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How One Muslim Artist Is Challenging Society's Stereotypes About Islam

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Azzah Sultan, 20, has personally witnessed rampant Islamophobia since moving to America from her native Malaysia in 2013. The young Muslim artist arrived in New York City at the age of 16 to study fine arts at Parsons School of Design. Miles from her family and confronted by Americans' largely negative view of Islam, Sultan channelled her emotions into her art.


"I use art to express my feelings and frustrations toward society," Sultan told The Huffington Post.


For one of her most recent pieces, called "Home Sweet Home," Sultan posted callouts on Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram inviting Muslim women around the country to donate a red, white or blue headscarf to her project. She received scarves from all over the country, she said, and stitched them together to create an American flag.


Her hope with the piece was to show that "being a Muslim does not make one any less an American," Sultan told HuffPost.



“The act of me hand stitching these scarves together brought the different backgrounds and stories of these women into one piece," Sultan said. "This is a testimony of coming from various backgrounds but still sharing the common idea of being a Muslim and an American.”


Much of Sultan's work focuses on this intersection of identity for Muslim women. The media, and society at large, she believes, misrepresents Muslim women and labels them "as oppressed, naive, traditional, backward thinking, submissive, and the list goes on."


Her 2014 series "Am I Modern Now?" plays with these unfair labels by challenging the assumption that Muslim women, and particularly those who wear the hijab, are stuck in a bygone era.


For the three paintings that make up the series, Sultan borrowed styles from three famous Western modern artists -- Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper John and Andy Warhol -- to demonstrate "how absurd it is to tell a Muslim woman that she is only modern if she adopts Western ideals," Sultan told HuffPost. 



Sultan dove further into the identities of Muslim women with her photographic series, "We Are Not The Same," which celebrates the diversity of their experiences and expressions. The project aims, as Sultan described on her website, to show that "although [Muslim women] do share the same faith we have our own interests, personalities, cultures, styles and hobbies."


Sultan will graduate from Parsons this spring and said she hopes to continue exhibiting her art before going on to graduate school.


"My ultimate goal, insha'Allah, is to own a gallery space where I can work with other Muslim and like-minded artists to create an environment where we can express ourselves through art," Sultan said.
 


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11 Iconic Feminist Quotes, Performed By The Women Of 'Hamilton'

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The women of "Hamilton" got together for yet another unforgettable performance, and this time it was all about feminism.


In celebration of Women's History Month, Glamour rounded up Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones, three stars of Broadway's hit musical "Hamilton." Using their incredible voices (and beatboxing skills), the three women performed feminist quotes and served up some major girl power.


Watch the Broadway stars channeling women like Audre Lorde and Eleanor Roosevelt in the video above. Here are some of our favorite moments:





WORK, ladies.


Check out the video on Glamour.

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Sad Men Nap Sadly In This Hilarious Instagram Account

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It turns out then when they're not ruling everything from Congress to the Academy, men turn to public napping. And they don't just nap -- they do so with miserable and exhausted aplomb. 



Haha. I love this guy.

A photo posted by Miserable Men (@miserable_men) on




A new Instagram account, aptly called Miserable Men, exposes one activity that -- if the account's photos are any indication -- will instill hellish misery into the bodies and souls of many, many men: being left alone in a department store while, presumably, their S.O. gets her shop on.  


This man is wondering what he did wrong in a past life...






While this entrepreneurial fellow scores points for using the shopping cart as a footrest.



Come on #miserablemen, I thought we were going to stand our ground this year and stay home!

A photo posted by Miserable Men (@miserable_men) on




And this poor guy's wife left three hours ago and forgot to tell him.



This poor sap's just praying for it all to end.

A photo posted by Miserable Men (@miserable_men) on




The only bad thing about Miserable Men is that there have thus far been a quick 36 posts -- we eagerly await more submissions. 


H/T The Cut

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Dad Responds Beautifully To His Wife’s Statement About Her Post-Baby ‘Bump'

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After receiving unsolicited comments about her body 11 days postpartum, a mom channeled her frustration into a powerful Facebook and Instagram post.


British author, actress, and blogger Giovanna Fletcher -- who's married to McFly singer and guitarist Tom Fletcher -- gave birth to the couple's second son Buddy on Feb. 16. 


On Wednesday, Fletcher posted a full-body mirror selfie, along with a caption describing the comments a stranger made about her "tummy" less than two weeks postpartum.




"A few days ago I had a near stranger point at my stomach, laugh and say 'Oh look, Mummy's still got her tummy,'" the mom wrote, adding that in the moment she laughed because she was so shocked by the comment.


"But the words have stuck with me. Obviously," she continued. "It wasn't left there either as there was another comment about my face 'slimming down'. More than anything, I was baffled over the stranger's need to share her thoughts..."


At the end of her caption, Fletcher addressed the truth about her "baby bump" and joined the ranks of proud bump-sporting moms like Jennifer Garner.


"Yes, I still have a bump," she wrote. "But that bump kept my little baby boy safe for a whole nine months. That bump has filled my world with even more love and light than I knew possible. That bump is a miracle worker... My bump will slowly go over time, but I'll never stop being thankful to it and my body for everything it's given me. #spreadlove"


With over 60,000 likes on Instagram, 240,000 on Facebook and thousands of overwhelmingly supportive comments across social media, the body positive post has touched moms and non-parents alike.  


Her husband Tom also shared the post on Facebook, with his own sweet response.





"So proud of my beautiful wife Giovanna Fletcher for sharing this," he wrote. "I loved her bump when our boys were in it and I love it now!"


The musician then discussed the effect of unsolicited remarks about women's postpartum bodies. "There's so much pressure on women to rapidly get their bodies back to 'normal' post-birth and careless comments, whether meaning to cause offence or not, can be so damaging and impactful," he said.


"We should all, men and women, support and applaud mums for what they have endured through pregnancy, labour AND after. Whether natural birth, c-section, in a pool, at home, in a hospital, whatever, wherever... mums, you're amazing -- bumps and all!"


Cheers to that!

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5 Things All Louise Rennison Fans Know To Be True

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I remember wanting to hide the first Georgia Nicolson book from my parents.


I was in middle school, and the neon green paperback blared the words thong and full-frontal, not to mention the mysterious snogging, right on the cover! This was no Judy Blume, where any in-depth explorations of being a teen or exploring oneself as a sexual being were tucked safely in the pages. It was right there on the cover.


I was hooked almost instantly. Georgia, our protagonist, took me through the world of prep school England, rife with friends, hallway nemeses, dreamy lead singers and embarrassments at nearly every turn. Louise Rennison wrote a world that was relatable and yet so far beyond what I saw as my quaint provincial suburban Long Island life.


Rennison, who would go on to pen 10 books about the adventures of Georgia Nicolson (with incredible titles ranging from Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers to Love Is a Many-Trousered Thing) and showed no signs of slowing down with her Tallulah Casey seriesdied on Feb. 29. With a movie based on the Georgia series and book sales in the U.K. totaling 2.6 million copies, shortly after the news of Rennison's death broke, fans turned to social media to express their sadness, thanking her for showing them a hilariously truthful side to growing up.










Let's remember some key ways Rennison improved the lives of countless teenage girls through her words. 


British teen slang totally beat American teen slang back in the '00s. 





At the very least, it was Georgia and co.'s delightfully odd vocabulary that blew my 13-year-old self out of the water. Thanks to Rennison, I added snogging (kissing), nunga-nungas (breasts), lurrrrrve (self-explanatory) and away laughing on a fast camel (still working that one out) to my repertoire.


Also included are expressions of delight, that make me cringe to think about now but really spiced up my old diary entries, like marvy and fabbity fab fab. Rennison understood the intense highs and lows of being a teenager, and peppered the experience with wild words to match.


Having questions about your body is totally normal.




There's one scene in Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging where Georgia decides to test out some intel she received, informing her that one's nipples get hard in the cold. She eventually pressed her own against a chilly window to make something happen.


It was both hilarious and scandalizing to my younger self, but throughout the series, Rennsion normalized the so-called embarrassing inquiries that arise when you're easing into sexuality and adulthood. 


Sex Gods are cool, but an Ace Gang is where it's truly at.





Georgia could get carried away with dreaming about her Sex God boyfriend, or even the chummy yet unexciting Dave the Laugh (oh, Dave the Laugh!), but it was her friends -- especially BFF Jas -- who truly had her heart.


She might never admit that out loud, but she knows that boy-stalking is no fun unless you've got a sweet girl gang to do it with.


You're not the only one who feels like a mess.




Sometimes all you need to get through a difficult period is knowing that someone has been there before. Rennison's Georgia was a weird, sometimes-outcast who didn't get on with either the popular crowd or the badass girls smoking in the bathroom. 


It's cool as hell to be unabashedly confident.





Still, despite her mishaps and insecurities, it was clear Georgia loved herself, warts (rather, prominent nose zits) and all -- a message that's unfortunately rare among the narratives we receive about teenage girls. 


Thank you, Louise Rennison, and may Georgia delight and inspire women for generations.

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Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell's Teen Son Makes Broadway Debut

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Well, this is sure to make you feel, like, really old. 


Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell has a 13-year-old son. 




Great way to go out Peyton Manning congrats Broncos

A photo posted by bayleelittrell (@bayleelittrell) on




If you are trying to do the math -- Baylee Littrell was born on November 26, 2002, which for context, is about a year after the band released their greatest hits album "The Hits -- Chapter One."


For any die-hard fans of the BSB, young Baylee's existence probably isn't surprising, since he has performed onstage alongside his dad and the group from time to time -- and even opened for the boy band last year.






But if you tend to view the Backstreet Boys as pure nostalgia, then we're sorry for making you feel ancient. 


Anyway, talent apparently runs in the family as Baylee made his Broadway debut on Thursday night, playing two characters in "Disaster! A Musical," which parodies 1970s disaster movies.



The teen, who has never performed professionally before, told the Associated Press, "When I think about it, I accomplished something that not a lot of people get to achieve in their life. I'm still a little shocked. It still hasn't come out of my mind yet."


Oh, and if you're wondering about the rest of the band: AJ McLean has a 3-year-old daughter, Howie Dorough has two sons ages 6 and 3, Kevin Richardson has two sons ages 9 and 2, and Nick Carter and his wife are expecting a son later this year. Whew

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Your Radical Guide To Fighting Discrimination In The Arts

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If you spent 30 years trying to accomplish one thing, what kinds of results would you need to keep you going?


When it comes to mastering a skill, a few decades might sound like more than enough time to reach your goal, especially if you adhere to the words of Malcolm Gladwell, who, in the book Outliers, explains that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. But when it comes to the task of fighting injustice, the road to success is much longer and harder fought.


Since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have been raising a much-needed ruckus over gender and racial inequality in the art world, under the leadership of seven anonymous, masked women. For over 30 years, they've publicly condemned museums that fail to collect or showcase women artists and artists of color, using facts, humor and "outrageous visuals." After decades of work, they show no signs of stopping.


