Perhaps the difference between art and political art lies in the fact that the former gives something to the world, while the latter borrows something from the world and gives it back. Over the past five years of the Syrian war, many artists and designers have documented their pain in their own way, which is fitting since an act of political art was at the heart of the uprising.

On February 16, 2011, 15-year-old Bashir Abazid and his friends painted several walls of his hometown of Daraa with revolutionary slogans: “The people want the fall of the regime” and “Your turn is coming, doctor,” in reference to President Bashar al-Assad, once a practicing ophthalmologist. Syrian security forces made an example of the children, detaining them and torturing them for more than a month.

The news of the detention and torture of the students shocked the country, and is now widely considered one of the main events that sparked the Syrian uprising. Shortly after the incident, street artists all over the region started painting the walls of their cities with similar slogans.

Over the past five years of war, political art has come to become part of the landscape of the conflict, both on the ground in bombed out cities and in the digital world, where different kinds of battles are waged.

Digital art, for example, which doesn’t require workshops or studios to produce, and can be distributed across various online platforms that reach millions of people, has become increasingly popular in Syria and other post-Arab Spring countries.

Visual arts in Syria have also taken a strongly political turn. Artists such as Youssef Abdelkie have paved the way for a younger generation of aspiring artists to use art to illustrate their feelings about the war. Abdelkie, who was detained by the Syrian government in 2013 for declaring his support for the Syrian revolution, has become well known for his dark and gloomy paintings and mural depicting the woes of war and loss.

Another artist, Abdalla Omari, a painter and filmmaker from Damascus, has also become famous for his series of war-inspired portraits. His portrait of Nayef – a young boy who was killed in 2013 after having survived the death of 40 of his family members – paints a powerful reality of millions of Syria’s children. For Abdalla, the act of revolt is a form of art in itself. “Art is rebellion against rules and norms, and an attempt to construct new rules and norms,” he said. “That’s why the documentation through art began from the moment these kids in Daraa wrote the slogans on the walls."

The act of creating art, for him, is directly linked to the revolt, and his work as an artist is merely a reaction to “the bigger masterpiece, which is the revolution.”

The Syrian crisis, said Abdalla, has put Syrian artists under a spotlight, giving them exposure and pushing them to work harder to deliver their messages. “In my opinion, voices of artists reverberate louder than others,” he said.

Sedki Alimam, a young graphic designer who fled his hometown of Aleppo in 2012, began publishing posters as events escalated in his country. For Sedki, art became a tool to express the overlooked reality on the ground: “There are no innocent armed men in Syria,” he told Syria Deeply.

When it comes to using art as a documentation tool, he believes that the focus should be on all sides taking part in the conflict. “I am with the Syrian Revolution, and anyone who sees my work can easily tell. However, I am against considering the involvement of foreign parties as a solution to the Syrian regime,” Sedki said.

Syria’s problem, Sedki said, is greater than Bashar al-Assad’s government. “The regime we are fighting is not Bashar al-Assad. We are fighting an entire system … Assad is just a puppet.”

In Sedki’s recent project, titled “Kingdom of Hyenas,” he replaces the heads of leaders on all warring sides with vicious-looking animals.

“It shows all fighting factions as monstrous creatures, mercilessly killing innocents, and stealing everything they lay their hands on,” he said. In today’s Syria, said Sedki, human concepts such as morality, justice and dignity are unheard of.

Fares Cachoux, a Syrian artist and graphic designer from Homs, is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized names in the Syrian visual arts scene. He was dubbed the “Designer of The Revolution” for his series of simple, yet powerful posters that offer a timeline of the country’s journey from civil uprising to bloody civil war.

Cachoux’s works have been showcased in numerous art galleries and exhibitions in Europe, where he hopes the world will see the heartbreaking story of his people and his country.

His striking artworks capture everything – from the Syrian government’s crackdown on activists, the Houla massacre, the rise of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, and the Russian government’s support of Assad.

Fares is a strong believer in the vitality of imagery in today’s digital world and the power of art and visual forms of communication in documenting war. “What we are witnessing today is a reinforcement of the image,” he told Syria Deeply. “We live in a society of pictures, of videos, of screens.”

Fares believes that the war in Syria, which has claimed more casualties than any other war in the 21st century and has produced more refugees and displaced people than World War II, is a “turning point in the history of war documentation.”

“For the first time, we have millions of pictures and millions of hours of recordings depicting a conflict from the very beginning,” he said.

Unlike World War II, where events were covered solely by print and state media and often took the form of propaganda, information from Syria is reaching the world in a faster, more direct and sometimes more reliable way. “It’s as if the world is able to watch the war live as it happens,” said Fares.

Visual art also plays a vital role in sending out a message to the world using a universal language. “You don’t need to be a Syrian or an expert on Syria in order to understand a simple poster,” he said.

For Fares, the job will not end with the end of the conflict. “The role of Syrian artists is, and will be, telling the story of the Syrian Revolution. Today, and years after the war is over, we will see hundreds and thousands of artworks, each showing the conflict in its own way. From Daraa’s children [in 2011], to the final solution to the crisis, we will see a very clear timeline consisting of works of art."

Despite the fading memory of the peaceful revolution, Syrian artists believe that years from now, the artistic memory of Syria will bear witness to the uprising turned civil war turned multi-pronged proxy war that has torn the nation apart. 

This article originally appeared on Syria Deeply. For weekly updates about the war in Syria, you can sign up to the Syria Deeply email list.

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Without distinction and beyond any hierarchal structures, Maxi Cohen has photographed every public restroom she's encountered throughout her travels. Whether together with film stars or cleaning staff, she has fulfilled her distinct artistic mission. The photographer's shots pay no attention to superstructures, instead they tell the tale of women just as they are behind the scenes.

In "Ladies Rooms Around the World," Cohen's lens is always directed at the mirror, where she appears as an intruder in a private world, uncovering the daily rituals that are repeated across the globe, from glamorous ceremonies in Los Angeles to airport restrooms in New York. Cohen immortalizes whomever she encounters in her democratic approach to the photoshoot. Each scene is treated with care and a certain reverence, whether on tour in Australia or in the discotheques of Zambia, restrooms at the Cannes Film Festival, bathrooms at a Samba school in Rio, or a casino toilet in France. 

It all began in 1978 at the Miami Film Festival Festival, Cohen writes of her remarkable project: "To escape the boring awards dinner at the hotel ballroom, I retreated to the ladies room. Enchanted by the octogenarians adjusting their corsets and false eyelashes, I took a camera from my purse and photographed the camaraderie of their tribal dance within this temple of porcelain and silver." 

The artist writes of the intimacy and vulnerability she discovered in these rooms around the world. The resultant photographs are undeniably intimate, their eras suggested by the chromatic differences apparent from one shot to the next. Warm colors alternate with cool shades, marking places and decades, but the protagonist remains the same: the female universe, told through the beauty of its own rituals.

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

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Russian mom Yuliya Skorobogatova thinks her newest photography project sums up parenting quite well.

As a student at the School of Visual Arts in Moscow, she created a series of selfie stick photos that document her chaotic life with her 1-year-old and 13-year-old daughters. From the early morning madness to food spills to the total lack of privacy, the scenarios depicted in the photos are all-too-familiar sights to parents with young children.

"I wanted to look at my life from the outside," Skorobogatova told The Huffington Post. Though many of the photos and captions in the "#selfiettes" series are hilarious and sarcastic, the photographer also offered a more earnest takeaway for parents. "Children grow up very quickly and we need to appreciate every moment of our lives spent with them," she said.

Keep scrolling for a look at Skorobogatova's selfie stick photos and their accompanying captions.

H/T BoredPanda

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Mental illness is often linked with greater creativity, but it's time to stop buying into the misconception.

