Anyone who is a regular at Paris Art Week has a collection of stories about something going wrong. This year it was all about protest, business as usual, and the surreal experience of attending an art fair while smelling burning plastic. I wrote the story for Hyperallergic.
Here is the link to the article.
Read More
A palpable wariness hovered over Istanbul’s art programme this autumn.
On the upper floor of a nineteenth-century building in the Passage Petits-Champs, in Istanbul’s Pera neighborhood, a DJ is playing Turkish dance classics.
One floor down, I’m seated in a quiet room with frescoed walls, sharing a sofa with a few artists and journalists. Istanbul-based artist Hera Büyüktaşcıyan is speaking: “In general, as Turks, our identity is very difficult to pin down, and definitely impossible to reduce to a single national image.”
I reported from the Istanbul art week for The Markaz Review.
Here is the link to the article
Read More
In the context of a 2026 Paris Art week, marked by protests, Arab artists featured prominently across several fairs, including MENART, dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa, and AKAA, which focuses on African art. They were also represented at Asia NOW and Art Basel Paris, which closed early due to protests.
For The New Arab, I tell the art week in Paris highlight their presence, and the importance of the latter especially in the French context.
Here is the link to the article
Read More
I have interviewed Elvira Dyangani Ose, the Artistic Director for the second edition of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, for a booklet by Frieze.
Her curatorial focus centers on non-Western narratives, collective representation in public spaces, and participatory histories.
Titled “Home: A Glossary for a Communal Sense of Place”, the Biennale opens in Al Ain in October 2026 before expanding across Abu Dhabi. Her Curatorial Focus: Her work centers on non-Western narratives, collective representation in public spaces, and participatory histories.
This summer I went island-hopping in Greece, and come out with the eyes full of sea and art, and a few reflections I wrote about for a few different magazines. This is what I wrote for Le Quotidien de l’Art (in French).
Read More
A man in his mid-forties, Negmatov was born and trained in Bukhara and has nearly three decades of experience as a jeweler. His native city has been a center of gold and silver work for well over a millennium, and craftsmanship helped shape the city itself: as many as two hundred crafts are believed to have flourished here, with each neighborhood, or mahalla, tied to a particular one.
I wrote about the craftmanship of Uzbek jeweler Zokir Negmatov for Times of Central Asia.
I have toured for Observer the private collections in Athens and their island outposts, which are reshaping where, and how, contemporary art gets shown in Greece.
Here is the link to the article
Read More
From St. Moritz to Gstaad, from Capri to the Berkshires, from Punta del Este to Joshua Tree, smaller, boutique fairs are setting up shop where collectors already are.
I wrote about the so called “Destination Art Fairs” for Observer.
My latest piece for Artsy took a lit of gallavanting. But if you are a journalist, you gotta wear out those soles!
From Marseille, France, to the Greek islands, some of the most compelling shows of the year are taking place in Mediterranean destinations. Taken together, this group of shows suggests that art, like most things along the Med, is something to be experienced with your senses and can fit seamlessly into a perfect day.
Here’s the link to the article
Read More
The Uzbekistan Pavilion, housed in the Quarta Tesa of the Arsenale, tackles ecological crisis in a way that is deeply personal to the country, but can speak to everyone. The pavilion conveys beauty and hope while not shying away from destruction. I reviewed the pavilion for Times of Central Asia.
Read More
“There is a Kazakh proverb that says: a foolish person arrives with noise, sweeping everything away in their path, while a wise person arrives quietly, carefully observing the world around them.”
Syrlybek Bekbota, the curator of the Kazakhstan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale – the most important art event in the world – offers me this thought at the dawn of the exhibition’s opening, and it feels like both a manifesto and an omen.
I wrote the piece for Times of Central Asia.
Here is the link to the article
Read More
While these tapestries were once diminished by academia and the avant-garde as mere “womanly craft,” contemporary artists from the Maghreb region in Northwest Africa are transforming the medium in ways that both honor and update longstanding traditions.
Many grew up around looms and recall their grandmothers’ hands on raw wool, their mothers’ crochet, or the cooperative workshops in their region. They attend to the labor, gestures, and knowledge that lived in the bodies of their women ancestors.
Finally, biennales, fairs, and museums around the world are starting to catch on.
Here are five of the most exciting contemporary artists inspired by Moroccan rugs and North African weaving.
Here is the link to the article
Read More
Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