Why? Because women are still severely underrepresented in galleries and museums. Recent stats reflect the dismal state of gender parity in the art world: In 2013, every artist in the top 100 auction sales was a man. In 2014, there were no women in the top 40. In 2015, only five of 34 art galleries surveyed by the feminist art collective Pussy Galore boasted rosters in which women constituted more than 50 percent.


In other corners of popular culture, diversity is at the front and center of conversations today. #OscarsSoWhite raised awareness of the white-centric nature of the Academy Awards and Hollywood at large. In the literary world, there are both organized efforts to combat gender and racial inequality in publishing, and individual acts of protest. Despite a statistical lack of progress in the art world, the Guerrilla Girls continue to advocate for more diverse representation in arts institutions with the hope that change is on the horizon.



Straddling the line between artist and activist, the New York-based Guerrilla Girls use pseudonymous names inspired by women artists who came before them and, in public, wear gorilla masks at all times. They favor anonymity in order to focus attention on the issues they're fighting for -- the severe lack of women represented in major art institutions -- and not their individual personalities. Together, as masked avengers, they produce everything from posters to billboards to stickers to expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and culture around the world.


While many of their unsanctioned protests have been directed at arts institutions, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Istanbul Modern and the Fundación Bilbao Arte Fundazioa, that doesn’t mean they're not willing to work with museums too. Earlier this year, the Walker Art Center, which started collecting the Guerrilla Girls’ work early on, opened an exhibit of 88 posters created by the women between 1985 and 2012.


In fact, in celebration of the Guerrilla Girls’ 30th anniversary, over 30 arts and cultural organizations in Minneapolis, Minn., and its surrounding cities will be collaborating with the collective for the Guerrilla Girls Twin Cities Takeover, an eight-week period that includes over 50 exhibitions, discussions, performances and special events.


The exhibition and accompanying takeover highlight the fact that the Guerrilla Girls are as active as ever. Soon after they landed in Minneapolis, we spoke to Kollwitz and fellow Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo about what museums, feminists, artists and everyone in between can do to help make the takeover successful -- and ensure that people and institutions outside of the Twin Cities are fighting for gender equality alongside them. 


“If everyone doesn’t stand up for a different art world and try to create a different one, 50 years from now, museums will not have a true picture of what was going on in culture," Käthe Kollwitz, one of the founding pseudonymous members, said in an interview with The Huffington Post last month. "They’ll have a picture of what was going on in power."


Read on for a guide to how we can collectively create an art history that reflects all of us.



What Individuals Can Do


“Complain, complain, complain,” Kahlo explained to HuffPost. This can take on many forms, but mostly it involves recognizing a problem, whether it’s sexism in the workplace or underrepresentation of women in films, and using your voice to address it. As the Guerrilla Girls have shown us, you can do so without giving away your identity or putting yourself at risk.


“Sometimes it really works to do little things anonymously," Kollwitz added. "A little guerrilla action can have a big impact." Here's your individual guide to achieving that impact:


1. Question popular culture. This initial activist gesture happens on a more cerebral level than an external one, but it's just as important. “People just accept culture as what’s presented to them,” Kahlo notes. “You should try to examine it, develop an opinion and not just accept what’s fed to you as high art.”


2. Stickers aren’t just for kids. The Guerrilla Girls have a long history of using anonymous public displays, small and large, to call out discrimination and inequality. Printable stickers are available on their website, from “Anti-Hollywood Stickers” for the Oscars to their legendary, scathing billboard image, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” Need a way to simply start advocating? Why not begin here.


3. Embrace social media to spread your message -- and make it last longer. Since the rise of Internet culture, the Guerrilla Girls have embraced social media as a new tool for protesting. “In the past, our posters would get covered up in a few minutes, but now, all of our work has a life digitally, on social media and on the Internet, so we consider that an equally important part of the work,” said Kollwitz. You can tag the Guerrilla Girls’ Instagram and use one of their favorite hashtags, #30yearsandstillcounting, to express your own frustration with arts institutions.



What Museums Can Do


Some museums, such as the Tate Modern and the Moderna in Sweden, have established mandates for diverse representation throughout their exhibitions and collections. Of course, the Guerrilla Girls emphasize that these efforts only came about thanks to an outcry from artists and the public.


“There are curators and sometimes directors at every museum who care about these issues and are working quietly behind the scenes, or more outwardly, and slowly things are changing,” Kollwitz explained. “But museums move at a glacial pace, which is why we have to keep up the pressure. It doesn’t just happen because of the zeitgeist.”


Beyond listening and responding to the complaints and concerns of the public, here’s what people who work in museums can do:


1. Avoid tokenism. When it comes to diversity, the Guerrilla Girls have witnessed a transition from outright institutional prejudice (with white males dominating museum collections and gallery walls) to the issue of tokenism. “Museums think that if they show one woman artist or one artist of color, the problem is solved,” Kahlo said, “but that’s a continuation of the problem.”


The Guerrilla Girls advise that while progress can happen in small strides, the larger goal of gender equality will not be achieved in token instances


2. Admit your failings. In an admirable move during the Twin Cities Takeover, one museum, the Minnesota Institute of Art, voluntarily opened itself up to criticism by the Guerrilla Girls, asking them to evaluate their collection. A video of the collective’s findings were projected on the museum’s own walls. One fact is particularly disappointing: “Only 8 of 415 paintings and sculptures in the European and American galleries (1400-1960) are by women.”


Realizing and acknowledging the problem is the first step in righting these wrongs for this museum and many others.


3. Don’t let wealthy collectors influence the art you collect and exhibit. When you look at the root cause of museums’ narrow collections, you’ll see a glaring conflict of interest. According to Kahlo, a board of trustees at a museum should not be comprised of wealthy collectors with a vested financial interest in the selection of artworks at a museum. As the Guerrilla Girls have pointed out, this has happened in the case of Eli Broad, whose Broad Foundation collection is 96 percent white and 83 percent male.


A more thorough code of ethics for museums can be found here.



What Other Organizations Can Do


According to the Guerrilla Girls, if you’re interested in activism, one of the best things you could do is to join together, whether that means forming a collective of your own or working with other organizations. You can see this spirit of collaboration and camaraderie in the Twin Cities Takeover, which lasts from January to March 2016 and will include over 20 arts and cultural organizations (from small non-profits to major cultural institutions) in Minneapolis/St. Paul and surrounding cities. 


Here's how to keep the spirit of collaboration alive:


1. Don’t let ego keep you from collaborating with other like-minded organizations and individuals. “What I love about the takeover is that so much of it isn’t about us,” Kollwitz concluded. “It’s people -- students, artists, activists -- coming together to do things as well. They aren’t joining us, they’re joining forces with us.”


2. It’s okay to have a focus. Don’t expect yourself to tackle everything. While the Guerrilla Girls' activism keeps in mind the systemic problems inherent in the realms outside of art, they've chosen to focus on the world they know best. “We are always expanding our reach, but we love criticizing the art world because it’s symptomatic of what’s wrong with society and our country,” Kahlo added. “We haven’t done everything, because we’re human. I look forward to doing what we haven’t done and seeing others do what we haven’t done.”


3. Stay nimble and welcome new ways of doing things.“The world needs more masked feminist activists than the Guerrilla Girls," Kahlo said. "Which will be more powerful. We have our specialization and way of doing things, and it’s not the only way. There are many unexplored avenues we’d love to be able to instigate."


The Guerrilla Girls are also quick to point out that their conception of feminism is not just about women. “There are so many people who stand up for feminism and are slowly changing the world, giving women lives their grandmothers couldn’t have had,” said Kollwitz.


According to Kahlo, “Breaking down the patriarchy is about gender equality across the board, the end of stereotypes, and the end of privileging one gender over another.” 


“Our feminism has always been intersectional," Kollwitz reiterated, "we really believe that no one is free until everyone is free.”


When they put it that way, it’s easy to see why the Guerrilla Girls are still fighting 30 years later, inspiring younger generations of women and men to join their cause. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some posters to print out.



-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











A Catalogue Of Wonderfully Useless Ideas Highlights The Power Of Imagination

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A great gift -- one that's significant, thoughtful, filled with meaning, big -- can be, despite all good intentions, somewhat of a drag. The time, money, thought and resources that go into a diligently assembled gift can leave the recipient with a combination of appreciation and anxiety, grateful for the magnanimous offering but nervous for when, if, and how the service will be repaid. 


That's why, for me, the most generous gifts are not the large ones that come elaborately wrapped up on holidays with a big bow on top. Instead, they're the ones that come unexpectedly and with joyful ease -- a note on your pillow, a candy on your desk -- gestures weightless and light as air. 


Ana Prvacki's artworks are such gestures. While most art grapples with Big issues like Death, Sex, God, History, The Color Blue -- Prvacki's preferred concepts are simple and succinct. For example, how to properly alert your friend to the small leaf of spinach caught between her incisors. 



Since 2005, Prvacki has been creating what she describes as catalogues of ideas. Her newest book, Finding comfort in an uncomfortable imagination is the uncanny lovechild of Yoko Ono's Grapefruit and SkyMall, a compendium of odd and beautiful ideas hovering between conceptual art and misguided hospitality. Flip through the hundred-page volume and you'll find prototypes for instruments and contraptions that will probably never exist off of the page, except in the shopping cart of the imagination. 


"Initially it was a way of exorcising excess ideas," Prvacki explained to The Huffington Post. "What do you do with all of the images that go through your head? It can be daunting. I wanted to get rid of that feeling and just enjoy the pleasure of generating ideas."


One idea is the "DIY pret-a-paracute," a custom designed skirt that doubles as a parachute, allowing its wearer to leap out of a window in truly dire social scenarios, or, of course, an actual emergency. "A gadget and a fashion item, 'DIY pret-a-paracute' promises trend and style as well as speed and movement for any occasion." On the adjacent page, Prvacki wears the one actual pret-a-paracute in existence, which she made herself by hand. 



Prvacki sometimes creates a single prototype to illustrate one of her concepts, but that's where the production aspect ends. "I like the notion that not every idea should be made real," she said. We’re constantly overproducing and manifesting things that shouldn’t be. Not every idea should be produced."


However, just because an idea won't be mass produced and distributed widely for profit doesn't mean it should be tossed aside and forgotten. Prvacki carries a notebook with her constantly where she jots down the images that pop into her mind. Sometimes they're banal, sometimes surreal, often a combination of the two. Through her idea catalogues, Prvacki honors the jewels of her imagination and sets them free, like a kid temporarily trapping a firefly in a jar and releasing it back into the wild. 


Prvacki's ideas often address our culture's bizarre standards of etiquette -- by, for example, placing a fig tree in front of an explicit artwork to mollify prudish viewers. Others play in the space between utility and futility, beauty and efficiency, concept and product. One of my favorite ideas suggests injecting a raisin with rosé to return it to its grapely state. (She likens the process to botox.) 