Mental health disorders are serious issues that should receive proper medical treatment. Eschewing medication or therapy in order to be more artistically inclined isn't just a sign of warped priorities -- it's actually based on bad information. 

As Jacqueline Novak, comedian and author of How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows, points out, the idea that mastery comes from misery is actually rather dangerous. In the video above, Novak nails the problem with the creativity and mental illness connection in a single monologue:

"If we cured breast cancer, would people say, 'Thank God we didn't cure this back in the '80s, otherwise we wouldn't have the Susan G. Komen Foundation?'"  

She's got a point. No matter which way you spin it, getting treatment for mental health is always the right option.

Watch the clip to hear more from Novak on the creativity and mental illness myth.

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Are you a creative person who wishes your personal expressions of originality and imagination could transcend the boundaries of time and space?

Well, NASA wants to help you achieve that lofty goal. Literally.

In September, NASA will launch its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on the first U.S. mission to collect samples of an asteroid and return them to Earth for study. The public is invited to submit art work about what exploration means to them, which will be saved on a computer chip and stored on the spacecraft.

"Space exploration is an inherently creative activity," Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement. "We are inviting the world to join us on this great adventure by placing their art work on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, where it will stay in space for millennia."

The spacecraft already carries a chip with more than 442,000 names that were submitted last year through NASA and The Planetary Society's "Messages to Bennu" campaign.

The target asteroid, Bennu, is named for an Egyptian deity associated with the sun and the creation of Earth. That's apropos, as mission scientists hope the samples retrieved during the mission will provide important clues of how our solar system formed and evolved.

Bennu -- which measures approximately 538 yards in diameter -- passes close to Earth every six years, meaning it grazed us by about 22,000 miles in 2013.

Check out the video below for a preview of the OSIRIS-REx journey to Bennu:

It will take seven years for OSIRIS-REx to carry out its primary goal of bringing Bennu samples -- about 60 grams, or 2.1 ounces -- back to Earth, according to Erin Morton, part of the OSIRIS-REx mission's Office of the Principal Investigator at the University of Arizona.

"We arrive at Bennu in 2018, spend a year surveying the asteroid, then take our sample in 2019," Morton told The Huffington Post in an email. "Once the sample is safely stowed, we have to wait until the asteroid comes near enough to Earth for the spacecraft to easily return -- which ends up being a little over a year. We leave the asteroid in early 2021 and return to Earth in late 2023."

When the mission is over, only the sample return capsule will fall back to Earth, so that the submitted art work from Earthlings will still be in space.

"The spacecraft itself will remain in space in a safe orbit around the sun, and without the weathering effects of the atmosphere, it has the potential to exist for thousands of years," Morton said.

Do you feel inspired now? If you've created something that you'd like to send to the stars rather than see sitting on a museum wall, submit your sketch, photograph, graphic, poem, song, short video or any other personal artistic expression to We The Explorers.

The submission deadline is Sunday, March 20, 2016, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. 

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England has something for everyone: the tudor home of Shakespeare, a football match at Manchester United, even the small chance of spotting the royal family. But let's face it, a picture with a red phone box is the real reason you want to hop the pond!

Once named the greatest British design in history, the red phone box is a beloved icon.

At the height of popularity there were once 92,000 phone boxes throughout the U.K. In 2015, the number of working boxes dropped to 9,400. According to a report British Telcom gave The Independent, “more than two-thirds of phone boxes now fail to cover their costs, including 12,000 rural kiosks where less than one call a month is made.” BT’s recent efforts to modernize these boxes in a cellphone age include solar-powered boxes to charge cell phones, wifi and defibrillators. 

Many of the remaining boxes are poorly maintained, largely due to cost, vandalism repairs have cost BT £5.2 million or roughly $7.5 million.

British communities are taking matters into their own hands with the Adopt a Kiosk program, which includes refurbishing decommissioned boxes into libraries, cafes, or galleries. BT has also started selling off red phone boxes, increasingly to foreign markets. 

With a decline in demand, an unprofitable system and high demands for repair, the days of the British red phone booth may be numbered. London's calling, book your flight now! 

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Los Angeles Shakespeare lovers, rejoice.

In honor of the famed poet's birthday (and the 400th anniversary of his death) on April 23, Britweek -- an organization whose goal is to educate the general public about the contributions of the British -- is putting on a star-studded evening in Beverly Hills titled "Murder, Lust and Madness." 

Throughout the night, Sir Patrick Stewart and 25 other actors will be performing excerpts of "Macbeth," "Othello," "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night," "As You Like It," "The Merchant of Venice," "King Lear," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and more. 

“The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death will be marked with celebrations, performances, lectures and discussions all around the globe,” said the show's writer, producer and director Louis Fantasia in a press statement. "Literally all the world is still Shakespeare’s stage, and I am thrilled that we are kicking off this 10th anniversary year of BritWeek with an evening of some of Shakespeare’s most passionate plays."

In addition to the one-night-only performance, BritWeek will present around 40 events throughout Los Angeles, Calif., during the two–week celebration. For more info on the event including how to purchase tickets, go here. 

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Two groundbreaking works, together at last.

"Hamilton" is a hit Broadway musical with a hip-hop twist. "Space Jam" is the story of Michael Jordan getting sucked through a golf hole to save the Looney Tunes from aliens. And now, they've finally been brought together in one glorious mashup:"Space Jamilton." Just like it was meant to be.

"I have the honor to be your obedient servant," reads the caption under the mashup video on Matthew Ahn's YouTube channel. Ahn is truly doing humanity a favor. Alexander Hamilton's story from creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda comes to life over the classic track from Quad City DJ's. The line, "Shoot, baby, shoot," has never seemed more appropriate.

So, everybody, get up! It's time for a mashup now!

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First of all, of course movies as you know them are dead. Nothing stays exactly the same over time. But when talking about studios going through the motions of making motion pictures, you could rightfully wonder if that routine has led to a decay in form. Studios are businesses with incentive to find a formula that works, and then mindlessly repeat that formula. The writers behind the movies can choose this path as well. So what happens when they don't?

The beloved experimental screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's writing is purposefully designed to be completely inaccessible to anybody but him. Or at least, his physical handwriting is.

When Kaufman first started going to coffee shops and writing in notebooks, he'd purposely scribble his notes illegibly. He didn't want somebody to be able to read over his shoulder. Not because he necessarily wanted to keep his work secret, but because he was embarrassed. Though he no longer feels as shy about his work, the chicken scratch continues. It became a part of his routine, even if the original intention is lost. His own harmless decay of form. It's just "the way I write now," he told HuffPost in a room at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York. "I'm just sloppy."

Those scribbled notes have turned into many prize-winning screenplays, including "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," for which the Academy awarded him Best Original Screenplay in 2005. His screenplays "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" were also nominated for the same award in 2000 and 2003, respectively. 

Kaufman was at the Crosby Street Hotel, however, to talk about his latest Academy Award-nominated project, 2015's "Anomalisa," which he both wrote and co-directed. It was the very last day of the press cycle Kaufman had embarked upon for the movie, along with co-director Duke Johnson.

Put as simply as possible, "Anomalisa" is about a married, middle-aged man who spends a night at a Cincinnati hotel where he tries to find love. But like so many of Kaufman's movies, there's much more than that. In the case of "Anomalisa," every character in the story -- save for the protagonist and one other -- has the same exact voice and looks more or less the same. Also, the whole thing is stop motion, and the movie is rated R for very detailed puppet sex.

The "Anomalisa" interviews over the last half year were largely focused on how hard it had been to make the movie. "'Anomalisa' literally almost destroyed the studio, multiple times," Johnson claimed in a podcast with The New Yorker. He added that the process involved "struggling everyday, sometimes crying in the parking lot," and joked, "you couldn't get [Kaufman] out of the parking lot."

