Nura Ali’s wide-ranging practice investigates the linguistic scaffolding upholding the assumptions we bring to the act of reading and writing. We speak about her most recent exhibition, blackness, whole-ness, the power of language, and the power of cultural unions.
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Is it ever possible to escape the language that contains us? Or find joy while subverting myths? Laura Letinsky breaks down her practice in photography and ceramics with Ryan and Brian on this week’s Bad at Sports.
This week Maryam Taghavi casts a spell over Brian and Duncan. Will they recover? We don’t know. What we know is this… Taghavi plays and pulls codes at the edge of beauty and language. What about languages beyond languages?
In her work she uses and recreates a language of the occult practices derived from Islamic mysticism. Her sigils promise to evoke real and active metaphysical powers. These forms become channels, lovely and beyond form itself – concept to volition, presence to absence. The works are a wish invoked. The conversation a wish fulfilled. Will Brian and Duncan ever be the same?
What does it mean to be modern? And can we possibly find a different kind of modernity by narrating our current issues and past events differently? Might that change the future as well? And of whom? How can we try to extend one’s imagination beyond our established conventions? The historiography of language—of one of the most fundamental commons—and of artistic practice that works with the human tool of imagination— might have some answers to the queries.