While most of Prvacki's wonderfully trivial inventions themselves aren't out to change the world, the general energy behind the lot of them just might. "I think we just, as a planet, as a civilization, need to work less and think more. Imagine more. I think ideas and imagination are also connected to solutions, and we should keep the imagination fertile."



The artist references Chindōgu -- the Japanese art of "unuseless" inventions -- as an inspiration. The term was coined by Japanese inventor Kenji Kawakami, and refers to objects that ingeniously solve a particular problem while simultaneously spurring many more problems as a result. For example, a "Chindōgu of the Day" listed online is the Hay Fever Hat -- a baseball cap with a toilet paper roll attached for those days when sneezing and snotting won't wait for you to reach into your pocket. 


Prvacki mentions another one of her favorites, solving the problem of how to cut down on your phone bill. "The idea was to fix a four-pound weight on your phone and so, the idea was, eventually you’d get tired of holding it and give up." Chindōgu ideas clearly toy with stereotypes of Western consumerism and the endless pursuit of efficiency, but the products are never just jokes. First and foremost, they truly aim to help."It's all very ethical," Prvacki says. "It never hurts anyone. It doesn't waste anything or make fun of anyone."


Following in the footsteps of Chindōgu, Prvacki offers ideas that are simple and bright, the artistic equivalent of a lucky coin or a bath mat that feels strangely luxurious under your toes. But look closer, and you'll notice the subtle layers embedded in each humble idea -- the humor, the poetry, the timely relevance, the playful critique. 



One of her critiques appears in "Stealing Shadows," one of the few ideas in the catalogue to come fully into being, appearing in a Los Angeles exhibition in January. The show featured just the shadows of famous "masterpiece" sculptures like Louise Bourgeois' spider and Jeff Koons' rabbit. The shadows sold for one percent of the price of the original artwork. 


"Shadows are so poetic," Prvacki said. "They deal so much with the psyche and our unconscious in a profound, archetypal way. The idea of stealing shadows of famous artworks, it felt mischievous. Plus it’s a zero carbon footprint work; you don’t need to ship it, the installation is very quick."


While some of her work is undoubtedly critical -- "Stealing Shadows" pokes fun at excessively expensive artwork as well as ideas of appropriation -- Prvacki is not interested in an ironic stance. "I’m a little bit afraid of irony," she said. "I always have been. I think there’s a certain cruelty in it -- it's an unproductive commentary. Ideas should be kind and loving. They should be productive." 


For Prvacki, thinking is not about judging, complaining, or tearing things down. Ideas are not pointed weapons but spurts of energy -- invigorating, nutritious, even pleasurable. "It's a poetic and absurd gesture to have a catalogue you cannot order from," she says. "It asks you: do you really need that? Is it pleasurable enough to have it just exist in your imagination?"



Other contemporary artists exploring the realm of "unuseless ideas" include The Institute for New Feeling, whose contraptions, like a neck pillow made from cement, offer a dreamlike alternative to spa souvenirs. Multimedia performance artist Jacolby Satterwhite turns his mother's doodles of bizarre inventions inspired by the Home Shopping Network into trippy virtual landscapes. 


But Prvacki's work feels especially light to the touch. The force of her work is not in the ideas themselves, but in the overall exaltation of the imagination and the generous dissemination of its small but juicy fruits. These are the ideas that are not held back by their absurdity, impossibility and levity, but energized by them. They are the small but mighty gifts -- the unexpected dessert, the thoughtful gesture, the subtle smile -- that make the sky more blue. 


Prvacki's Finding comfort in an uncomfortable imagination is available at 1301PE Gallery and Art Catalogues at LACMA. See an earlier interview with her here


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












The Bottom Line: 'Blackass' By A. Igoni Barrett

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It was only a matter of time before some resourceful author used Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as the foundation for a novel explicitly about racial and gender identities. A racial transformation forms the central drama of A. Igoni Barrett’s Metamorphosis-themed satirical novel, Blackass, though not the type readers have typically seen in the past.


In 2014’s Your Face in Mine, by Jess Row, a white Jewish man voluntarily undergoes racial reassignment surgery to become black -- he identifies more strongly with that culture and wants to fully take it on. In 1961, white writer John Howard Griffin published Black Like Me, a nonfiction account of traveling through the South dressed in convincing blackface; the book documented the abrupt shift in treatment he received when he presented as a black man. Narratives of people willfully choosing to give up (if only temporarily) their white privilege to live as black people aren’t novel.


In Blackass, the protagonist, Furo Wariboko, neither chooses his transformation nor does he want it, despite the sudden social capital it endows him with. A young Kalabari man who lives with his family outside Lagos, Nigeria, Furo has been crushed under the wave of unemployment stifling the career prospects of the country’s youth. One morning, however, he wakes up with plans to head into Lagos for an interview -- only to look down at his recumbent body and see that in his sleep, he’s metamorphosed into a red-headed white man.


In a panic, Furo dresses for his interview and escapes the house without being seen by his family. He’ll never be able to explain that this white man in their house is their son and brother, he realizes, so his only option is not to return. In his neighborhood, his new identity immediately causes issues. The mere presence of a white man, or oyibo, raises suspicious eyebrows from people he long considered friends and neighbors.


As he approaches the city center, however, his fortunes turn. White men aren’t so uncommon in Lagos, but they are uncommon in the lines of jobless unfortunates waiting for entry-level interviews. Furo is quickly yanked from the line to his interview, brought in to speak to the CEO, and offered a senior-level marketing job on the spot. “I’ll be frank with you,” his new boss tells him, shortly before establishing that Furo meets none of the skill-related criteria for the job. “We need a man like you on the team.” His unspoken words, “a white man,” hang in the air.


Furo’s familiarity with Lagos and Nigerian culture, his Nigerian accent and fluent dialect, and his name make him an oddity as a white man, but this also allows Barrett to show the web of countervailing advantages experienced by black Nigerians and white foreigners. Perceived as an oyibo, Furo finds himself newly taken advantage of by locals who expect a naive, wealthy out-of-towner, or treated with tense suspicion. When his Nigerian background becomes apparent, he’s accepted as a fellow, presumed to know the rules of the game.


Still, his whiteness imbues him with an overwhelming aura of sudden authority and importance that arguably outweighs the feelings of displacement and alienation Furo struggles with. After years of increasingly desperate unemployment, he’s suddenly bombarded with lucrative job offers. Having left home suddenly, he’s without a place to live for two weeks before his new job begins, but as a white man he’s almost immediately picked up by a beautiful sugar baby, Syreeta, whose comfortable lifestyle is funded by a wealthy man she sees once a week. Though Furo has no money, his light skin makes him appear a more desirable partner, someone who could give her a biracial child like those of her socialite friends who married foreigners.


Thanks to his whiteness, Furo suddenly has a job, the deference of local Nigerians, and a gorgeous lover who takes him in and buys him a new wardrobe.


Furo’s blackness doesn’t simply evaporate quietly into his past, however. He’s plagued by signs of his true identity, from the increasingly publicized search his family has begun for their vanished son to the melanin-rich zone on his buttocks. Yes, Furo does indeed retain his black ass, even as the rest of his skin has paled to the shade of mashed potatoes.


This struggle chimes with the stories of light-skinned black people in white-dominated countries “passing” as white -- a similarity that resonates more strongly as Furo struggles to distance himself from the life he thought he could simply walk away from. Torn between how profoundly he misses his family, his social network, and his true identity, and how desperately he wants and needs the money and status that come with his whiteness, he finds himself taking dramatic steps to ensure that he can forever leave behind the past he deeply misses so that he can reap the benefits of his new life.


Before long, Furo changes his name to Frank Whyte, even applying for new personal documents, in hopes that he won’t be connected to the reports of a missing black man named Furo Wariboko. But it’s too late; he’s already had a chance encounter with a writer named Igoni who becomes fascinated by the white Nigerian and tracks down Furo’s family -- starting with his social-media savvy sister, who’s been tweeting up a storm about her brother’s disappearance. Furo’s plan of starting over, whole-cloth, as a white man named Frank Whyte seems doomed.


His longer passages trade off with shorter interludes from Igoni’s perspective, which ultimately adds more confusion than clarity. The writer, clearly a surrogate for the book's author and a character who allows readers to see parts of the narrative outside Furo’s viewpoint, never feels fully realized as a character, nor do Igoni’s passages add much to the overall narrative. At some point, it becomes clear that Igoni too has undergone an identity change -- she is a woman, while when Furo first met her, she was presented as a man. But it’s not clear at all whether she made the transition purposefully or in a dream as Furo did, or what purpose her identity serves in the novel.


Barrett seems to be drawing a rough parallel between the experience of Igoni, a transgender woman, and Furo, a black man who woke up white, but doesn’t explore whether such a parallel truly captures the truth of those two experiences. It’s a half-baked and underexamined comparison, yet provocative enough to deserve more from the book. Indeed, much of Blackass seems to suffer from this failing; it’s not a long novel, yet long passages seem to meander needlessly, while other vital, explosive concepts are tossed in haphazardly and all-too-briefly.


Blackass is a blunt, transparently written novel -- the kind that makes the reader feel as though they’re standing inside the skin of the character, going about his day with him -- and though the topic could easily be that of a polemic, it’s also a subtle, circumspect novel about the intersecting, sometimes mutually exclusive needs humans have for family and connection, and for status and power. In Barrett’s debut, it often seems as though his project was simply too ambitious for its 250-odd pages, which aren’t quite capacious enough to grapple with all the big ideas he wants to rope in. An abundance of big ideas, and a compelling voice, however, mark Barrett as a writer to look out for in the years ahead.


The Bottom Line:


Barrett’s racial satire bulges with more ambitious ideas than its length can handle, but its power and insight should put him on to-watch lists.


What other reviewers think:


The Guardian: "His characters’ every foible is captured and amplified for effect. But his handling of plot is not so masterly; the introduction of Morpheus is one too many transformations."


Financial Times: "Blackass is a strange, compelling novel, and Barrett has something to tell us all."


Kirkus: "The story doesn’t quite live up to its brilliant premise, but readers in search of an incisive observer of contemporary life will find one in Barrett."


Who wrote it?


Igoni Barrett is the author of a short story collection, Love Is Power, Or Something Like That. He has received a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. This is Barrett’s debut novel. He lives in Nigeria.


Who will read it?


Readers who prefer work with a strong social or political theme, as well as fans of reality-bending fiction or magical realism.


Opening lines:


“Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep. He was lying nude in bed, and when he raised his head a fraction he could see his alabaster belly, and his pale legs beyond, covered with fuzz that glinted bronze in the cold daylight pouring in through the open window.” 


