Reviews

Craft x Tech's Curio at Design Miami/ Basel paired six international designers with Tohoku artisans. Sabine Marcelis with Kawatsura-shikki, Ini Archibong with Tsugaru-nuri. A review.

A Basel of quieter sales and better hanging. The speculative middle got taken down to the basement. Unlimited still delivered.

The Brussels gallery Objects with Narratives debuted at Design Miami/ Basel with a solo show by Ben Storms. The floor of the booth was under a shallow layer of water. Everything seemed to be floating. Most of it wasn't.

Design Miami/ Basel's 18th edition opened with a Pesce memorial in the entrance hall. Inside, Ben Storms flooded his floor, Maxime Flatry made a booth of air, and Craft x Tech brought fifty coats of lacquer from Akita.

The Holy See's pavilion at the 60th Biennale, With My Eyes, was staged inside the Casa di Reclusione Femminile on Giudecca. Pope Francis came. So did a small and necessary collapse of the usual critical distance.

On Archie Moore's Australian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, the first to win the Golden Lion. 65,000 years of family, chalked onto a wall that will be painted over in November.

Notes from the 60th Venice Biennale. Mataaho on the ceiling, Archie Moore in chalk, the Holy See inside a prison, and the long argument about whether "foreigner" can carry this much weight.

Bawwaba at Art Dubai 2024, under Emiliano Valdes, themed Sanación. A review centred on Mirna Bamieh's working Palestinian kitchen at NIKA Project Space.

Art Dubai 2024 at Madinat Jumeirah, reviewed. Strong Modern section, growing Asian collector base, and an argument about whether Dubai is now a centre rather than a satellite.

Tosin Oshinowo's second Sharjah Architecture Triennial, The Beauty of Impermanence, reviewed. Salt churches, pastoralist geology, and a serious argument about whose buildings get called architecture.

DAAR, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, won the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale's Golden Lion for the best participant. A review of their room and the fifteen-year practice behind it.

On Terra, the Brazilian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, winner of the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. A pavilion that put the ground back in the room.