With a budget of around $8 million, the project is still far from making its money back, only pulling in $3 million at the box office to date. ("Anomalisa" just debuted on Digital HD.) An Academy Award nomination and a 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes does not always translate into money.

Johnson laments that the Internet seemed to wreck his movie's chances of earning a profit. He recalls discovering for himself that BitTorrent and other forms of illegal downloading particularly "hurts a small movie." 

This current economic reality of the industry doesn't seem suited for a movie that insists on breaking formula.

"But I'm writing a novel now," Kaufman told HuffPost. "It [is] kind of a way out. Or at least theoretically a way out from this business." Kaufman is still writing a separate screenplay for "a sprawling satire about the United States," but he's unsure if he'll get the money to make it. In any case, for the cost of presumably somewhere around $10 and in a format that isn't quite so easily stolen, you will finally be able to read something Kaufman has written.

Given the chance for closing statements to end the "Anomalisa" press tour, Kaufman and Johnson decided to air grievances. Johnson exspressed frustration with people who "fancy themselves cinephiles" yet don't go to the theater in droves to support independent movies.

"Otherwise, the independent film will, if not die ..." Johnson trailed off, before backtracking slightly and conceding that even if making a movie top to bottom in the traditional sense may be becoming harder, the form probably won't fully die due to the increasing ease of the technicalities of filming.

The director expressed concern that the fate of independent film was to be dictated by whatever websites -- perhaps Funny or Die and BuzzFeed -- could afford to create. "And then people will only be able to see 'Star Wars' and Marvel movies in theaters, which is great and I like to do that, but I like to be able to do it all," Johnson said.

Kaufman agreed with Johnson. "There are not $20 million dollar movies anymore. I mean virtually none," he said. "A studio won't do it and independent people don't have that money. So they don't exist, [but] used to exist in studios."

The "$20 million movie" is how Kaufman made a name for himself -- "Eternal Sunshine" was made for $20 million, "Adaptation" for $19 million. Compared to years past, low-budget hits seem to be on the rise. (Though for what it's worth, the most recent Academy Award for Best Picture went to 2015's "Spotlight," a $20 million movie.)

"I wish that there was sort of a celebration of diversity in terms of content in movies," said Kaufman, going along with Johnson's superhero point. "I feel like that is a big big issue with our society and I feel like we've been trained as people to sort of go where the big money is and go where the corporations want us to and it's, I don't know, I find it disheartening."

Maybe Kaufman and Johnson are coming off a particularly disheartening few years in the movie business. But do we really want an industry that can't accommodate a screenwriter that has written -- according to Writers Guild of America -- three of the 101 greatest screenplays of all time? A writer whose work gets nominated by the Academy almost every time? Even when 2008's "Synecdoche, New York," didn't earn quite the same accolades, Roger Ebert -- arguably the most famous movie critic of all time -- still named it the best film of the decade.

When asked if he’s ever thought of what a dream $100 million Charlie Kaufman movie would look like, the writer initially said, “Well, the novel ...”

The upcoming Kaufman novel in his own words “is by design something I think is impossible to make into a movie. Sort of the opposite of what you're usually trying to do with a novel these days. It's like, it cannot be made. And that's what I set out to do."

And what's it about?

"It's about a movie," the writer said. "An impossible movie." 

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After leaving Harry Potter fans to subsist on rereads and tiny snippets about Professor McGonagall from Pottermore for what felt like decades, J.K. Rowling has been back with a vengeance.

A new play, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," will give fans a look into the life of Harry the family man, chronicling his life as a busy Auror, husband, and father dealing with a troubled son. The upcoming Potter world film, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," starring Eddie Redmayne, will bring the wizarding world to the big screen for the first time since "Deathly Hallows." And to prepare for the latter project, Rowling recently published the four-part story "History of Magic in North America," which glosses over the Salem witch trials, the Magical Congress of the United States of America, the wizarding school of Ilvermorny, and skinwalkers. 

Oh, yes, that last one: One of four parts of Rowling's magical history addressed magic in the Native American "community," as she put it, including the Navajo tradition of skinwalkers, which Rowling wrote as legends surrounding Native Animagi, born of rumors spread by jealous medicine men.

Rowling's entire section on Native American magic, which appeared on Pottermore last week, ignored the plethora of different, unique tribal nations across the continent in favor of vague generalizations and stereotypes about Native magic, which quickly drew backlash from Native leaders and activists.

"We as Indigenous peoples are constantly situated as fantasy creatures,” wrote Cherokee scholar Adrienne Keene on her blog, Native Appropriations. “But we’re not magical creatures, we’re contemporary peoples who are still here, and still practice our spiritual traditions, traditions that are not akin to a completely imaginary wizarding world.”

She wasn’t alone; Keene's response to Rowling’s “History of Magic in North America” circulated widely, along with social media posts, blogs, and articles by many Native American readers disturbed by the shallow, generalized inclusion of Native tradition and stereotypes in the story. First Nations artist and author Aaron Paquette put it bluntly in an article for the Ottawa Citizen: "This is colonialism. Simply put, it’s cultural theft and these are not her stories to tell." 

It’s pretty clear, to anyone paying attention, that Rowling messed up.

Reading and listening to Native American and First Nations activists, authors, and readers reacting to the treatment of their cultural heritage, certain important points keep emerging: “History of Magic in North America” relied on worn-out stereotypes that erase tribal distinctions, ignore the true cultures and traditions of different nations, and reinforce conceptions of Native American people as mystical beings rather than real people who continue to exist today. The story was shallow and poorly researched, not a detailed and thoughtful exploration of the histories of the peoples who have lived on this continent for centuries.

Scholar Amy H. Sturgis, who is of Cherokee descent, told me, “Some of her descriptions -- the claim that the Native American wizarding community was ‘particularly gifted in animal and plant magic’ for instance -- refer less to Native American cultural traditions than to stereotypes of the mystical Noble Savage that have been used for centuries by non-Natives to make Native Americans seem exotic and Other.”

Regarding the skinwalker narrative, which has garnered particular outrage, she noted that it was particularly troubling to see Rowling make use of a Navajo tradition "as legend, a smokescreen for 'real' magical history, and to divorce this tradition from its specific origins and apply it to all of Native America as a whole."

One thing's certain: Rowling didn't have much idea what she was writing about, and it showed. "I don't think she has the knowledge necessary to do justice to marginalized peoples," Debbie Reese, a Nambe Pueblo Indian scholar, told me. (Reese writes the blog American Indians in Children’s Literature, which carefully reviews young people's literature with representations of American Indians to tease out the often glaring misrepresentations, appropriations, and damaging stereotypes within.) 

Last week, I wrote about how the original Harry Potter series was soaked in British culture, specifically the boarding school narrative traditional to British children’s literature. Taking the wizarding world out of its cozy Hogwarts nook seemed, to me, unwise; it removed the school story structure that made the series so familiar and homey, as well as pushed Rowling herself out of her comfort zone. Suddenly, she’s writing in more than passing about North American magical culture, and what, really, does Rowling know about North American culture?

Given that Rowling's lived experience and cultural heritage is white and British, and that the original series succeeded within the confines of a British boarding school setting, perhaps it makes more sense for her to stick with it. One reader, Milana, had a different response to my article:

Though some people of color appeared at Hogwarts over the years, in non-starring roles, the setting of the fantasy series that has dominated the YA landscape to an astonishing degree is deeply Anglo, predominantly white, and culturally homogenous. As Milana and plenty of other readers saw it, why shouldn’t fans from other races, cultures, and continents see how the parallel magical world would look in their own societies? 