Notable passage:


“And in this state of naked grace -- stripped of the past, curious about the present, hopeful about the future -- he strode to the tall mirror over the vanity table and stared into the face of his new self. A face whose features had altered less in dimension than character, and whose relation to the selfie in the newspaper was as close and yet as far apart as the resemblance between adolescence and adulthood. His face had sloughed off immaturity. Then again, the unexpectedness of his skin shade, eye color, and hair texture was the octopus ink that would confuse his hunters, as even he wouldn’t have recognized himself in a photo of his new face, and so neither would his parents nor anyone who based their looking on his old image. He knew at last that he had nothing to fear. He was a different person, and right here, right now, right in his face, he could see he looked nothing like the former Furo.”


Blackass
by A. Igoni Barrett
Graywolf Press, $16.00
Published March 1, 2016


The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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What's It Like Making A Terrence Malick Movie? We Asked 'Knight Of Cups' Star Freida Pinto

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Terrence Malick is such an enigmatic figure in Hollywood that most of the coverage surrounding "Knight of Cups" is basically just film journalists asking the movie's stars, "So what's this guy like?" Since Malick's debut feature, "Badlands," wowed at the New York Film Festival in 1973, the Oscar-nominated director has renounced interviews and upheld a somewhat erroneous reputation for being reclusive, even as "The Thin Red Line" and "The Tree of Life" found mainstream success. His supposed hermit life has become enough of a narrative that a video of Malick dancing at a country bar was a minor Internet sensation in 2012, when he was filming "Knight of Cups" and the still-unreleased "Weightless."


The Huffington Post hopped on the phone with first-time Malick collaborator Freida Pinto earlier this week. In "Cups," Pinto plays one of several women who float through the life of an adrift Los Angeles screenwriter named Rick (Christian Bale, who appeared in "The New World"). As was the case with 2012's "To the Wonder," Malick didn't provide the cast with a script. In fact, Pinto hardly knew what the movie was about before seeing the final cut. Why commit to such an amorphous experience? Because it's Terrence Malick, of course. And because Jessica Chastain said it was a good thing to do.


Many actors see working with Terrence Malick as a career milestone. Does your life feel different, having now made a Malick movie?


It definitely feels different. For any actor to have been part of a Terrence Malick film is a huge achievement, in many ways, and not just an achievement because he’s an amazing filmmaker and has been a legendary filmmaker since “Days of Heaven” and “Badlands,” but more so because you are given the opportunity to have this experience that only the actors who work on a Terrence Malick film can have.


You hear Jessica Chastain doing "The Tree of Life” promotions and talking about this experience and you go, “God, I want to experience that too.” And here I am, finally having had that experience, and I get it. I totally get it. It was one of those really liberating experiences that you almost can’t have on a film with a script. This is us going in absolutely unprepared and not knowing where we’re going to go, which can be daunting. But at the same time, just letting yourself be in that moment is very, very freeing and quite revealing of ourselves, as well, like, “This is how far I can really take myself.” And I’m surprised that I can actually say that and I’m surprised that I can actually do this. The word is “free.” I can’t think of any other word -- the word is “free.”


Since there's no script, what information were you given about the part before showing up?


No information whatsoever. The only thing that I had in hand was six pages of something that was written just as a reference. It had nothing to do with my character or what he wanted me to do on set.


And it was something Terrence wrote?


It was just something he wrote, like his stream-of-consciousness typed out. He uses a typewriter, so that makes it even better. 


Of course he uses a typewriter. Was there a narrative in those six pages? 


It was very philosophical. It was a lot of quotes form philosophers that I assume Terry really likes to read. There were a lot of Mother Teresa lines in there. It was just a guide. It was not in any way lines I had to repeat on set. Sometimes I did and it would be fine, and sometimes it didn’t make any sense. He would also say, “You can say this line or you can not say it if you don’t want to.” That kind of freedom is very rare. There couldn’t have been preparations on a film like this.


Does that mean you named the character too? She introduces herself as Helen.


No, that was the one thing that I did know, that the character was going to be called Helen. Terry gave me that name. 


How long were you on set?


I think it was about a four- or five-day thing. 



When you arrived, there must have been some sort of guidance about the scene you'd be shooting. Was it, "Okay, we're doing a party scene, action," or was it, "Just start talking and we'll figure it out"?


The first scene I shot was not the party scene, actually. I shot a scene with Christian by the window where I ask him, “Is this a friendship we have? I don’t want to wreak havoc in men’s lives anymore.” I arrived and I was like, “Terry, what do you want me to say?” I even asked Christian, “Do you think you could help me out here?” And he said, “No! I do want to help you, but you’re going to do all the talking and I’m going to do all the listening.”


The only thing I did get in terms of references from Terry was that Christian Bale’s character is on this search and he gets his answers in half-fragments from these women and I’m playing one of them. I said, “OK.” Initially I was a singer and then all of a sudden I became a dancer because that’s what was happening in my life at that point of time -- I was training for this other film where I played a dancer. And then I was a yogi and I was a model, so you know what? It didn’t matter at that point because I was going to be very in the moment and very present. Even if Terrence had said, “Be a singer,” but I felt like dancing, he would have accepted that. I just know it.


Had you met him before the first day on the set?


No, the first day I met him was on set.


Had you spoken to him at all? 


I did speak to him over the phone. He said he really liked my tape and he asked me a lot about myself and he asked me how long I’ve been living in LA and what my experience with LA was like. He asked me a few questions. In his head, I’m assuming, he was trying to piece together how these women would impact Rick’s life. Now that I’ve actually watched the film, a lot of what he asked me and a lot of what we did on set makes sense. It’s really an exploration of self in a city like Los Angeles that can be very polarizing in many ways. You can make of it whatever you want to make of it. It can be that place where you find answers and peace, or it can be a place that many associate with debauchery and excess and fake pretentiousness. Whatever you associate with it is what it is for you, right? So if you asked me about my first couple of days in LA -- actually I didn’t have a very good experience in LA because I just thought it wasn’t the same kind of vibrant, exhilarating city that London or Mumbai was for me. But I feel like my character is a passenger of sorts in the film. She goes through LA like she would through life. 


Do you think he had the movie in his head, or did he film vignettes and then find the story in the editing process? 


I’m sure he had a baseline for what he was trying to do and I’m sure he discussed it with Christian, because Christian is in every frame of the film. But I’m sure it was just like us being free to explore and to surprise ourselves. I’m sure he wanted some surprises, as well. He had no idea what we were going to say, so as much as he would construct the film in his head. Ultimately, the fact that he had given us so much freedom, whatever he expected was probably not going to be the only thing he thought. I’m sure the film actually gets made at the editing table, in this case.


Do you do takes and then get feedback? Does he tell you he doesn’t like something? 


Terry never says he does not like anything. That’s not him. Whether it’s wrong or right, it just happens. But if there’s something he likes and he wants us to do more of it, he’ll definitely be very vocal about that. Like, “Continue talking about this incident in your life and give us more of an insight,” or whatever. If we went in the wrong direction and it felt out of character, then he just won’t use it in the film.



Did you understand what “Knight of Cups” was about before seeing the actual movie?


Definitely after seeing the finished product because I had no idea what the film was going to be. But I have to say, while I was shooting the film, I was already on a quest for my own answers, in many ways. I think doing the film with Terry and all the questions of validation that have been the biggest looming questions over my head, like how much validation do we seek in life? Especially as actors, our lives depend on critics and validation and ratings and God knows what. Is that what we work toward? Or do we work toward a certain level of finding that happiness within ourselves? I think that spiraled those questions into a process, which I’m really grateful for.


Are you in the movie more or less than you expected?


I didn’t know what to expect because literally the only thing I knew was scenes that I’d shot with Christian. I had no idea who the other women were playing. It was all a surprise for me, as well. Even some of my own scenes were a surprise to me.


What do you make of people who’ve had bad experiences with Malick? That's always been part of his reputation. Christopher Plummer said he’d never work with him again. 


Because I’d read Jessica Chastain’s interviews, I really wanted to be part of the experience. Everybody has a different experience and a different takeaway from working with a director, and I think it’s perfectly fine to like someone’s style and also to not like someone’s style.


If you had to characterize him for the many people who want to know what Terrence Malick is actually like, how would you describe him? 


Wow. He is like a spiritual guide, in many ways. He’s like a child, actually. He’s like a child with such vivid imagination. If he did have preconceived notions or ideas, he doesn’t have them anymore, so he comes with very little judgment, and that’s very evident in the women who play the various characters in the film. One character is a stripper, another is having an affair -- there is no judgment whatsoever. He made it feel very comfortable.


Is he the type of guy you'd grab a drink with after work?


Well, Terry and I made dinner plans. They didn’t materialize, but we made plans because he loves Indian food. But he likes the not-spicy kind of Indian food, which is not Indian food! He and I kept in touch, and we’ve been in a touch a lot since making the film. Even if he wasn’t in touch, I would still have the nicest things to say about him.


"Knight of Cups" opens in limited release on March 4.

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Israeli Artist Paz Perlman Explores The Healing Power Of Art

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"In order to liberate myself from the past, I have to reconstruct it, ponder about it, make a statue out of it and get rid of it through making sculpture," Louise Bourgeois famously declared, "I'm able to forget it afterwards. I have paid my debt to the past and I am liberated."


For Paz Perlman, a conceptual artist born in Israel and based in New York City, Bourgeois' words constitute a mythos to live by. Perlman's multimedia sculptures and bricolage, often grid-like tapestries of found twigs, fabric, and otherwise unwanted detritus, are born of a desire to piece together history. Not just her history, but a blanket of past trauma and pain that's wound its way in and out of Perlman's life. 


Growing up in Israel, the artist experienced early on the weight of collective memory. Throughout her childhood, she remained acutely aware of the lingering indignity of the Holocaust and how the immense tragedy submerged itself in her Jewish roots. She and her family lived in shelters throughout the War of Attrition in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her timeline is punctuated by shared experiences like these, fracturing the memories she has of her own life. Today, she lives with a slippery desire to piece it all together; to weave together a story that she can ponder and let go. 


Perlman's work is currently on view at Proto Gallery in New Jersey, in a group show titled "Beautiful Liars." The exhibition presents memory as a battleground, exploring the real and imagined aspects of history through the work of six women artists. Like Perlman's pieces, the art on display mines shared experiences, some not even witnessed by the artists themselves, illuminating the value of stitching together disparate stories to uncover some kind of truth.



In one alcove of the gallery, Perlman's delicate paper works hang in a horizontal line across a far wall. Composed of a wild array of found objects, the two- and three-dimensional rectangles appear like portals into dark, forgotten moments. Embellished with metallic paint, red thread, swirls of cotton and plastic -- the pieces don't reflect a cohesive narrative; rather, they mimic the ways repressed stories can flutter in and out of consciousness. Perlman tethers the moments together, though, connecting the fragile pieces with one thin, consistent line.


"Making art allows me to get intimate with what I have repressed in my unconscious," Perlman explained. "This void is inexpressible through words alone. My artistic practice allows me to bypass my rational mind and reach directly into the unseen."


