.

Bansie Vasvani is an art historian and critic. She lives in New York City.

Tracey Moffatt. As I Lay Back on My Ancestral Land No. 2, 2013; digital print; 49 x 72 in.; edition of 8.

Perhaps the most striking part of Tracey Moffatt‘s Spirit Landscapes at Tyler Rollins Fine Art was meeting Moffatt in person. Forthright and guileless, she spoke of her Australian Aboriginal ties and her return to her country to document nature after being away for more than a decade. Stirring in her commitment to her heritage and nation, her photographs tackle issues of identity and belonging in a forceful yet subtle manner.

In the series titled As I Lay Back on My Ancestral Land, a slew of surreal images are presented through different colored filters that alter a viewer’s perception and reception of the work. Photographed while lying on the ground, a reclining naked female body’s contours are interwoven with shots of the trees and the sky that suggest her strong association with the land. Yet the spectrum of bright tinted filters create an affective distance from a more heavy-handed treatment of traumatic Aboriginal history. Not only does this feature set a playful tone and help release past anxiety, it also has the opposite effect of drawing the viewer in and making the image resonate and linger in one’s mind.

If the work is defined especially from the point of view of Moffatt’s Aboriginal ancestors and the way they were bound to the land, her methodology helps unbind, expel, and banish these memories. Picturesque Cherbourg, another series comprising photographs of pretty suburban landscapes that are ripped and reassembled, was in fact an area where the “natives” were held in the 1920s. Decades later, the cheerful sunny backyards attest to the passing of time and the absence of memory. Moffatt seems to suggest that time continues singularly through day and night, keeping the past from the present and future. The violence of the ripped photographs is a reminder of Cherbourg’s tainted history.

Even though Moffatt’s images reference personal themes, the notions of identity and belonging take on a larger universal significance. She raises important questions about the subtle play between traumatic memories of the past and the present, and the way they shape one’s relationship and kinship with a place. Ultimately the viewer is left to ponder these ideas from Moffatt’s persuasive and compelling body of work.

Spirit Landscapes is on view at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, in New York City, through December 21, 2013.

Bansie Vasvani is an independent art critic and writer. She lives in New York City.

Vonetta McGee.jpg: Spectrum Queer Media announcement for Blacula. Courtesy of Spectrum Queer Media.

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which serves Austin’s independent film and LGBTQIA communities, was my favorite theater in the city. My best friend and I would attend the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival every year there. It was the only time and place that we could see films by, for, and about LGBTQIA individuals.

When I moved to the Bay Area, I didn’t think I would find a movie theater like the Alamo until I saw an advertisement for a screening of Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years. 1984-1992 (2012) at the New Parkway Theater in Oakland. This was one of many weekly films catering to the East Bay’s LGBTQIA community—in particular those of color—that Spectrum Queer Media puts on. Kin Folkz (aka Monica Anderson) founded Spectrum Queer Media, curates these events, and aims to celebrate and empower the people who attend them. If you are feeling some sort of way when you are there, Kin Folkz will somehow appear and give you one of those lingering, healing hugs in which she totally empathizes with you. The burden of navigating through daily micro-aggressions (whether racist, sexist, or homophobic) tends to take its toll, and a hug like this will release the tears so I can go on with my week.

At the Parkway, you can order “Nacho Ordinary Nachos,” wash it down with “Periscope Mash-Up Red Wine,” and then top it off with an It’s-It ice-cream sandwich, or “Crusty Carmel Corn.” My friend’s popcorn came in a white plastic bowl, like the one passed around when watching your favorite TV show at home as a child.

Even if other mainstream feature films are screening in other rooms or at other times at the Parkway, Spectrum Queer Media films are one hundred percent LGBTQIA. Films such as Pariah (2007), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and The New Black (2013), as well as classics such as Blacula (1972), are shown. There are a few perks to attending: After the films, prizes are given out for answering trivia questions, and there might be a panel or Q&A with the filmmaker, in person or remotely. There have been impromptu performances and talkbacks, a common practice in African American homes. As the film unfolds on screen, another conversation may simultaneously take place during the film, which enhances the humor and viewing experience. I highly recommend going to these events at least once. You will leave feeling embraced and filled.

Spectrum Queer Media hosts Spectrum Sundays and Taboo Tuesdays weekly at the New Parkway Theater, in Oakland, California.

Felicia Hayes is pursuing her Masters of Fine Art in Creative Writing from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

Barbad Golshiri. The Untitled Tomb, 2012; iron, soot, 53 x 24 in. Edition of 3. Photo: Andreas Vesterlund, courtesy the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York.

The question of martyrdom pervades Barbad Golshiri’s sculptural installation of tombstones in his solo exhibition Curriculum Mortis at Thomas Erben Gallery. Through his deeply conceptual yet enormously potent practice, Golshiri devises a way of outwitting the religious regime of his home country Iran with work that one can position in the relatively recent legacy that includes sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and Iranian modernism from the 1950s. Reminiscent of Carl Andre’s spare, horizontal sculpture Equivalent VIII (1966), Golshiri’s abstract, minimalist forms are a refreshing way of addressing oppression in his country.

In The Untitled Tomb (2012), a transportable metal lid with stenciled Arabic text on its surface serves as a temporary tombstone for a man who was not permitted to have one. Soot poured on the stencil marks the metaphorical site of the grave and the man’s epitaph that begins “Here Mim Kaf Aleph does not rest. He is dead…” Aleph’s ephemeral gravesite is visible so long as it is not blown away by the wind. If martyrdom is understood in light of the Islamic concept of jihad or holy struggle, Mim Kaf Aleph’s ongoing battle to be honored and acknowledged even after his death convolutes this belief.

Similarly, Death Sentence (2012) is comprised of three rectangular marble pieces inscribed with Braille that honor three political activists killed in captivity. The translucency and visual depth of the surface imbue the tombstone with the spirit of the deceased and the muffled truth behind their demise. In addition, through the shattered, burnt cow skull joined with wax and wires titled Perpetual is He (2012) Golshiri dismisses conventions of authoritative representation while commemorating the writer Mohammad Mokhtari and the frequent disappearances and untimely deaths of other Iranian intellectuals.  The inscribed epitaph refers to their perpetual spirit and strength that live on long after they are silenced.

Ultimately, no matter if his tombstones pay homage to Samuel Beckett or the renaissance painter Jan Van Eyck, Golshiri’s innovative sculptures incorporate minimalism in such a way that is endemic to his culture and its history at a crucial time.  His simple forms, which defy traditional presentations of tombstones that celebrate death and martyrdom, befit his larger gesture to outdo and question authority without making a frontal attack on it.

Barbad Golshiri: Curriculum Mortis is on view at Thomas Erben Gallery through October 26, 2013.

Bansie Vasvani is an independent art critic and writer based in New York City.