Yet, at the same time, the aforementioned outcry over the inept inclusion of Native peoples' traditions and lore in “History of Magic in North America” showed clearly that many observers saw little to appreciate in Rowling’s incorporation of their cultures into the Harry Potter universe.

But now that we’re having this conversation -- what next?

Was there a way for Rowling to write a history of magic in North America without writing this“History of Magic in North America,” without either appropriating the culture of, or totally erasing, the Indigenous peoples who make up most of the history of the continent? What should future writers keep in mind when writing from outside Native communities? And, more generally, how can the literary world expand the representation of Native American and First Nations characters in fantasy YA without proliferating such catastrophes?

Milana, the tweeter who originally got us thinking about whether Harry Potter itself should be globalized for the sake of diversity, and who preferred we not include her last name, told me over email that "History of Magic in North America" "definitely read as appropriation, unfortunately,” but she believes "with assistance, [Rowling] could've preserved and honored Native American folklore rather than make them out to be a mythical culture that no longer exists.”

When it comes to those elements of a deep and spiritual tradition you either form relationships and get permission, or you leave it alone.
Aaron Paquette

Sturgis had a similar take. “Discussing North America requires discussing Native America,” she told me, pointing out that the story was an obvious step in setting the stage for the upcoming "Harry Potter" film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which is set in North America.

“It would have been unthinkable for Rowling to ignore the First Nations on this continent while building her magical history," she added. "That said, her treatment did not display quite the same careful research, respectful touch, and attention to detail shown in her past handling of other world culture. In that sense, I was disappointed.”

In past research, Sturgis has written extensively about the intersection of Native American issues and fantasy, including Harry Potter specifically, and she’s argued in the past that non-Native authors shouldn’t be excluded from writing about the culture. In a 2009 interview, she told digital magazine Journey to the Sea, “There is a great debate about who has the right to draw on Native American traditional material, about who is authentic and what is credible. These questions for the most part disturb me.” Though slapdash uses of Native American tradition and history, like Rowling’s skinwalker tale, proliferate, she explained, “I do not believe the solution is to prevent non-Native authors from accessing and being inspired by this material.” 

Specifically, Rowling would have done well to reach out to scholars and leaders from the Native cultures she planned to draw from in her fiction, argued Paquette. "Taking an entire continent's worth of distinct nations and lumping them together was both sadly familiar to Indigenous people but somewhat surprising since it came from an author who seemed to care about justice and human rights," he told me. "Reaching out to the communities you intend to fictionalize would appear to be one of the first things an author with her means might do."

He emphasized that the outcry wasn't "because Rowling isn't 'Native' and she dares write about 'Native' stories [...] When it comes to those elements of a deep and spiritual tradition you either form relationships and get permission, or you leave it alone." He even specified that this extended to distinctions between Native nations. "If I decided to totally claim another Indigenous culture's stories and rewrite them, it wouldn't matter that I was also Indigenous," he said.

Not everyone can get behind that philosophy, however.

Reese told me frankly that she doesn’t believe there’s a need for outsiders to try to write about Native peoples, nor to include them as characters in a white-dominated franchise. “What she has created has nothing to do with us,” said Reese, referring to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. “Now, it may strike her (and others) as a mark of diversity and inclusion to have Native ‘wizards’ but doing that is simply putting us on her stage as decoration for a story that has nothing to do with us.”  

What’s more, Reese said, she’s seen a great deal of agreement among Native leadership. “I believe that, if she had talked with Native scholars who work in literature and media, and Native leaders, she would have heard a very strong ‘don't do that,’” she explained, citing numerous instances of both prominent leaders and individuals on Twitter making clear they preferred Rowling not even attempt to write about their culture. “Stories like the ones she did sell,” Reese pointed out, “and things that sell get done over and over again. They overwhelm and overshadow Native writers who submit manuscripts to publishers that are rejected because they don't fit the expectations of the market.”

Rowling is simply the most prominent and influential example of an all-too-common story -- a fiction by a non-Native writer that negligently mishandles cultural traditions and lore, while receiving more institutional support and marketing reach than Native writers are likely to ever get.

It’s not just that this individual story is deeply troubling, but that Rowling’s immense market power lifts the flawed, stereotypical portrayal of Native peoples into the forefront, reaffirming a long history of white-narrated, ignorant portrayals and drowning out the voices of Native authors working from a place of deep cultural knowledge and personal investment.

Fictions work if the reality of the peoples whose lives are being fictionalized is well known by readers who have a firm grasp on the subject matter from the start. With Native peoples, that firm grasp of who we are is not there.
Debbie Reese

As is often the case, however, Rowling’s enormous influence could easily work to the good. 

Milana saw a path for Rowling to use her almost supernatural clout to help the Potterverse expand in a thoughtful, sensitive manner: “[The] only other way I could see it is if she gave other writers of color her blessing to develop the [international] schools along a central concept,” she suggested. That approach certainly seems like a long shot, but it wouldn’t be the first time a big-name author allowed her name brand as a seal of approval on series additions written by other authors.

"I think you'd have many Indigenous authors jumping at the chance," said Paquette. Fans might balk at a non-Rowling Harry Potter, but the advantage of seeing another magical school built out with the same degree of bred-in-the-bone cultural knowledge that she brought to Hogwarts could trump that.

Putting aside Harry Potter cowriters, farfetched as it sounds, there are already many Native writers, writers of color, and writers from various marginalized communities who are drawing from their own experiences and cultural lore to create original fantasy worlds. Paquette, who is Cree and Metis, is the author of an award-winning YA fantasy novel, Lightfinder, which draws from Cree traditions. But Native authors often struggle in a white-dominated literary industry. “I don't think there's a need for coverage from a white perspective, but all could use some endorsement by the likes of Rowling,” said Milana. Using her unparalleled reputation to amplify the stories of Native fantasy authors, instead of drowning them out with another half-baked, stereotype-ridden Native fantasy from her perspective, would be a positive step.

Sturgis told me she still hopes that future fictional explorations of the Harry Potter wizarding world in North America will improve on what we’ve seen so far. “Painting all of Native America as one monolithic whole with the same traditions and beliefs is very problematic. Rowling did not take similar shortcuts with her handling of various other (often but not exclusively European) cultures and heritages,” she pointed out. “The question is,” she said, “whether, in fleshing out information Rowling had already teased about magical North Americas, she will hold herself to the same standard of careful research and respectful execution that she’s previously observed in her world building.”

A clear solution may not exist as to how to totally avoid such debacles in the future; as Paquette put it, "you'll never please all the people all the time." Many Native scholars, authors, and activists would prefer that non-Indigenous authors not venture to write about Native peoples at all, while others see active, compassionate communication and collaboration as the ideal approach.

Solving the problem starts, though, with listening to what people like Reese and Paquette are saying -- with the literary industry using what power it has to promote Native authors' representations of their own cultures and mythologies, and with white authors learning the importance of relying on a depth of research and relationship-building with the people they're writing about, rather than resorting to crude stereotypes. 

Unfortunately, the stakes aren't low for Native peoples if high-powered figures like Rowling continue as they have been. 

Reese pointed to the research of Stephanie Fryberg, which suggests that pervasive Native stereotypes in fiction and cultural representation can harm Native youths' self-esteem and ambition. In a study titled "Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots," Fryberg and her coauthors found that exposure to stereotypical Native American mascots limited Native young people's conceptions of their future selves and lowered their senses of community value.

Perpetuating a specific image of Native peoples broadly throughout society -- one that is lacking in appreciation for the multitude of tribal distinctions, the real and rich history of those nations, and the continuing vital presence of Native peoples in North America today -- crowds out more empowering and varied representations of Native Americans that recognize their individual humanity, their real contemporary lives, and the value of their cultures.