Like her memories, Perlman's own identity has been fractured by migration. She left her home country at the age of 19 to spend a year in India in an Ashram, returning to Israel to join a dance academy. Soon after, she moved to Los Angeles, Calif., to train in Tai Chi, before moving to Amsterdam where she lived for 15 years as an artist and instructor. For 10 years after that, she lived and studied art in the United Kingdom, graduating from Central St Martins, University of Arts London. Finally, she landed in New York in 2015.



To create works like "Middle Way," two twin sculptures made from wood, sticks, fabric and paper, hung purposefully by "Beautiful Liars" curator Molly Merson below a window at Proto Gallery, Perlman scours parks and sidewalks in NYC for materials. She rarely has a plan for her installations, instead, she composes pieces like "Taking Refuge" and "Passage" in the moment. For her, the process -- one of acknowledging the past value of her found objects and gluing them together anew -- takes precedence over the end result. 


In the end, Perlman transforms her paper and plastic into vulnerable works, objects that are physically held together by the weakest of threads. The shaky results itch away at an obsession Perlman revisits frequently: a preoccupation with impermanence. She cites Thich Nhat Hanh when speaking of change and transcendence, who wrote: "Impermanence means being transformed at every moment. This is reality. And since there is nothing that is unchanging, how can there be a permanent self, a separate self? ... Our body is impermanent, our emotions are impermanent and our perceptions are impermanent."


The most overtly hopeful of her pieces at Proto Gallery are two hanging sculptures, dubbed "Tree of Life 1 and 2." Built of wire and charcoal, the minimalist works cast four-pronged shadows on the white wall behind them, stretching a viewer's eye from their cross-like tips to their dark, anchored bottoms. Together, the trees appear like totems of the past, small relics that Perlman, like Bourgeois, can cast aside in liberation. 


"By bringing my pain to the surface in this way, I can confront it and let it go," Perlman concludes. "I have found this to be the most effective pathway to healing and transformation."


"Beautiful Liars," featuring the work of Paz Perlman, Suzanne Goldenberg, Tatiana Istomina, Katerina Marcelja, Lynn Umlauf and Florencia Walfisch, will be on view at Proto Gallery until March 20, 2016.

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9 Illustrations Nail The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Modern Womanhood

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"I simply want to draw girls how they look," artist Cécile Dormeau recently told The Huffington Post.  


And that's exactly what Dormeau does. 


The French illustrator and graphic designer draws women shaving in their underwear, fishing for men, taking selfies and fighting off creepy dudes on the subway. Dormeau's Tumblr and Instagram are overflowing with these quirky feminist illustrations and GIFs. And they are equally weird and wonderful. 


"A lot of my illustrations obviously empower women," Dormeau told HuffPost. "I like representing women in a way that we're not used to seeing them. I want to celebrate women's weaknesses along with their strengths."




While Dormeau's work is known for its body-positive message, her art highlights other topics such as sexual harassment. Dormeau's humorously drawn illustrations bring important topics to light, which she says helps readers relate to and share her work.


"To highlight topics like sexual harassment is important to me," she said. "What woman has never (unfortunately) been harassed on public transport? A lot of my followers tell me that they identify with my work, which proves that we really need to speak more about it to find answers." 




Dormeau said her main message behind her illustrations is to represent what's not represented enough -- whether it's as small as screwing up that perfect winged eyeliner or as large as dealing with the dynamics of consent.


"Drawing things that are not often brought out in the spotlight, hidden actions or details that we are ashamed to share are the main themes that I like to work with," she said. 


She added that it's empowering to help women realize that those taboo topics aren't off limits for discussion. "Through my illustrations, I want women to realize that we are all a bit fucked up sometimes -- and that’s completely OK," Dormeau said. "You’re not alone to struggle and fight with your insecurities and problems. We just have to find a way to speak about it, share it and laugh about it together. We are enough, we are great just as we are."


Scroll below to see more of Dormeau's illustrations. 



Head over to Dormeau's Tumblr or Instagram to see more of her work. 

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أسرار جديدة عن السجانة السويسرية عاشقة اللاجئ السوري.. هربته بسيارة زوجها إلى اليونان

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هربت ضابطة شرطة سويسرية مع عشيقها المغتَصِب السوري السجين باستخدام سيارة كان قد اشتراها لها زوجها الذي انفصلت عنه مؤخراً.

أنجيلا ماجديشي، الشرطية البالغة من العمر 32 عاماً، فتحت باب الزنزانة لعشيقها حسن كيكو، البالغ من العمر 27 عاماً، خلال حراستها بنوبة الليل في سجن ليماتال بمدينة ديتيكون في زيوريخ، واختفى كلاهما بينما كان زميلها بفترة الحراسة في قيلولة. بحسب ما نقلت صحيفة دايلي ميلالبريطانية.

وفي فيديو تم نشره مؤخراً، ظهرت حارسة السجن المتزوجة في سيارة جديدة من طراز BMW X1 كان قد اشتراها زوجها الذي يحمل الجنسية الرومانية، والذي انفصلت عنه مؤخراً لعلاقتها بكيكو. وهي نفس السيارة التي استعانت بها للهرب برفقة السجين.

فاللقطات التي سجّلتها كاميرا السجن تؤكد أن السيارة كانت تحمل أنجيلا وكيكو، والذي قد ارتكب سلسلة من الاعتداءات الجنسية شملت اغتصاب فتاة تبلغ من العمر 15 عاماً، ومحاولة اغتصاب فتاة أخرى تبلغ 19 عاماً، قد عبرت إلى إيطاليا عقب ساعات من الهروب من السجن.

ويقول المتحدث باسم شرطة زيوريخ، ستيفان أوبرلين، من جانبه: "كان لدينا الكثير من الخيوط، ولكن لم يصل أيٌّ منها إلى نتيجة حتى تلك اللحظة، ومازلنا لا نعرف أين هما".

ولكن على الرغم من ذلك، يزعم أحد المحكومين عليهم الذين كانوا بصحبة كيكو بسجن ليماتال أن كلاً من الهاربين يرجّح أن يكونا في اليونان، وأنه لم يكن ليدخل سوريا كما أن عائلته وأصدقاءه قد غادروا البلد على أي حال، بحسب ما نقلت صحيفة سويسرية.

فقد قال السجين السابق الذي عرّفته الصحيفة بذكر الحروف الأولى من اسمه "ج.ج": "لقد غادرا إلى اليونان؛ فهي تعرف البلد جيداً نتيجة عطلاتها هناك، وليس بإمكان السلطات أن تبحث عنهما كثيراً لأنها منشغلة بأزمة اللاجئين"، وأضاف أنه كان من المعروف أن شيئاً ما يجري بين كلٍّ من الحارسة والسجين.

أصغر وأجمل النساء
وتابع "لقد تخلت عن وظيفتها وعائلتها وأصدقائها من أجل رجلٍ خطير للغاية، إنها في وضع رهيب تماماً. فلم تكن فقط أصغر وأجمل النساء العاملات بالسجن، بل كانت أيضاً لطيفة ومتأنية، وببساطة تامة فقد كانت شخصية محبوبة".

وأضاف "لقد كان يتحدث السجناء كثيراً عن ذلك، وأنه قد جعلها كالخاتم في إصبعه، وأضافها إلى قائمة ضحاياه. وكان حسن يتحدث عادة عن محاولته للهرب من سوريا إلى سويسرا، وقد أسرت هذه الحكاية الحارسة، وجميعنا كان يعلم أن شيئاً ما يجري بينهما".

وتابع "ج.ج" أن الحارسة منحته كل الامتيازات التي كانت وحدها كافية لتشير إلى أن شيئاً ما يحدث، ولكن عندما كان يُسأل كيكو عن ذلك من قِبل الحُرّاس الآخرين، كان دائماً ما يُنكر أن شيئاً ما بينهما".

زوج والدة الحارسة، والتر مايندر، يقول إنه موقف صعب على والدتها التي لا تتمكن من التوقف عن القلق حيال الابنة، وإنهما دائماً ما يفكران في المكان الذي قد تكون أنجيلا فيه.

حيث قال: "لقد سمعنا تقارير تشير إلى أنها قد تكون في سوريا أو في دولة عربية برفقته، بينما يُرجّح قول آخر أنهما لم يعودا معاً، وهي فقط ساعدته على الهرب إلى أي مكان خلال رحيلها إلى الشرق". وتابع: "شيءٌ واحدٌ مؤكدٌ بالنسبة لي، وهو أنها لم تعد في إيطاليا، وأنا متأكد أنهما قد غادرا إيطاليا منذ فترة طويلة".

وتابع "إنها شخصية مُنظمة حقاً، من هؤلاء الأشخاص الذين يخططون لكل شيء، وحين تقرر شيئاً فلا أحد ولا شيء من شأنه أن يغير رأيها. والحق أن بإمكاني أن أرى أن كل شيء كان مُخططاً له سلفاً بعناية، على الرغم من أن لا شيء كان يشير إلى ما كان على وشك الحدوث، فقد كانت تقيم معنا لمدة أسبوع قبل هربها، ولم يبد أي شيء خارجاً عن المألوف".

من المقاتلين ذوي العضلات
وأضاف "ليس لدي أي شك في أنها لا تزال على قيد الحياة، فهي مقاتلة عنيدة وذكية جداً. وتعرف حقاً كيف تدافع عن نفسها"، وعندما سُئل عما إذا كان يُصدق أن ثمة علاقة غرامية كانت تجمعها بالسجين، رد قائلاً: "إنها تحب هذا النوع من المقاتلين ذوي العضلات، وقد رأيت صوراً له، وعلى هذا الأساس يمكنني القول إنهما معاً".

ولكن زوجها الذي انفصلت عنه مؤخراً يقول أنه خلال انفصالهما كان من الواضح أن شيئاً ما خاطئاً يحدث وأن هناك رجلاً آخر في الصورة.
فقد قال إنها بدأت في قراءة القرآن، وكانت مهتمة بسوريا. وتشاهد الأفلام الوثائقية وتقرأ الكتب بهذا الشأن، وأنه يشتبه في محاولتهما التوجه إلى سوريا عبر تركيا، وقد تم الكشف مؤخراً عن أنّ والدي كيكو السوريين يعيشان الآن أيضاً في تركيا.

وكانت أنجيلا منذ انفصالها عن زوجها تعيش برفقه زميلة لها تعمل أيضاً حارسة بالسجن، وتحمل الجنسية التركية، ويُعتقد أنها على علمٍ بتفاصيل ما حدث وساعدتها على التستر، بحسب الزوج.

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All The Books You Should Read, According To Your Binge TV Preferences

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Raise your hand if you think you watch too much television. *Slowly raises hand.* Now raise your hand if you think you should read more books. *Sheepishly repeats gesture.*


I'm imagining a lot of arms in the air right now, which, hey, we're in the golden age of television. There's no shame in a healthy obsession with streaming shows like "UnREAL," "Master of None," "The Affair," "Game of Thrones," "The Walking Dead" ... the list goes on and on and on. But there's also nothing wrong with wanting to return to the original binge-able medium -- literature. 


