Matthew Rana
@mdrana.bsky.social
Poet and critic living in Stockholm. https://matthewrana.com
”Unlike Björk, who disappears from femaleness by going into other species, Rosalía goes deeper into female itself, drilling down into it, past the mutilations of flamenco to some place of power where she feels new.” Anne Carson on Rosalía @lrb.co.uk
Anne Carson · On Rosalía
We require heroism of our entertainers. We want them sacrificing themselves to a certain ultimate degree of input. No...
lrb.co.uk
“Hennix’s epistemic art treats knowledge not as a positive point of appearance but rather as something more elusive and contingent.” From my review of CC Hennix at Malmö Konsthall, now online at Frieze. www.frieze.com/article/cath...
The Negative Aura of Catherine Christer Hennix
At Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, the artist’s austere yet expansive practice interlaces mathematics, mysticism and sound to advocate for the power of absence
frieze.com
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s spectral work anticipated the ways in which we tend to the wounds inflicted by nationalism artreview.com/theresa-hak-...
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Language of the Dispossessed
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s spectral work anticipated how we still tend to the wounds of nationalism
artreview.com
”Karlberg’s show stages painting as a ’success medium’, as Isabelle Graw puts it. That is, as a prop for self-promotion and branding, a device promising further movement, circulation, and exchange” from my review of Marie Karlberg’s exhibition at Issues Gallery in Stockholm.
Let’s Stay in Touch - Kunstkritikk
What does it mean to be important in the art world? Marie Karlberg’s Stockholm show answers the question, one oversized business card at a time.
kunstkritikk.com
“While many are quick to dismiss the late-stage Khan as a psychotic […] I suggest that we read his final text as a psychodrama revealing the enmeshment of histories of colonization […] with problems of race within psychoanalytic institutions.” Noor Asif’s brilliant piece @parapraxismag.bsky.social
Stranger than Faction — Parapraxis
Masud Khan’s Rewriting of Psychoanalysis Noor Asif
parapraxismagazine.com
"Copjec believes that Islamic mysticism and the concept of the imaginal world get something deeply right about reality, contingency, and the nature of the image." Henry Clements on Joan Copjec’s “Cloud”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/joan-copjec-cloud-kiarostami-corbin-lacan-sufi-freud/
God and the Unconscious | Los Angeles Review of Books
Joan Copjec’s new book charts the conceptual affinities and historical convergences between psychoanalysis and Islamic philosophy.
lareviewofbooks.org
So, it turns out that the co-host of Sweden’s most popular game show is a family abolitionist. @genderhorizon.com @reproutopia.bsky.social
Dagens ETC@etc.se · 7mo agoPå spåret-domaren försvarar miljöpartister, förkastar kärnfamiljen och drömmer om kollektivboende.
My review of Lutz Bacher’s first posthumous institutional solo show in Europe is now online at Texte zur Kunst 🔥✍️
THE STRUCTURE OF AN ERROR Matthew Rana on Lutz Bacher at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo
Matthew Rana on Lutz Bacher at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo
textezurkunst.de
“Hejinian’s writing is an antidote, as it is ludic, full of love, released — offering us insight in a shimmering turning of the clock.” From Sarah Riggs’s searching review of Lyn Hejinian’s Lola the Interpreter. @weslpress.bsky.social
“In a Temporal Panic” | Jacket2
jacket2.org
The new issue of the Swedish psychoanalytic journal Divan is now available, featuring my essay ’Knutar av Akut Materia’, a ”sinthomatic” reading of Bhanu Kapil’s 2011 book Schizophrene.
"With an emotional register ranging from petulance to narcissistic neediness, the book dissects the field of the minor affects with discomfiting precision." New in review, Tan Lin on Steven Zultanski's Help: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/tan_lin_revi...