"Fictions work if the reality of the peoples whose lives are being fictionalized is well-known by readers who have a firm grasp on the subject matter from the start," explained Reese. "With Native peoples, that firm grasp of who we are is not there. What most people 'know' is mystical, romantic, tragic, noble ... but not who we are as peoples of today who have a unique status in the U.S."

Now, people around the world might be getting reintroduced to Native American peoples by the force that is Rowling's Harry Potter, and the appropriative and stereotypical treatment of Native communities isn't just a missed opportunity -- it's another massive reinforcement of an actively damaging problem. 

But it's not too late for Rowling to use her powerful Twitter presence and international fame to make a positive difference for Native peoples. Reese suggested that she take the humbling step of openly apologizing and explaining where she went wrong to her readers. “That would help everyone who is impacted by her stories, and, I daresay, it won't hurt her profile, either,” Reese told me. “She can own what she did and use her words to educate and inform readers everywhere.”

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A design collective and a 3D imaging studio have teamed up to show Lesbos, the Greek island now known for being a staging ground in the refugee crisis, like it's never been seen before.

"Where Land Meets Sea" was shot in January and explores the parts of the island that are most pivotal to refugees' experiences. 

The haunting 3D video highlights the island's crucial role as a stop on a long migratory journey into Europe. Discarded life vests -- left behind by the hundreds of thousands of people who have passed through Lesbos on their way to Greece's mainland and then westward into the European Union -- are now a part of the island's landscape.

"The rugged, mountainous landscape of the north is perforated by synthetic piles of survival, ones that challenge its legitimacy over the land," reads a description of the video on Embassy for the Displaced's Facebook page. Embassy for the Displaced is a design-based collective that aims to visually archive the refugee journey and that was involved in producing the video.

An average of 2,000 people arrive on Lesbos each day, the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, told The WorldPost. The island has about 6,000 places, including camps and centers, where refugees can find shelter. 

The island's changing demographics are also shown in this visual representation. Aside from refugees, swarms of volunteers and aid workers --like the rescuers preparing to head out to sea in the clip above -- now inhabit the island.

The project started out as Embassy for the Displaced co-founder Stefanos Levidis' master's thesis at University College London. The art collective later partnered with 3D scanning studio ScanLAB Projects to finish the project.

"Being Greek, we witnessed the exodus that followed first hand, rendering the Greek islands an informal 'gate to Europe,'" Levidis and the collective's co-founder, Sofia Georgovassili, wrote in an email. 

They figured that 3D imaging would be a powerful and unique way to inform people about a place that most have only seen in pictures and videos.

"We are always looking for new ways of representation and cartography, how to best map and portray the crisis that is unfolding in the island of [Lesbos]," they wrote.

ScanLAB Projects often works with architects and artists but never had completed a project like this before. Co-founder William Trossell said the studio had worked on projects with similar design, "but this is the first time it's got more of a humanitarian angle."

Embassy for the Displaced's newest project: making waterproof backpacks out of recycled rubber dinghies and life vests found on Lesbos that they can distribute to refugees.

"The boats the smugglers pack the refugees in are unsafe for the crossing, while most life vests are fake, but their poor quality makes for perfect material for backpacks," the group's co-founders wrote.

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"This is a robbery, gentlemen," one of two thieves allegedly told the pair of young security guards patrolling Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990.

Later that morning, two men walked out with 13 artworks: "Three Mounted Jockeys," "Leaving the Paddock," "Procession on a Road Near Florence" and two studies by Degas; a Shang dynasty vase; "Landscape with an Obelisk" by Govert Flinck; "Chez Tortoni" by Édouard Manet; "A Lady and Gentleman in Black," "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Rembrandt; "The Concert" by Johannes Vermeer; and, somewhat oddly, a finial eagle.

They dressed as police officers to gain access to the building after hours, handcuffed the guards on duty and duct-taped them in the basement while the thieves made off with the art in a red hatchback. Combined, the museum asserts that the lost works are worth around $500 million. It's the largest (that is, most expensive) art theft in U.S. history.

Now, 26 years later, none of the stolen art has been recovered. But museum officials say they are still hopeful for its return. Actually, Gardner museum security director Anthony Amore isn't the least bit concerned with successfully prosecuting any of the criminals involved. 

"We have only one mission," Amore told The Huffington Post. "I could not be any more clear: Our only mission is recovery of the art. We don't even mention 'prosecution' in this building."

The FBI, for its part, maintains an "active and ongoing" investigation, Bureau spokesperson Kristen Setera told HuffPost, remaining "committed to making sure the artwork is returned." Amore pointed out that members of the public could help the museum find the 13 missing works by familiarizing themselves with the images, and sending a tip online or over the phone. 

The security director explained that the museum has received many thousands of tips offering clues to the paintings' whereabouts since their disappearance -- and the tips keep rolling in. Amore and federal authorities are in contact "seven days per week, without exaggeration," Amore said, following up on every single one. (In a 2011 lecture, former head of the National Stolen Art File Lynne Richardson said federal authorities chased leads to Japan, France and Ireland -- even from a psychic in Australia who pointed to a specific New Jersey home. The person living there had taken the remaining contents of the house to a dump upon moving in, but said he "could have seen" a few of the paintings.)

Major leads have included an anonymous note, a credible sighting, and more than one raid through the underworld of Boston crime gangs and beyond. Here is a brief overview:

March 1990

After the robbery, the Gardner museum announced a $1 million reward for the return of the paintings, which has since been upped to $5 million. Authorities immediately had one suspect: Myles Connor, Jr., a well-known art thief who also happened to be in jail at the time. Connor claims that he'd cased the Gardner museum in the late '80s with Boston mobster Bobby Donati, but didn't act. In 2013, Connor told The Patriot Ledger that he suspected his crew of thieves was hired by someone else.

April 1994

Four years after the heist, the Gardner museum received a message from a person claiming they could return the paintings for $2.6 million and legal immunity. The subsequent attention by FBI and other law enforcement apparently spooked that individual after the museum shared his or her letter with authorities to inquire about immunity. Nothing came of the offer.

Late 1997

Vanity Fair published an investigative piece about the heist by Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg in March 1998. Mashberg's story is long and winding, but here's the gist: Months before, he'd met with a man named William P. Youngworth III, part of a Boston art theft ring and an associate of Connor, whose release from prison Youngworth wanted to secure. He allegedly showed Mashberg a rolled-up canvas in a warehouse that appeared, when unrolled, to be the missing Rembrandt seascape. The Gardner museum later stated what Mashberg saw was either the original work or a good copy. 

Authorities, however, did not end up negotiating a deal with Youngworth or Connor -- even after the Herald received paint chips allegedly taken from the stolen works and analyzed them to confirm their authenticity. A separate FBI analysis determined the chips did not belong to a Rembrandt. 

1999 

The FBI contacted two more possible suspects with ties to organized crime, Carmello Merlino and David Turner. The Boston Globe reported that Merlino, now deceased, once attempted to negotiate the artworks' return until he was arrested with Turner, accused of plotting to rob an armored car depot. 

May 2012

A woman told authorities that she once saw her deceased husband, a friend of Merlino, give a Connecticut mobster named Robert Gentile a painting. Authorities raided Gentile's home in Manchester, Connecticut, but turned up nothing. Gentile's lawyer told the Boston Globe in December 2015 that federal authorities are still convinced his client knows the paintings' whereabouts.

March 2013

In a public appeal for help, FBI told the press it had determined the works were moved to "the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions," but still didn't know precisely where. 

August 2015

The FBI stated its certainty that the two thieves who posed as cops were now dead. But the missing works could have changed hands several times.

"The focus of the investigation for many years was: Who did this heist?" FBI assistant special agent Peter Kowenhoven told The Associated Press at the time, adding, "So now the focus of the investigation is the recovery of the art." At the same time, authorities released grainy security video that captured what may have been a dry run for the robbery.