The reality is, the thought of curling up next to a good book for one, two, or 12 hours, never gets old. We can always use a little SSR, or as the cool kids know it, silent and sustained reading. But that doesn't mean you need to forgo your love of Netflix, Hulu, et al. Instead, use our handy guide to all the books every binge TV lover should read. Go ahead, binge read away.


1. If you like "Jessica Jones," you'll like Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg



Lady detectives? Check. Badass women fighting for their independence -- sometimes quite literally? Check. “Jessica Jones” was hailed as revolutionary, and in some ways it is; watching a Marvel superhero romp around in everyday clothes is uniquely inspiring to us everyday folk. But its Bechdel Test-passing scenes between Jessica and her BFF reflect bigger changes bubbling up in the book world, and Laura van den Berg is among those stirring the pot. Her short story collection is brimming with powerful women, and one specific story, “Opa-Locka,” follows private investigator sisters on the job. -- Maddie Crum


2. If you like "UnREAL" you'll like Arts & Entertainments by Christopher Beha



What you see on reality TV may not be so real: This is the highly practical lesson of Lifetime’s hit drama “UnREAL,” which goes behind the scenes of a show heavily based on “The Bachelor” to show intrigue, manipulation, exploitation and high-stakes risk-taking, all in the name of ratings. Arts & Entertainments, by Christopher Beha, takes a similarly jaundiced view of contemporary television, focusing on a former actor who is tempted to sell a sex tape of his now famous ex to supplement his income as a teacher and support his wife’s dreams of starting a family. The protagonist finds himself pulled into a world of nonstop celebutainment, scripted reality, and moral compromise. Like "UnREAL," Arts & Entertainments features relatable leads who don’t seem all bad, yet find themselves snared by the rewards of participating in an unethical enterprise. And once in, they find it’s harder to leave. -- Claire Fallon


3. If you like "The Jinx," you'll like People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry



It’s been over a year since the release of HBO miniseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” in which writer/director Andrew Jarecki spent hours interviewing and getting to know accused murderer, billionaire and super creepy old man Robert Durst. If you watched it, you’re familiar with that combination of nausea, goosebumps, shortness of breath and complete terror that accompanies the best of true crime, rendering the old “it’s all just pretend” mantra useless. If you chase that feeling of self-imposed torture, check out Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness, an equally horrific tale delving into a young woman’s disappearance in Tokyo in the year 2000. The story surrounding her death, and her killer’s 30-year history of brutal violence against women, will be sure to make you just as sick, and just as powerless to put the book down. -- Priscilla Frank


4. If you like "The Walking Dead," you'll like Zone One by Colson Whitehead



If you’re addicted to “The Walking Dead,” this wry zombie novel is for you. Unlike the TV show, this book balances its heartbreaking elements with moments of playfulness and laughter. It also reads like an elegy for the modern world, with the protagonist missing luxurious conveniences like “free Wi-Fi.” There are still zombies wreaking havoc, but Zone One offers a chance to slow down and ponder the apocalypse, fleeting human connection and the things we’d miss if all hell broke loose. -- Tricia Tongco


5. If you like "Master of None," you'll like Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie



"Master of None," the brainchild of Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, tackles all the usual comedy suspects: dating, family, parenting, careers. But it does so with a refreshingly diverse cast, and incorporates honest and hilarious stories of immigrants in the Untied States along the way. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book outlines the life of Ifemelu, a Nigerian-born woman who moves to the U.S. and confronts, head on, narratives familiar to the "Master of None" universe, albeit in a more serious tone. Ifemelu leaves Nigeria to escape "the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness" and finds herself face-to-face with racism in America. If you were intrigued by the big issues of Ansari's show, pick up Adichie's book. -- Katherine Brooks


6. If you like "Skins," you'll like The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison



Perhaps the most incredible part of “Skins” is that every cycle found its way deep into your heart, pummeled it, and somehow left you coming back for more. Jamison’s Exams does precisely that. Each essay in the work is a different story entirely, creating a larger work woven together by one thread: empathy, an emotion you can’t help but feel in every episode of the mid-aughts BBC show. “Skins” characters overlap in some cycles and their day-to-day activities often veer off into the strange; facets of Jamison’s vignettes that also ring true. The show and the book, in their own ways, use humor and harrowing tales to carve out beautiful, poignant moments amid otherwise normal lives. -- Jenna Amatulli


7. If you like "The West Wing," you'll like This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral -- Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking! -- in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich



If you love "The West Wing," you might enjoy the slightly less rose-tinted vision of Washington provided by New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich. It’s a scathing look at the culture of Washington, D.C. and at the media the covers it. From the young interns who go there to do good (probably because they’re inspired by bingeing on "The West Wing") and stay to do well, to the journalists who attempt to cover politicians while being close friends with them, the cast of characters in this book are almost too much to believe. Just like in "The West Wing." -- Chloe Angyal


8. If you like "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," you'll like The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie



At first glance, these two stories don’t seem to line up much: In “Kimmy Schimdt,” the titular character (Ellie Kemper) is a woman newly unleashed on New York City after years of being forcibly kept in an underground bunker by a religious zealot (trust us, it’s funny!). Veblen, the protagonist of The Portable Veblen, lives in a shabby Palo Alto cottage and is newly engaged to a man who invented a revolutionary skull-punching device to alleviate brain trauma in combat. These two premises share more in tone than you’d think: both have wacky circumstances that set up interesting turns of plot throughout their stories, and both characters have shades of perceived naiveté (“Hashbrown no filter!” Kimmy declares while trying out newfangled lingo, whereas Veblen is sure she can communicate with squirrels) while maintaining solid values underneath. Does good triumph over evil in Kimmy and Veblen’s lives? You’ll just have to watch and read to find out. -- Jillian Capewell


9. If you like "The X-Files," then you'll like Voices in the Night by Steven Millhauser



Do you watch “The X-Files” because: a) You’re enamored of Mulder and Scully’s weird, never-fully-realized relationship, b) You’re a sucker for sci-fi, c) THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, or d) All of the above? If you answered “D” and haven’t read Steven Millhauser yet, you’re in for a treat. His schtick is constructing fantastical, supernatural events, and cataloging how communities respond to them. And, there might be a few wayward romances thrown in the mix for good measure. Mermaids, phantoms and magical mirrors are among the strange phenomena you’ll encounter. -- Maddie Crum


10. If you like "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," you'll like The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi



Though the name has been known to turn off a few viewers, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” has gathered a devoted following for its unconventional, hourlong musical comedy episodes. Rebecca Bunch, a high-powered NYC lawyer, quits her miserable job and moves to West Covina, California, after learning her one-time camp boyfriend, Josh, lives there. If you’re one of those who loves “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” for its examination of the tension between feminist ideals and highly unfeminist urges -- like, say, to throw away your whole life for a decade-old crush -- and for its off-kilter humor, consider giving a glance to Amanda Filipacchi’s The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty. More surreal than traditionally comical, Filipacchi’s unsettling novel digs into how women deal with the emphasis placed on their beauty or lack thereof, especially by potential romantic partners, and the degree to which we’re tempted to abandon our ideals in order to earn a man’s attention or true love. And like “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” it does so from a subversive, super-unexpected angle. -- Claire Fallon


11. If you like "The Affair," you'll like Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff



“The Affair” is about -- duh -- an affair, between a novelist and a waitress who are both married to other people. The story is told from both lovers’ perspectives, Rashomon style, showing how memories shift, impressions differ, people lie. Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, too, takes the shape of a split narrative. The first half of the book is told from the perspective of the privileged and gifted playwright Lotto. The second half is from his beloved wife, Mathilde, brilliant and full of secrets. The book doesn’t just tell the same story from two different angles, but spans the life of two people both before, during, and after they fell in love. The stunning book captures the wild turbulence of falling in love, and the way we’re all unreliable narrators of our life stories. -- Priscilla Frank


12. If you like "Black Mirror," you'll like Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro



"Black Mirror," a British TV series made up of stand-alone episodes, features sharp, suspenseful tales that feed into techno-paranoia. If you’re a fan of science fiction that could seamlessly happen moments from now, as featured on the show, then you’ll enjoy Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Without giving away the mysterious premise, the characters in this novel know about their dystopian destiny since a young age, but don’t fight it. Instead, this novel explores what it means to be human, to be an artist and other moving investigations.  It doesn’t have the same heavy-handed, satirical tone as "Black Mirror," but this tragic, poignant book gives us a glimpse at a future that could easily happen. -- Tricia Tongco


13. If you like "The Sopranos," you'll like Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels



OK, hear me out. "The Sopranos" is all about family and coming to terms with the legacy of a last name. Yes, it's about the mafia too, but beyond its "Godfather" connotations, the show explores the strength of family ties and the desires of individuals to break out of the shadows of the people who came before them. Elena Ferrante's four-part series, dubbed the "Neapolitan Novels," takes place in Naples in a period marred by mafia activity. While the central characters -- Lila and Lena -- encounter mobsters and fascists throughout the books, Ferrante's storytelling focuses on how the two women navigate familial strife, new relationships and the internal struggles that come along with it all. -- Katherine Brooks


If you like "Charmed," you'll like Witches of America by Alex Mar



Let’s just call it like it is: Witches are dope. Where “Charmed” lets you live in a world where there are demons, spells, and the “power of three,” Mar’s Witches lets you enter the world where witches -- real witches -- are currently living and have lived for years. While what makes you gasp aloud in “Charmed” isn’t what will have your jaw dropping in Mar’s tale, there’s no shortage of shocking moments and incredible nuggets of witch history. Witches is a foray like no other into a religion that we’ve (mostly) only seen hyper-fictionalized and you know what they say: Fact is stranger than fiction. -- Jenna Amatulli


If you like "Game of Thrones," you'll like Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin



Fantasy is not my favorite genre, but I happily jumped on that "Game of Thrones" bandwagon full of nerds and haven't looked back. "GoT" fans are quick to tell you, "Read the books! Did you read the books? You've got to read the books." So a few weeks ago, I started reading the books. And, guys, you need to read the books. Yes, "M'lady" is much more difficult to stomach on the page than on premium access cable, and I've never read the word "manhood" more times than I have over these 800-some pages, but the end result is a richer, more detailed depiction of the characters and scenery we all love on HBO. It's like watching the director's cut of your favorite movie. -- Sara Boboltz


If you like "Friday Night Lights," you'll like Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger



If you can’t get enough of Riggins, Saracen, Vince and the gloriously functional and loving marriage of Coach and Mrs. T, you should read the book that started it all. Buzz Bissinger’s year-long observation of the Permian Panthers in Odessa, Texas, is -- like the show -- an exploration of a town and a culture obsessed with high school football, and an unsparing look at how football shapes (and, in some case, poisons) the lives of everyone in the town. Like the show, it’s a big story with a big cast, which allows for ruminations on masculinity, race, class, and the role of sports in The American Dream. -- Chloe Angyal


If you like "Scrotal Recall," you'll like The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman



The unfortunately named but touching “Scrotal Recall,” originally released in the U.K. and first offered on Netflix in the spring of 2015, follows a man recounting his sexual exploits after a chlamydia diagnosis. Through this self-examination, a sweet storyline about human connection and modern dating emerges. Adelle Waldman offers a similarly spot-on meditation on the dating lives of young men in the big city. Our hero Nate, a rising literary star, must weigh his dating prospects against his own self-perception and views on love and sex. Both the bingeable show and the page-turning book hit honest points that will hit home for anyone who’s been through the Tinder wringer. -- Jillian Capewell


If you like "The Office," you'll like The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips



The Beautiful Bureaucrat is what would happen if you took all the grim reality packed into "The Office" -- the monotony, the fractured relationships, the dead-end dreams, the general feelings of disconnect -- and turned all of those icky, troubled emotions into a bizarre dystopia. Think of Helen Phillips' main characters as Jim and Pam, if Jim and Pam lived in a world haunted by an all-knowing Database. The book is quick, funny, creepy and -- while it won't actually satitate your need to see J & P back on screen -- it's a read any office drone will find amusing. -- Katherine Brooks

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Pat Conroy, Author Of 'Prince Of Tides', Dead At 70

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By Bill Trott


(Reuters) - Pat Conroy, who turned tales of his painfully dysfunctional family into best-selling novels such as "The Great Santini" and "The Prince of Tides," died on Friday at the age of 70, his publishing company said.


