カテゴリー: Culture
My friend Jai Verma, who has died aged 75, was a poet, a writer and cross-cultural organiser who served as a bridge between her country of origin – India – and Nottingham, her chosen home.In 2003, Jai co-founded Kavya Rang (Colours of Poetry), a multil…
As a child, Wang Tao was inspired by the American film The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke. Now 25, he is China’s poster boy for the sportRising from the ground with 73kg of writhing muscle on his shoulders, Wang Tao grimaced. The man whose legs were …
British Museum, LondonA lovable elephant deity and a floating serpent goddess are just two of the highlights in this sensual show about three of the country’s great religionsAbout 2,000 years ago, Indian art went through a stunning transformation led, …
A show full of deities, snakes and shrines puts three ancient faiths in the spotlight. Our writer seeks out its inspiration in the bustling metropolis of MumbaiIt’s the eyes that stay with you – piercing black discs that seem to vibrate against the int…
Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney; then heading to MelbourneCounting and Cracking creator S Shakthidharan uses family and fable to examine epic ideas in this story of a community under threatGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailHaving made his name with…
Writer, actor and director Lawrence Valin says that in Little Jaffna he wanted to ‘show new role models’It has been hailed as one of the most innovative and surprising French gangster films this year: a suspense movie that tears through Paris’s Tamil n…
Sotheby’s sale of Piprahwa gems, excavated after burial with Buddha’s remains, denounced as perpetuating colonial violenceBuddhist academics and monastic leaders have condemned an auction of ancient Indian gem relics which they said were widely conside…
From its cavernous domed bazaar to its ravishingly muscular museum, the Uzbek capital has one of the world’s wildest collections of modernist gems. Will its bid for world heritage status succeed?A pair of huge turquoise domes swell up on the skyline of…
Usman Riaz’s full-length debut is a decade-in-the-making story about life’s beauty and fragilityThe Glassworker began as an “impossible dream” and, like every impossible dream, its existence is a testament to the grit and grind of those who willed it t…
Fifty-five years since Osaka last hosted, rocks from Mars, domestic androids and artificial hearts are part of showcase on ‘unloved’ islandAs clunky as it sounds, “designing a future society for our lives” isn’t a bad ambition for the world in these tr…
As wealth in India has grown, so has the number of arts patrons championing both India’s 20th century modern masters and the next generationFor over seven decades, the masterpiece had gathered dust as it hung in the corridors of a Norwegian hospital. B…
One of a series of photographs taken across India in which women, many of them abuse survivors, use traditional needlework to embellish portraits of themselvesThis is a portrait of Praween Devi, a woman I met in 2019 through a local organisation while …
The artist, who has an exhibition at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, created a unique body of work from jail uniforms, soap and lids while detained by Myanmar’s regimeThe Burmese painter Htein Lin’s art bears the imprint of his years in a Myanmar jail, wher…
Serpentine North gallery, LondonHugely complex and infinitely layered figurative paintings dominate in a show that feels part-comic book, part Chagall dreamscape, part folk-artEvery painting in Arpita Singh’s debut UK exhibition feels like a desperate …
A daughter’s death is the catalyst for a difficult journey to Kabul, chronicled in this claustrophobic documentary about the void left by traumaLiving in the remote, mountainous Daikundi province in central Afghanistan, the Khawari family is part of th…