December 2015

The FBI raided the Suffolk Downs horse track in Boston. Since part of the track had been closed when the Gardner heist took place, it might have been a holding place for the works. The investigation, however, turned up nothing.

Amore told HuffPost that he believes the stolen works are still together. Robert Wittman, a former lead of the FBI's Art Crime Team, however, described in his 2011 book Priceless: How I Went Undercover To Rescue The World's Stolen Treasures that at least a few of the paintings had made their way to Europe. During his time at the FBI, leads from international police showed the works were almost certainly in France, but, according to Wittman, a successful seizure didn't happen due to infighting between agencies.

The former FBI agent told HuffPost that he could not say whether any of the works were still overseas. (In his 2013 interview, Connor said the paintings were certainly "all the way around the world," possibly in Saudi Arabia.)

Art theft is a glamorous crime in popular culture: A wealthy patron, with a special place in his heart for Rembrandt, commissions a heist, or some enterprising soul nabs a painting to later use as a bargaining chip. Wittman said he'd never seen a commissioned art theft in his decades-long career at the FBI, calling thieves "better criminals than they are businessmen." And it's true that some thieves have abandoned art, burned it, or were caught in other bungled attempts to offload their ill-gotten goods.

But some hold onto the notion that stolen art can be used as a pawn. In 2004, ABC News reported that Youngworth referred to the Gardner robbery as a "grab and return" crime. Donati, the mobster, supposedly wanted to secure a get-out-of-jail-free card for Italian mob boss Vincent Ferrara, who was to be sentenced to prison within days of the heist.

But even Wittman believes the 13 Gardner works will eventually surface.

"That's the good thing about these artworks. They outlive us," Wittman told HuffPost. "And if anyone wants to profit, they have to keep them in good condition." 

Anyone with information about the Gardner theft is encouraged to submit a tip to the museum at theft@gardnermuseum.org, or to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALLFBI (1-800-225-5325). 

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Once upon a time, approximately 30,000 years ago, in a place now called Willendorf -- located in Austria -- a bold paleolithic artist carved a woman's figure out of oolitic limestone. And bae had a beautiful belly. Now known as "Venus of Willendorf," this iconic artistic depiction of the female form paved the way for countless more. 

Throughout the history of Western artwork, the female nude has remained a constant source of inspiration for artists, whether dead white dudes or contemporary feminist provocateurs. We of the Huffington Post Culture team have, forgive the pun, a soft spot for the many beautiful bellies that pop up along the way. 

As evidenced by the original Venus figurines, the belly has long been a symbol of fertility, abundance, and even pleasure. Whether giving birth or enjoying the delicious delicacies the world has to offer, women and their bodies are often linked to the most profound and sensual pleasures of life. 

Today we're honoring the muses of art history whose bellies cannot and will not be contained. From Rubenesque bombshells to Lucian Freud's fleshy inspirations, the following art historical women are body-positive icons.

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The life and legacy of queer artist Robert Mapplethorpe will be remembered with a hotly-anticipated new documentary this spring. 

While HBO's "Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures" doesn't air until April 4, New Yorkers can get a head start on the celebration this weekend. A special pop-pop installation at Manhattan's Flatiron Plaza North will feature a series of larger-than-life projections as well as a selection of both famous and lesser-known works, accompanied by revealing commentary from the artist himself.

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the two filmmakers behind "Look At The Pictures," said the exhibit proves that even 27 years after Mapplethorpe's death, the artist's work is "more relevant and powerful" than ever. 

"Mapplethorpe himself said that the whole point of art was about opening something up in ourselves," they told The Huffington Post in a statement. "With everything happening in the world today, we must keep our minds and our hearts open." 

Following its stint in New York, the pop-up installation moves to San Francisco's PROXY in Hayes Valley on March 25. 

Check out a series of shots from the installation's debut in Miami below.

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Electronic music fans from all across the world are descending on the sunshine state, taking over Miami and transforming the waterfront of Bayfront Park for Ultra Music Festival. All types of music -- electronic dance music (EDM), that is -- will be present for the massive 3-day festival, expected to bring more than 165,000 neon-outfitted, dance-stepping and fist-pumping fans, that has quickly become the world’s gold standard in the EDM festival world.

The festival is in its 18th year, with each year seeming to be an attempt to outdo the previous one with bigger stages, better lighting displays and more and more top-notch artists. This year, Ultra Live -- the festival’s live-stream experience -- will be cast to over 20 million unique viewers globally.

Ultra Radio -- the festival's audio broadcasting platform -- looks to become “the world's biggest broadcast of electronic music content ever," transmitting live for 8 hours across 50 networks and in 38 countries for all of the Ultra fans who were unable to make it to Miami.

The festival, spanning March 18 to 20 during Miami’s famed Music Week, attracts the biggest names from the DJ world. This year, Martin Garrix, the 19-year-old wunderkind is scheduled to headline Friday’s offerings.

DJ Carl Cox will be holding down the trance- and techno-heavy Carl Cox and Friends stage, with lighting displays pioneered by SJ Lighting capable of transforming your entire outlook on human existence. Stage design revolutionaries Arcadia are set to unveil their Spider stage on North America with nightly landing shows at 8:30 p.m. With artists like Afrojack and Cedric Gervais to Hardwell and Jackmaster spinning their way into the memories of their fans across the 3 days, festivalgoers have to make tough choices, planning out their stage and lineup schedules carefully.

Superstars like deadmau5, Avicii, Tiesto and David Guetta will mesmerize audiences while being woven into day-long music binges alongside sets from emerging artists like live show whiz Klingande, the innovative Mija, house and disco connouseir Jackmaster, along with tropical house mainstays Kygo and Thomas Jack.

The festival hasn’t even started, but the outrageous stages and lighting displays have been set up for the last few days in Bayfront Park, with crews running through all sorts of tests, putting on lighting shows for the ghosts of fans yet to arrive. Miami Music Week parties and pool parties have taken over the scene at South Beach. SiriusXM has been running a 3-day music lounge with live DJ sets and performances to "deliver exclusive content ... from what will be the epicenter of dance music world." 

The coming weekend is sure to be epic in otherworldly proportions as fans eagerly await the doors opening on 4 p.m. Friday to take the plunge into festival mania. The time is almost here.

Thank the dance and music gods. Festival season is upon us.

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In the first scene of "Krisha," the title character ambles down a suburban sidewalk. The sky is crisp, but she's overcome with jitters. Signs of an active neighborhood surround Krisha as she hurriedly drags a suitcase, but the walls seem to close in on her before she's even entered one of the homes. We realize a certain constitutional chaos bedevils Krisha, and with that in mind, the 82-minute film becomes an exercise in self-imposed distress.

"Krisha" exists in the vein of one of cinema's great traditions: tales of women on the verge, women whose internal hysteria forms its own horror movie. Trey Edward Shults, making his debut, invokes the likes of Roman Polanski ("Repulsion"), John Cassevetes ("A Woman Under the Influence") and Ingmar Bergman ("Cries and Whispers") -- except, for Shults, this story is personal.

The 27-year-old director culled "Krisha" from his family's struggles. Schults' cousin, an addict, attended a reunion where she relapsed and died one month later. Drawing from that and the rocky relationship he had with his own father, Schults wrote a film about a newly sober but no less troubled woman in her 60s. Arriving for Thanksgiving with relatives who last remember her as an addled firebrand, Krisha -- trying so hard to keep it together -- steadily unravels. 

Shults shot a version of "Krisha" in 2012, casting his relatives on a $7,000 budget that came from his own pocket. He didn't have proper camera equipment, there were more characters in the script than actors on hand, and the whole endeavor became one of the "worst things" of his life, as he recently described it to The Huffington Post.

