It has been a long time since as many people took to the streets in the cause of feminism as did for the Women’s March on Washington. Protesters wore the hand-knitted pussyhats in such large numbers that they colored the crowds pink. The hats became a striking visual signature feature of the protest against the Trump administration. They stand for a feminism that has majority appeal, albeit with questionable references.

The education project Pink Triangle is a long term project initiated by the Education Department of Museo Reina Sofía in 2019 as a space of reflection and action regarding LGTBIQ+ activisms in school spaces. Through their experiences, perspectives and reflections, students, teachers and families contribute to this complex and necessary discussion. The project entailed 3 workshops, a video dialogue and the set of materials presented here. These didactic materials make up the vertices of a triangle of reflection and action around experiences and tools related to sexual and gender diversities that coexist in schools, which are, by their very nature, ...

Affidamento, or entrustment, is one of the most important and difficult practices enacted by the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, founded in 1975. Rejecting a narrative of equality and sisterhood, the Milan group sees difference, or disparity, as one of the most generative qualities of the personal and political relationships between women. Looking to historical examples of relationships of affidamento, and discussing how entrustment operates in our own lives, this session explores how practices of writing and narration give form to these exchanges and open up new spaces for feminist politics in the everyday…

Hallie Ayres speaks to Emily Apter and Aliza Shvarts. The conversation was scheduled following the opening of Aliza Shvarts: Purported at Art In General on February 20, 2020.

What would it be like if one day everyone you encountered said that they were you. Would you let them assume your identification, knowing that ultimately they can only be themselves. These questions are what Carroll provokes us with in All the Men Who Think They Can Be Me.

For this episode of our “Criticism in Conversation” series, a writer and collaborative performer, Jacob Wren, speaks with artist Dayna Danger, about the line between empowerment and objectification and the meaning of community in both their work. Danger is a 2Spirit/Queer, Metis/Saulteaux/Polish artist whose images highlight and queer power dynamics, kinship, representation, and sexuality. Wren makes collaborative performances, exhibitions and literature, including 2014’s Polyamorous Love Song and this year’s Authenticity is a Feeling, a hybrid of history, performance theory, and memoir. Together they cover a lot of ground, from personal narratives and community relationships to speaking against silence and apathy. We ...

On a recent visit to an archaeology museum, I was struck by the ornate jewelry dating from the early Bronze Age—bracelets, rings, and necklaces that look remarkably contemporary in design. People have always had a taste for fine things. And of course, these were objects for the wealthy, for those of high social status who were buried with their goods. While I have become accustomed to admiring such items during museum visits, my central thought on this trip was that luxury has always existed. This prosaic musing led me to consider the problematics around luxury. It’s difficult to look at ...

This conversation with Stéphanie Dadour evolves around her doctoral dissertation that studies architectural theory and practice in the end of 20th-century North America. We explore a particular chapter of this dissertation to continue a series started with Olivia Ahn and Karen Tongson, about the gendered spatial paradigm constituted by the American suburbia. Citing the works of Mary McLeod, Beatriz Colomina, Joel Sanders and other feminist/queer thinkers and architects, we address architectural elements proper to this paradigm, such as the lawn, the curtain, or the window as instances of gendered apparatuses. We conclude the conversation by examining anthropometric studies, as well ...

This conversation with Liliana De Simone has for ambition to address the way architecture necessarily considers an idealized normalized body in order to conceive itself. Such a consideration almost always follows the dominant essentialization of bodies and this discussion addresses one in particular, gender. We first describe the canonical standardized bodies (often male) as defined by Le Corbusier, Neufert, and Dreyfuss. Then, we address more specifically the situation in South America (Colombia and Chile) and Liliana’s interest for urban policy making in this matter. We finish the conversation with the gender violence that resilience to catastrophes reasserts, in particular in the ...

Beyond the Threshold: Women, Houses and Cities offers a revised account of the history of architecture and urban planning through the contributions of the women who have been silenced in our general histories. Its frame of reference is the built environment, from design to politics, from architecture to urban planning – thus, the house and the city, the private and the public. The first as a metaphor for architecture and the second as a synthesis of people’s actions. Taking a feminist approach entails a necessary deconstruction of dominant historiography, revealing the false neutrality and universality found in the transmission of ...

In this interview, film-anthropologist Harjant Gill introduces the figure of the young rural Sikh man in Indian Punjab, who later migrates to the capital city, Chandigarh or abroad. We base our conversation both on Harjant’s thesis that presents a research about the (normative) notion of masculinity constructed within these young migrants’ imaginaries (through cinema for example), as well as on his film Roots of Love (see below), which introduces the bodily characteristics that a Sikh man must present continuously, in particular the unshorn hair and the turban covering it. Harjant and I thus talk about this particular object that enfolds within it ...

This twelfth SDUK broadsheet examines the diverse means by which individuals and communities build lasting or fleeting bonds. Coinciding with the conclusion of Crossings: Itineraries of Encounter, the Blackwood’s 2021–22 lightbox series, this issue, BONDING, echoes themes seen throughout Crossings: migration, diaspora, borders, and archives. Where the lightbox exhibitions examine image-making practices, this SDUK issue engages print culture in new and recurring formats including visual storytelling, poetry, a letter exchange, and a recipe. Food is the source of many enduring cultural bonds, and thus one might be tempted to start from the gut: See Diasporic Dumplings (p. 27) for a site-responsive ...