Conroy, who had announced in a Feb. 15 Facebook post that he had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina, surrounded by family and loved ones, said Todd Doughty, a spokesman for Doubleday.


“The water is wide and he has now passed over,” said his wife, novelist Cassandra King Conroy.


Much of Conroy's work was inspired by a dark muse - his father, U.S. Marine Colonel Donald Conroy. The elder Conroy was a fighter pilot who fought in four wars - World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the long-running conflict with his family. He was a tyrant who beat his wife and children.


 



"I remember hating him even when I was in diapers," Conroy wrote in the prologue of "The Death of Santini," the memoir that put to rest his feelings about his father, as well as serving as a postscript to the novel "The Great Santini."


Hollywood loved the emotional aspects of Conroy's works and "The Water Is Wide," "The Prince of Tides" and "Lords of Discipline," as well as "The Great Santini," were all made into successful movies.


Conroy once told People magazine that his books were an effort to explain his life to himself, which was a complicated undertaking.


He was one of seven children in a family that, due to his father's military assignments, moved 23 times before he was 18.


Conroy's mother did not know how to deal with his father much beyond designating hiding places for the children to run to when a rampage started. As the oldest child, Conroy often tried to intervene when trouble started, which meant that he would took the brunt of his father's cruelty.


Later in life, as he exposed the ugly side of his family in his books, Conroy became estranged from some siblings who he said were in denial about the early days. Some family members were so upset by "The Great Santini" that they picketed his book-signing appearances.


In "Why We Write About Ourselves," a book about memoirists, Conroy said he actually played down his father's abuse in his books.


"I wasn't yet prepared to say he beat us half to death and left us in the driveway," he said. "I had trouble getting people to believe me."


The two reached something of a reconciliation before the elder Conroy died in 1998 and the father would sometimes attend book-signings with his son and autograph books as "The Great Santini."


Despite his literary success, Conroy would struggle through alcoholism, depression and two failed marriages. Like four of his siblings, he attempted suicide.


"My family is my portion of hell, my eternal flame, my fate, and my time on the cross," Conroy wrote in "Death of Santini."


Conroy was a teenager when his father was assigned to a military base in Beaufort, South Carolina, and the state would become the setting for many of his books, as well as his long-time home.


"It was in Beaufort in sight of a river's sinuous turn and the movements of its dolphin-proud tides that I began to discover myself and where my life began at 15," he wrote on Facebook in announcing his cancer.


Conroy graduated from The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina that he attended to appease his father, and his novel "The Lords of Discipline" explored the physical and mental abuse heaped on students there. "My Losing Season" was a memoir about his experiences on the school's basketball team.


 



 


Instead of a military career, Conroy became a teacher on isolated, impoverished Daufuskie Island, where many of his students were illiterate and direct descendants of slaves. He was fired after a year because of his maverick approach to teaching and fights with administrators but came away with material for "The Water Is Wide," which was made into the movie "Conrack."


The 1986 novel "Prince of Tides" also bore resemblances to Conroy's life - a man trying to overcome the psychic trauma from life in a troubled family. The movie version starred Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.


Conroy cleaned up his lifestyle in his mid-60s after dealing with diabetes, escalating weight, high blood pressure and a failing liver. He lost weight, quit drinking, began eating healthily and joined his personal trainer in opening a fitness studio in Port Royal, South Carolina.


"He will be cherished as one of America’s favorite and bestselling writers, and I will miss him terribly,” his longtime editor Nan A. Talese of Doubleday said in a statement.


Conroy was married three times.


(Reporting and writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Kim Coghill and Nick Macfie)

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To Witness War Is To 'Experience The Worst In People But To Remember The Beauty'

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Amid the mass armor of indifference in the world, there are always those who decide to shine a light on the realities that most people like to keep hidden in the shadows.


Among them is Lynsey Addario, a photojournalist who specializes in photographing armed conflicts. She has chosen "to live in peace and witness war—to experience the worst in people but to remember the beauty," as she writes in En el instante preciso (At That Precise Moment: A Photographer's Life of Love and War), published in Spanish byRoca Editorial.


Warner Brothers has recently secured film rights to the memoir. Jennifer Lawrence will play the photojournalist, and Steven Spielberg is slated to direct.


The photojournalist worked as a conflict reporter in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Congo, among other war zones. She has repeatedly photographed women in conflict areas, such as Sudan, Pakistan. Addario's photo series have also captured communities beyond war including: transgender sex workers in New York, monks in Bhutan and women running for a Miss India beauty pageant.


Addario -- who handles words just as well as she does a camera -- didn't write a navel-gazing memoir. Instead, she provides an analysis of international politics as she captures her struggle to reconcile her career as a war photographer with the call of motherhood and family.



In an essay published by the New York Times Magazine, Addario recalled feeling uneasy about the thought that having children would force her to turn down assignments. “I was paralyzed by the limitations I assumed motherhood would impose on my mobility and my career,” she wrote. 


She has also said that becoming a mother has changed her approach to photography. “When I became a mother, I realized so much more about the mothers I’ve photographed and that love that is inexplicable for someone that doesn’t have a child,” she told TIME Magazine



Scroll down to take a look at some of Addario's photographs:



This post first appeared on HuffPost Spain. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.

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A Unique Norwegian Choir Is United By Coal As Mining Industry Suffers

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In Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a choir united by coal takes to the stage in an abandoned building – but the future for local coal mining looks uncertain. This is the first installment of “Meet the North,” a series that ventures into the lives of some of the 4 million people who call the Arctic home.


It was below freezing inside the derelict mining building that looked down over Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Coal dust powdered the wooden floor. The corrugated metal walls enclosed a control room, ceiling tracks and tangles of steel. This building used to collect cable cars full of coal and send them down to the harbor. It was abandoned long ago, but for one night in June – this night – it becomes a concert hall jammed with locals dressed in down jackets and brightly coloured winter hats. Coal – the world’s most maligned fossil fuel and the foundation of this community – was about to take center stage.


The crowd cheered and whistled as 16 Norwegian men filed into the room. They wore matching white caps and navy blue coveralls with “Store Norske Mandskor” (Great Northern Men’s Choir) silkscreened on their breast pockets. Each man boasted a custom belt buckle showing a hammer and pick – the traditional tools of miners. But the outfits belied their true occupations; this group included the world’s northernmost architect and the town pastor, as well as the leaders of all the political parties in town.


The conductor wore white gloves and a purple down jacket beneath his costume. With a flash of his hands, the men breathed in and opened their mouths. Their voices poured over the crowd and across the bright fjord.



Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, midway between Europe and the North Pole. Almost 2,200 of Svalbard’s 2,700 inhabitants live in Longyearbyen. They’re mostly Norwegians, as Norway has sovereignty over the archipelago, but the town was named after an American, John Munro Longyear, who started coal mining in 1906. The Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (the Great Northern Spitsbergen Coal Company) bought Longyear’s enterprise 100 years ago, and it’s still the only mining company in town.


In the 1980s and 1990s, Longyearbyen evolved from a company town, which was expensive to maintain, into a community that also relies on tourism and a university campus. In 2015, the coal company employed almost 500 people on the island of Spitsbergen and said that 40 percent of the population still relied on the mines through direct and indirect jobs.


The company inspired the choir, which has existed on and off for a century. Elisabeth Larsen, who sells Store Norske’s coal to international buyers, tipped me off about the show.



I met Larsen on her coffee break outside head office, across the street from Norway’s only coalfired power plant. Its fuel comes from Mine 7, 16km (10 miles) from town, that produced 70,000 metric tons of coal in 2015. The largest mines are in Svea, 60km (37 miles) away, where they have extracted between 1 and 2 million metric tons of coal annually for the last few years. Last year, $64 million worth of coal was shipped to Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.


“Nobody likes coal,” Larsen said, “but nobody wants to accept the fact that we don’t have anything to replace it with.” At 78ºN, energy security is paramount. Heat is life.


For Longyearbyen, coal is a Catch-22. It might be dirty, but it’s local. It comes from down the street, and if it runs out, the community must rely on diesel shipped a long, long way. Coal built this community, but times are changing. Coal mines are an anomaly in Norway, which is known for its hydropower, and a growing number of townspeople recognise that coal is dirty to burn and expensive to extract.


I expected that differing views about coal and energy would create tension in such a small community, and I asked Larsen how people deal with that.


“Oh, it’s not difficult between people.” she responded.


I hesitated and then replied: “I don’t believe you.”


Larsen laughed. “Go to the concert on Saturday night, and you’ll see what I mean.”



The air in the old building seemed to warm even as the evening grew colder. The music alternated from heartfelt ballads to fun and silliness, and each tune rang with precise harmony. Whether they were singing about the tundra or covering “Sixteen Tons” by Kentucky’s Merle Travis, these men had joy on their faces – and it was contagious.


They sang and even danced. They led us in half-time stretches. Their voices resonated with the steel of that stark building. And then we went to the pub.


Over beers and pizza and between spontaneous bursts of song, I got to know the men a little better: the heads of business development and real estate for the mine, a schoolteacher and the head of the trade union. Also, political leaders from the Labor Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and – the newest act in town – Miljopartiet De Gronne, the Green Party.



I recognized the Green Party leader, Espen Rotevatn, as the conductor in white gloves. Part of his political mission is to end coal mining on Svalbard forever; yet in his spare time he dons a miner’s outfit and leads his group to harmony.