Instead, Shults transformed the footage into a short film, which premiered at South by Southwest in March 2014. Encouraged by a friend who produced the short, Shults redrafted the script and shot a new feature-length version of the movie that August, self-financing it with the help of $14,000 in Kickstarter funds. The shoot took place at his mother's home, lasting nine days and totaling a modest $30,000. The following March, it, too, bowed at South by Southwest, scoring one of the festival's grand jury prizes and an impressive distribution deal with A24. (It won an Independent Spirit Award last month and opens in select theaters this weekend.)

Why so impressive? This is a low-budget movie about a 60-something-year-old woman, and it carries no star power whatsoever. Shults' aunt, the gifted Krisha Fairchild, portrays the title character, and Shults himself plays her all but estranged son. (He also recruited his mother and grandmother for key roles.) No director makes a festival-bound psychological thriller as unrestricted as "Krisha" -- we never get a full account of the character's ailments -- and expects its shelf life to go far, at least not without Meryl Streep's name stamped on the advertisements. Equally impressive: A24 agreed to finance Shults' follow-up film, as well.

But Shults, who sought to capture the energy he witnessed during his time interning on Terrence Malick sets, shows a command that most first-time filmmakers cannot. His wide shots gradually pan in on Krisha, expressing an escalating confinement. In greeting the family, her weary face gawks at how much younger everyone was when she last saw them, providing everything we need to understand her history. As she comments on their changes, the camera tightens on Krisha from behind, following her uneasy movements and slowly cutting the others out of the frame. She is feigning comfort, and Shults -- with the help of cinematographer Drew Daniels -- seizes every opportunity to underline her outsider status. From there, an internal breakdown ensues, rendered effective by the sense of mystery that Shults inserts in his script. By the film's end, the audience exists almost exclusively inside Krisha's head. Desperately wanting to see her to maintain composure, but knowing it is increasingly unlikely, we become addicted to Krisha's perspective.

"By the end, you’re in her own drugged delirium inside her own head, and it’s a mesh between reality and how she perceives reality changing events, all fueling this rage," Shults said.

Emboldened by the click-click-click of a menacing score -- Shults and composer Brian McOmber did their best to "hide the influence" of Jonny Greenwood's musical contributions to "There Will Be Blood" -- "Krisha" is a thriller of the homeliest kind. It's the story of someone for whom life has grown unfamiliar. Everything from the past seems to exist outside of herself, especially as tribal tensions rise. Those happier remnants surround Krisha during this Thanksgiving visit, yet she can't reach out and seize them. There are too many demons in too many corners of her mind. By the time that turmoil culminates in a culinary disaster, her deterioration has become too constricting. She is her own enemy, unable to atone, and we are her disappointed sympathizers. The movie is a master class about the troubled human psyche.

"It’s me processing the lost souls in our family, and then combining that with a narrative," Shults said. "I just wanted to see and try to make a movie I haven’t seen before, and it all kind of meshed together."

"Krisha" is now open in select theaters.

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Against a backdrop of warfare, with mortars firing bombs and civilians under siege, Mariela Shaker left Syria in 2013 with her beloved violin. She set off to the U.S. to study music, carrying with her what has become a literal instrument for peace.

Throughout her journey, officials were convinced her violin case was a gun. At many of the 70 checkpoints she had to stop at from Aleppo to Beirut -- before flying to the U.S. -- her case and other belongings were searched by guards.

“They believed musicians were infidels,” she told The Huffington Post.

Shaker, now 25, made it to the U.S. along with her violin, and is now pursuing a master’s degree at DePaul University in Chicago. She hopes to one day be an ambassador for Syria and bring music education programs back to her home.

Shaker said she believes music is one of the most powerful ways to connect people from different and often dissenting backgrounds.

“When I perform Jewish music for Islamic communities and I’m Christian, it’s something that unites us together."

“When I perform Jewish music for Islamic communities and I’m Christian, it’s something that unites us together,” she said.

Shaker, who has been granted asylum, initially came to the U.S. on a student visa to study music at Monmouth College in Illinois.

That was two years after the protests broke out across Syria against President Bashar al-Assad, who then retaliated with military violence. The unrest, which began five years ago, has amounted to 4.8 million refugees fleeing Syria.

During the beginning of the conflict when Shaker still lived in Aleppo, her family didn’t have consistent electricity and power. She was set on making it out of Syria, so she initially applied for scholarships and grants by hopping around to different Internet cafés, relying on their short-lived backup generators.

She’d spend seven hours a day researching, eventually connecting with individuals who wanted to help sponsor her and help her get to the U.S.

“I didn’t have much hope of ever leaving,” she said. 

Her 27-year-old brother was also able to flee, crossing the Mediterranean and making it to a refugee camp in the Netherlands. Shaker said his journey was harrowing, as rough seas almost sank his poorly crafted boat. Still, she said she knows he made the right choice.

“My mom wouldn’t have let him go unless she thought the sea was safer than Syria,” she told HuffPost.

Shaker keeps in touch with her support system back home, calling her parents every day. Her dad reports that they still don’t have basics like running water, saying they have to fill water containers from wells.

She said the conditions remain the same as when she lived in constant fear in Aleppo.

“Our home had been attacked randomly. We decided not to even fix windows or doors because there was constant throwing of mortars and missiles,” Shaker said. “A lot of my friends were killed. You don’t know when it’s going to come.”

She said she misses home and has mixed emotions about having left -- but that’s she’s just grateful to have found an opportunity.

“It’s more emotional than a feeling of guilt,” she said. “It’s not what I’d hoped for. I wanted to come to the U.S., but not with the situation of war back home.”

Shaker has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and spoken at the White House. She said her experience has transformed both her life and her craft, further crystallizing her goal to be an advocate for peace.

“With what I’ve gone through, music now goes far beyond playing violin. I’m telling a story trying to make people believe in music and humanity,” she said. “Through music, I just want to persuade people there are good things in life.”

--

As the refugee crisis persists, a large need for donations remains, Jennifer Patterson, a spokesperson for USA for UNHCR, told HuffPost. She describes below how donations will be used. Donate through the widget below and learn more here.

$30 can help provide thermal blankets for three refugees to keep warm.

$30 a month can help provide secondary education for a Syrian refugee girl.

$45 can help provide a solar lamp to a refugee on arrival in Europe. 

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Japan's Edo period, stretching from the 17th to 19th century, was characterized by economic growth and a rigid social order, both of which worked together to bolster a before unrealized interest in art, culture, entertainment and, yes, sex. 

While most marriages at the time were arranged -- and between a man and a woman -- sex between two men was not at all uncommon, though often kept out of public view. For the most part, such erotic encounters were allocated to three spheres: red-light style pleasure districts, kabuki theater, and shunga, or erotic art.

Artistic representations of erotic encounters between two men, known as nanshoku, are harder to find in the annals of shunga prints than images of sexually skilled octopi. However, a wildly rare shunga handscroll by artist Miyagawa Choshun, which has been shielded from public view since the 1970s, depicting man-on-man loving, has been recently rediscovered by Bonhams auction house. 

I believe a yaaaaaas, kings is in order. 

"In the strictly regulated society of Edo period Japan, it was not unusual for people to yearn for circumstances and opportunities not afforded them by birth," Bonhams' Director of Japanese Art Jeff Olson said in a press statement. "For most, costly visits to the pleasure quarters were out of reach, so illustrated erotica was the next best thing."

While most shunga prints frame the genitals front and center, nanshoku works focus more on the tender romance of the relationship. Think of them as the soft-core alternative to hardcore porn. The pairings normally consist of an older man and a younger partner, dressed in an ornate kimono and traditional woman's hairstyle. Artistic depictions often muse on the luxurious details of the young lover's garments and appearance, so maybe they're more like Edo's version of a rom-com.