”Börjel’s brilliance here is to extend this sense of personal tragedy to the collective and, most importantly, back again.” My review of Ida Börjel’s MA @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social for Tripwire22
A review of MA by Ida Börjel
reviewed by Matthew Rana in Tripwire 22 Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023 MA, by Swedish poet Ida Börjel, is a long abecedarian poem patterned after Inger Christensen’s Alphabet (1981). In twenty-nine sec…
tripwirejournal.com
The Palestinian-led BDS movement has updated our priority targets, pressure targets and organic campaign targets.
Gradually, the outline of Modi’s plan to remake Kashmir has come into sight. Under the slogan of development and to “transform” the state into an “industrialized territory,” the Indian government has sold land to Indian capitalists.
Seizing Kashmir - Boston Review
For decades India has refused to acknowledge Kashmiri demands for self-determination. Now Modi has a new strategy—a settler project.
bostonreview.net
These are the #BDS consumer boycott targets named in the ground breaking report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Read more: bdsmovement.net/news/naming-...
“For the communities of the [Indus River] delta… drawing a map for someone is a gesture of hospitality and generosity. Within the fleeting line of a river, someone opens up their world, their knowledge, their memories.” Shahana Rajani in conversation with Nick Axel @eflux.bsky.social
New Silk Roads - Shahana Rajani - The Fleeting Line of a River
Colonial maps and hydraulic technologies attempted to reorganize these mobile, water landscapes into a propertied and regulated geography. But in this soaking ecology, quite literally, the logic of th...
e-flux.com
The new issue of Texte zur Kunst is now available, featuring my review of Dora Budor’s exhibition ‘Fidelity’ at Beau Travail, Stockholm
Issue No. 138 / June 2025 "Exhibition Politics"
textezurkunst.de
“This is more than a rushed centralization of resources by an efficiency-driven conservative government. It is a move to weaken both the independence and the forcefulness of Sweden’s cultural imagination.” Natasha Marie Llorens for @eflux.bsky.social on recent shifts in Swedish cultural policy.
Political Capture of the Arts in Sweden - Notes - e-flux
Natasha Marie Llorens on the right-wing effort to control the arts sector in Sweden.
e-flux.com
”The ambivalent meanings ascribed to the djinn make the djinn a vital material-symbolic object that can be read to represent the encounter with difference and impasse.” From Perwana Nazif’s fascinating piece @parapraxismag.bsky.social
Appearance of a Djinn — Parapraxis
Islam, outside and in psychoanalysis Perwana Nazif
parapraxismagazine.com
“For the most part, Pain’s approach is intensely observational, in keeping with the idea of accueil, or welcome, a radical kind of listening practiced at La Borde.” Nicholas Gamso on the films of François Pain, now on view at JOAN gallery in LA. @eflux.bsky.social
Nicholas Gamso on François Pain - Criticism - e-flux
In 1966, a young medical student named François Pain won an internship at the experimental Clinique de La Borde, outside the town of Cour-Cheverny
e-flux.com
“For Malkani, the sacred is political and resonates with the ways in which protest is inscribed within acts of veneration and prayer.” My review of Zahra Malkani’s stunning exhibition ‘Sada Sada’ is now online at Frieze.
Zahra Malkani’s Hum of Ecological Reverence
At Konsthall C, Stockholm, the artist’s sound installation examines the environmental damage of regional river systems, calling for collective mourning and remembrance
frieze.com
Look out world, Bhanu Kapil has a new blog…
Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi?
wasjackkerouacapunjabi.blogspot.com
“Here, the notes are much sweeter – what, to my untrained nose, seems like the overwhelmingly funereal scent of lilies or perhaps something like bubblegum.” My write-up of Bjarne Melgaard’s collaboration with Norwegian perfumier Malbrum at VI,VII Oslo is now online @artreview.bsky.social
The Artworld’s Latest Fragrance, With Notes of Tragedy
In ‘Abuse Is the Beauty of the Working Class’, Bjarne Melgaard’s olfactory experiments evidence an irrepressible artist at work
artreview.com
