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“Something in the Air”, American Vogue. September 2016 issue. Style by Anna Schiffel.

F R I D A Y - F R Y - U P  :  C R I S T I N A - D E - M I D D E L “In the sixties a 5 year old Nigerian kid´s village was attacked by soldiers. His mother had left him home alone and he had to run away escaping the bombs and the fire. He saved his life entering the Bush, this magical territory where no humans are allowed and where all the Yoruba spirits live and fight. Our kid spent 30 years lost in the Bush trying to find his way back home amongst the spirits and the dead. He got married two times, became a king, a god and a slave, a cow, a jar, a horse, a goat, ate gold, silver and bronze, snakes and snails, he fought 2 wars and was sentenced to death half a dozen times… all that in just 100 pages. Amos Tutuola wrote “My life in the bush of ghosts” in 1964 and then had to leave the country to escape the violent reactions to a book that would open in the exilium, a new path for contemporary African narrative”. Combining street photography with staged portraits, Cristina De Middel’s “This is what hatred did” reconstructs folklore and pins it against its contemporary self with an animated adaption of Amos Tutuola’s “My life in the bush of ghosts”. Dedicated to the idea that contemporary issues should be described in a way that includes the agent´s traditions, perspectives, fears and hopes, Middel’s series documents the enhanced reality of the Lagosian neighborhood, Makoko, and reimagines Tutuola’s characters against its floating byways.   In an interview with American Photo Cristina said of her work — “What do you hope gallery goers will take away from the show? - That Africa is not a country; that it is not a battlefield; that there are lots of African stories that are positive, and a lot of extremely talented people doing amazing things there. We cannot keep traveling there with a post-colonial, outdated set of Western clichés about the continent. To understand Africa, you need to get into their mentality and way of understanding the world or at least try. You can see more of Cristina De Middel’ This is what hatred did, right here. 

What I Bought (Tanyth Berkeley’s collaboration with her muse Linda Leven and Lance Lee, Linda: Breach of Beauty)

The pictures above are excerpts from various LBM Dispatch editions.

“My relationship with nature has not changed and my idea of intimacy hasn’t either. We cannot fight nature. Nature is and will stay beautiful and scary at the same time” - Mayumi Hosokura

Thank you Bridget Collins — Brooklyn, NY

“Flowers aren’t just beautiful to show on tables,” said Azuma Makoto, a 38-year-old artist based in Tokyo. His latest installation piece, if you could call it that, takes this statement to the extreme. Two botanical objects — “Shiki 1,” a Japanese white pine bonsai suspended from a metal frame, and an untitled arrangement of orchids, hydrangeas, lilies and irises, among other blossoms — were launched into the stratosphere on Tuesday in Black Rock Desert outside Gerlach, Nevada, a site made famous for its hosting of the annual Burning Man festival. ”I wanted to see the movement and beauty of plants and flowers suspended in space,” Makoto explained that morning.

Commemorate some of Contemporary Art’s most-established artists, including Elad Lassry, Nikolas Gambaroff, and John Armleader, as featured in our newest sale, June Contemporary.

Wouter Van de Voorde