Choshun's striking handscrolls are at once minimalist in their color-blocked elegance and grandiose in their detailed renderings of kimonos and tricky-looking sexual positions. The lovers are rendered in a gold-tinted, floating world, swallowed up by the fantasy of their own desires. 

The exciting rediscovery was included in an auction at Bonham's this week, selling for $37,500, as part of the eighth annual Asia Week New York, a celebration to promote and affirm the cultural importance of Asian art. See more images from the handscroll below. 

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We live in what American politicians like to call a post-9/11 world. This demarcation of life into before and after isn’t just because the attack was so large, but because it was on American soil -- “never again” was the obvious, instinctive reaction to such an enormous loss of our country’s citizens.

As one of the primary characters of Karan Mahajan’s latest novel, The Association of Small Bombs, puts it, “People did not care about a small bomb in a foreign country that had injured a Muslim, and why should they? They were grieving. Three thousand of their countrymen had perished. Why would they look outward?” Mansoor Ahmed, a Muslim Indian studying at Santa Clara University in 2001, actually survived a terrorist blast that killed two Hindu friends when he was 12 -- a small bomb that had quickly vanished from the news. Painfully, he comes to realize that many parts of the world don’t care much, if at all, for the trauma he’s suffered in his non-newsworthy bombing.

September 11, 2001, marks the day when terrorism began to meaningfully matter to many of Mahajan’s American audience, or so the “post-9/11 world” soundbite suggests, but his novel paints a searing image of the devastation left by the more typical forms of terroristic violence that predated the post-9/11 world, and that continue to this day.

The novel opens in 1996, with an explosion in an open-air market at Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. Two young brothers, Tushar and Nakul Khurana, have been sent to pick up the family’s TV from the repairman and bring their friend Mansoor along, planning to then drop him off at home. Instead, the three boys find themselves near a bomb set by an experienced Kashmiri bomb maker, Shockie. As it tears open, and the Khurana boys are instantly killed, Mansoor is left with wounds both mental and physical. It’s a “small” blast; only 13 people are killed, and 30 injured.

Mahajan dances between the broken, bitter Khuranas, Deepa and Vikas, and the gratefully generous but vaguely resentful Ahmeds, Afsheen and Sharif, who are on some level uncharitably aware that their son would never have undergone this horrific event had their now-bereft friends dropped Mansoor at home themselves instead of allowing him to visit the market with their rambunctious sons. The Khuranas attempt to find comfort in each other, in having another child, in victim advocacy; Afsheen and Sharif invest in sending their miracle son to the United States for college. But Deepa and Vikas find themselves drifting separately into misdirected anger and coping strategies, while Mansoor grows up too sheltered and fearful to leave the house, instead pouring himself into a passion for computer programming that exacerbates the wrist injuries he took away from the bombing.

Ultimately forced to take leave from college to recuperate, Mansoor falls in with an NGO that agitates for just treatment of accused terrorists -- many of whom are believed to be innocents railroaded by corrupt police. There, he meets the passionate and eloquent Ayub, a Muslim activist from more humble roots, who urges Mansoor and the rest of the group to devote themselves to nonviolent protest to bring about change in the treatment of Muslims. Cracks show in the seemingly idyllic organization, though; while Ayub clearly feels strongly about saving his fellow Muslims from horrific mistreatment, and draws the largely unobservant Mansoor into a more religious lifestyle, he’s also volatile and easily disappointed. The NGO isn’t as stable as it appears.

Through an ever-growing cast of Muslim and Hindu characters, Mahajan plumbs the depths of the living death that can follow even the smallest of small bombs, as families are gutted, innocents arrested, and desperate idealists turn to the most deadly tactics in a twisted hope of making change. At one point, a more experienced terrorist explains to a new recruit who only wants to target complicit parties, “It’s better for the event to be big, to affect many. People say 9/11 was the worst terror attack of all time -- was it? I think the small bombs that we hear about all the time, that go off in unknown markets, killing five or six, are worse. They concentrate the pain on the lives of a few. Better to kill generously than stingily.”

By winding us closely into the lives, families, and social networks of the main cast of characters before, in some cases, showing them resorting to horrific crimes or being (if unjustly) charged with terrorism, Mahajan makes the humanity, the psychological unraveling or misplaced idealism or confusion, of each person in his novel more tangible than any news item ever could. Even the narrative sometimes seems to skip and jump like the perception of someone in the grip of a profound trauma, drawing the reader into an understanding of how disorienting it can feel to realize you don’t quite know how you got to where you are at this very moment.  

If sometimes it almost feels like he’s delving into the troubled minds of too many people to excavate in just 275 pages, if sometimes his acute descriptive language misfires, these tremors don’t unsettle the jittery flow of Mahajan’s artful narrative. In a post-9/11 world, this novel should be considered a must-read.

The Bottom Line:

A psychologically intimate and stylistically compelling examination of the ripple effects of small acts of terrorism, Mahajan’s second novel shouldn’t be missed.

What other reviewers think:

The New York Times: "Allow me to skip the prelude to judgment that usually begins a book review, and just get right to it: Karan Mahajan’s second novel, The Association of Small Bombs, is wonderful. It is smart, devastating, unpredictable and enviably adept in its handling of tragedy and its fallout."

Kirkus: "An engaging if plot-thick novel that’s alert to the intersection of the emotional and political."

Who wrote it?

Karan Mahajan is the author of the novel Family Planning, which was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2010. He has written for The New Yorker online, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and more. He grew up in New Delhi, India, and now lives in Austin, Texas.

Who will read it?

Readers who enjoy books that take on multiple, conflicting perspectives and allow empathy with unconventional characters. Also, readers who prefer books that take on thorny geopolitical issues.

Opening lines:

“The bombing, for which Mr. and Mrs. Khurana were not present, was a flat, percussive event that began under the bonnet of a parked white Maruti 800, though of course that detail, that detail about the car, could only be confirmed later. A good bombing begins everywhere at once.”

Notable passage:

“What was it about such a morbid war zone that energized Vikas? Once, on a trip to France to screen a documentary at the Aix-en-Provence film festival, Vikas had peeled off and visited a chateau in the Loire Valley. Stony and hard skinned, the chateau consisted of two towers connected by a covered bridge that ran over a river. During the Great War, his guide had told him, the battling armies shared the bridge as a common hospital. Vikas had been stunned by the idea of wounded soldiers -- who may have wounded each other -- lying bed-to-bed in the same ward. What horrified him was the fact that injury, its violent horizontal stasis, revealed the complete artificiality of war.

"He remembered seeing Tushar and Nakul in the morgue and thinking: They belong to a different class now. The class of the dead.

"He had never lost his urge for classification -- this tyrant’s urge for unity and separation. He knew everyone was different, yet he wanted them to be the same. Hence his obsession with death.” 

The Association of Small Bombs
by Karan Mahajan
Viking, $26.00
Publishes March 22, 2016 

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

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This artwork definitely deserves a standing ovation. 

Hong Kong-based artist Tik Ka combined elements from traditional Chinese opera with Marvel characters as part of a mashup series called "Opera Circle Avengers," according to a Huffington Post translation.

The result is just spectacular. 

The series includes opera characters influenced by Iron Man, Deadpool and the Hulk, among others. To create the artwork, Tik Ka used a pencil to draw the outlines and later filled in color on the computer. 

The artist told HuffPost in an email that he grew up in Hong Kong while it was still under British rule. The experience, he said, explains his fascination with both Eastern and Western cultures -- something that's reflected in his series. 

Well BRB, Marvelling at the pictures. 

Check out the kickass "Opera Circle Avengers" below. 

To see more of Tik Ka's work, visit his Facebook page here. 

H/T Mashable

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