Sveinung Thesen, the concert MC and an employee of the mining company, explained it best: "Your political beliefs and what you culturally relate to are two different things. I perfectly understand a person can be skeptical toward mining but still be proud of the heritage we have here in Longyearbyen."


Everyone around the table understands that the mines still greatly affect their community. Aleksander Askeland, who works in business development at Store Norske, explained that if the coal mines closed 300–400 jobs would quickly disappear. “This is bad for everybody," he said. "You can’t turn this off in a day.”


Even Rotevatn voted in support of a $70 million loan from the Norwegian government to keep the mine going in the short term. “It seems wrong to me that we do this [coal mining] in the Arctic, in a very special environment ... but a vote against the loan was a vote against Longyearbyen,” he said. Keeping the mine going for now buys time to build a longer-term solution, which may or may not include coal.


Almost a year later, big changes have come. For 2017, Store Norske has decided to double production at Mine 7 and stop production in Svea for three years with the hope that coal prices will rebound. If they do not, Store Norske will close those mines permanently. For now, the company will cut the 300–400 jobs that Aleksund referenced, and by next year the company will have only 95 employees. Elisabeth will still be one of them.


In the meantime, energy diversification is on the table: for example, a test project for solar energy is running in Svea. On the political front, Rotevatn and one other member became Svalbard’s first representatives of the Green Party last fall.



Choral singing is all about a common purpose. In this case, a love of Longyearbyen that includes its past and future. Coal may be leaving center stage, but nobody in the choir underestimates its importance – regardless of their politics.


Politics are unavoidable in a small town, and the Store Norske Mandskor knows when they must be sidelined for the good of community. When I asked Rotevatn what happens when politics meet music, he simply said, “Nothing. We sing, and we drink beer.”


It’s a simple formula, but it seems to be working. They will need to stand strong as coal heads backstage.


Jennifer Kingsley is the founder and project lead for Meet the North , which is sponsored by Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic. Follow her northern adventures on Instagram.


This article originally appeared on Arctic Deeply. For weekly updates about Arctic geopolitics, economy, and ecology, you can sign up to the Arctic Deeply email list.

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Italian Unions Lambast New Museum Boss For Working Too Hard

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ROME, March 5 (Reuters) - Italian unions have lambasted the new museum chief of the world-famous Royal Palace of Caserta for working too hard, prompting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to ride to his defense.


Renzi's government appointed Mauro Felicori five months ago to revive the fortunes of the spectacular, 1,200-room Baroque palace of the Bourbon kings, which like many of the country's artistic and cultural treasures was suffering from decades of neglect and mismanagement.


Local unions however sent a letter to the culture minister, Felicori's boss, complaining that he works late into the evening without the rest of the personnel being informed.


"Such behavior puts the whole structure at risk," said the letter, published in Corriere della Sera daily on Saturday.





In a post on his Facebook page, Renzi said the accusation leveled at Felicori, a 63-year old expert in the management of cultural sites, was ridiculous.


"The unions complaining about Felicori, who was chosen by the government after an international selection process, should realize that the tide has turned. The fun's over," Renzi said.


Visitors to the Caserta palace, a Unesco World Heritage site often referred to as Italy's own Versailles, increased 70 percent in February from a year earlier, with revenues up 105 percent, he added.


"The director is simply doing his job. And we all stand by him, without fear."


The national leader of Italy's biggest labor group CGIL, Susanna Camusso, distanced herself from the complaints against Felicori.


"Mistakes must be acknowledged and those unions are wrong," Camusso tweeted. (Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Ros Russell)


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Robert Carlock On 'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,' Political Comedy And Returning To Multi-Cam Sitcoms

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Robert Carlock is responsible for several of your televised comedy obsessions: He wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and "Friends" before becoming one of the head honchos on "30 Rock" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." This weekend, the first movie he's written, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot," again finds him in the company of frequent collaborator Tina Fey. 


In "Foxtrot," Fey plays Kim Barker (Baker in the movie), whose 2011 memoir The Taliban Shuffle recounted her experiences as an unfulfilled TV journalist who hesitantly accepts a role as a war correspondent in the Middle East. The Huffington Post sat down with Carlock a few weeks after CBS green-lit his first multi-cam sitcom (another Fey union) since "Joey" crashed and burned in 2006. We talked to Carlock about his approach to the light drama of "Foxtrot" and what he thinks about the state of the multi-cam landscape.


I know studios are struggling to market adult dramedies right now, but the trailers for this movie are very misleading. The actual movie is so much better!


I think what’s great is that Paramount is committed to making movies like this. These movies don’t get made as much as they did when I was a kid, and not just war comedies, which is a thing, but anything where you have to pay attention. I think it’s probably a hard thing to figure out how to market because I wonder if, just personally, as a viewer and as a writer, people are used to receiving these kinds of movies and whether they have the shorthand to understand what this is. It is dark and light, and it is more naturalistic than just a comedy. It’s not a rom-com, but it has those elements. That’s what I loved about writing it: It’s about people living in this situation, and people, wherever they are, do funny things. They fall in love, they make mistakes, they have work problems -- even if a work problem could be getting killed.


That’s a pretty big work problem.


Yeah, that’s a pretty big one. And how do you cope with that? What kind of behavior does that bring out? Because, at the end of the day, people are people. I loved writing it because Kim’s book is funny but also sad and frustrating and all of the things that I think we’ve experienced being in the Middle East for well more than a decade. So to answer your question, I hope people show up because I really like it and I think it was a hard movie to name for those same reasons. You don’t want to tell people it’s a hilarious comedy, you don’t want to tell people it’s a dark drama, you don’t want it to feel like it’s political.


Is that why you switched from "The Taliban Shuffle" to "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"? 


Yeah, and that wasn’t my decision, but it also did reference something specific in the book that was her dual life between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and this movie is all about Afghanistan. To that end, it didn’t mean anything anymore. So that was the first place where that title fell apart. But also, yeah, having Taliban in the title would suggest something preachier.



With a movie like this, you have to make a decision whether to lean in to the violent political background or to create a plot that's almost an antidote to that landscape?


Right, I think you’re touching on something that I was very conscious of, which was there are things that are inevitably political in their nature, even if the movie doesn’t take a side. My first draft, I think, was around 300 pages. I was like, “Well, OK.” There were threads that just had to go away and there were things where I just felt like I was saying the same thing 100 times. My hope was that this individual person’s experience could be hopeful, that she could come out of it intact or better having had the experience. That was sort of as close to a point as I wanted to get. I hope the sweetness isn’t cloying. I was conscious of, “OK, how do you tell an Afghanistan story that isn’t simply, 'Oh my God, we’re still there and we went to Iraq." I wanted to stay focused on Tina's character, and I wanted to be able to suggest that, in spite of the frustrations and the hardships, she was able to return to some version of her life. 


And there's so much low-hanging fruit to reach for when it comes to depicting cultural divides. 


I have met and talked to a lot of Afghans, and they have a sense of humor. They're people. And it’s very easy to either ignoble or demonize the other, especially when it’s a world where you’ve been at war for 15 years. There was a scene that didn’t make the movie that Kim came and told me about that wasn’t in the book, where she and some friends were at a café and she was complaining that she hadn’t learned any of the Dari swear words and made [Christopher Abbott's character] teach her. You never do that -- you’re talking to a woman, teaching her all these terrible words. He was just laughing and she was laughing, and the table next to them was offended. We shot a version of that scene, which I think was at least good on a character-actor standpoint, to have that interaction of, “Oh OK, we’ve broken though this barrier.”


I think people find a lot of humor wherever they go. Whatever situation they’re in, funny things happen. They use humor to express themselves, even if it’s gallows humor. And certainly the Afghan characters couldn’t be separate from that. I think it was very important that he not just be the person quoting poetry to her.


After running "30 Rock" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," how easy is it to hand over a script and let someone else take the reins?


You know, that’s a great question. First of all, those guys are great and I just trusted them implicitly. I had Tina in there, too! It was a little weird, and yet at the same time, when I got used to it, it was sort of freeing. I would wake up in the morning and go, “Well, maybe I’ll have to adjust some dialogue or something today,” but I don’t have to have a meeting with props and I don’t have to think about making the day. I can just kind of watch it. And sometimes you’d be sitting there watching it and saying, “Why are they doing that? Oh OK, they’re going to get it around the other side,” or whatever it is. You can’t turn that brain off, and it took a little getting used to. Some days you’re just blowing up a car. So you say, “Yeah, I’ll drive out to the desert and watch a car get blown up.” 


It’s interesting that you are going the multi-cam route next. It seems to antithetical to your other recent shows. Are you excited for the transition?


When you have that three-joke-a-page or five-joke-a-page rhythm, like we do on our TV shows, it’s hard to make adjustments in TV. You know, my first shows, “SNL” and then “Friends” -- and “Dana Carvey” before that -- were in front of an audience. “SNL,” of course, is live. That’s what the “L” stands for.


Oh, OK!


Yeah, people aren’t aware. And I love those show nights, both on “SNL” and on “Friends.” That’s a place where, when a joke doesn’t work for an audience, you’re pitching live and you’re doing the scene again and getting different jokes. When that experience can be communicated, I think you have, even at home, a different relationship with those characters when it works. We did a multi-cam last year with a guy named Matt Hubbard, too. I think Tina, coming from improv, knows that feeling of doing a show. If you can get that to communicate through the screen, it’s a different and, in its way, a better experience. It’s like communicating what it’s like to be at a play or another live performance. That’s a long-winded way of saying I’m a believer in multi-cam. I can’t say there’s a ton that I watch right now, so our hope is to do something that is worth watching.


So can you do "30 Rock" with an audience? Can you keep it edgy and multi-cam at the same time?


I don’t think it can be that, exactly. Even when we did the live “30 Rock” episodes, they couldn’t really be “30 Rock.” You don’t have the tools visually and you don’t have the same room to tell a story and to do jokes. Inevitably, it is a little different. But can you do it different in a way that our seven fans will follow us? We're going to try.


"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is now in theaters.


This interview has been edited and condensed.

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These 'Sleep Levitation' Photos Show The Exquisite Bliss Of Bedtime

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There are few things more satisfying than crawling into bed after a long day.


Despite that fact, busy schedules make it increasingly easy to think of sleep as a luxury rather than a necessity. Missing a few hours here and there won't hurt you, right? False. 


It's important to recognize sleep as a vital (and wonderful) part of your day. It's widely accepted that getting quality rest improves virtually every facet of life. Studies have shown that getting consistent, good sleep can boost mental health, clear the mind, help to maintain a healthy weight and improve mood. It may even help you live longer.


To showcase the beautiful refuge of sleep, Huffington Post photographer Damon Dahlen captured people "levitating"over their beds, a technique he's known for -- and it looks totally magical.


Relish bedtime like the sleepyheads in the photos below. Your body and mind will thank you.



Also on HuffPost:


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