I’m Robin, Editor of Misstropolis.
I hope this site brings you some joy and some knowledge (or at least a nice distraction) during this surreal, enlightening and historic time.
I like to write about art, style and purpose. If you have ideas for stories or would like to contribute, I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading!
Misstropolis
Spirit & Style, Inside & Out
A solo exhibition of papier-mâché sculpture and paintings by Haitian-American visual activist Fabiola Jean-Louis at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents a transformative vision of Haitian spirituality and culture. The artist talks with Misstropolis about why she chose paper, inspiring social change, and diving deep into the waters of the abyss in a search for freedom.
Two significant Boston artists—Eva Lundsager and Cicely Carew—exhibit powerful new work in a two person painting show at Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis.
Petra Slinkard has devoted her career to educating the public about the role fashion and design play in the human experience. Through extensive cross-cultural research and partnerships with global leaders in the field, Slinkard has established herself as an expert-to-watch and helped make PEM’s innovative and inclusive fashion initiative into one of the best in the country. With storytelling as her magic power, she brings the past into the present in ways which capture hard-to-reach contemporary audiences. She is one of the women putting the Boston area on the map as a global cultural hub, and for all those reasons, she is the latest in Misstropolis’ Visionary Series.
An important new show opens at the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) this Thursday, January 23. Curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of the independent consultancy c2-curatorsquared, in collaboration with MAAM’s Director Lisa Tung, Future Fossils brings together the work of 20 international artists representing tremendous diversity of place, material, process, thematic concerns and career stage. The exhibition’s scale and themes make it one of the most important on Boston’s 2025 cultural calendar.
Sam Fields uses commonplace, feminine and domestic-coded materials to make art which arbitrary hierarchies of taste. Aesthetic distinctions impact class distinctions, gender identity and social power dynamics. Her art begs the question, “Who gets to decide what is good taste and bad?”
Nostalgia feels like the appropriate vibe when thinking about holiday gifts this year. Nostalgia for simpler times; for happier and sexier times; for times when headlines were less horror show and more same old evening news. Gift giving, when carefully considered, can be a deeply moving process for both the giver and the recipient. Let us help you make 2024 your best giving year yet.
Sneha Shrestha, who goes by the artist name Imagine, blends graffiti, geometric abstraction and traditional Himalayan design to create work that examines the sacrifice, longing and hope of the Nepali diaspora. In her paintings and soaring public murals, her audacious colors and balletic lettering speak to the resiliency and power of the human spirit.
Can those of us who feel shock at Donald Trump’s second election victory learn from our reaction? Can we embrace our shock as a teacher capable of illuminating the blind spots we stubbornly cling to and collectively nurture in our echo chambers and tribal communities?
Edra Soto mines the rich history of Puerto Rican vernacular architecture in her public installations and wall sculptures. An artist, curator and educator now based in Chicago, Soto brings an academic rigor and emotional authenticity to work made in the tradition of Puerto Rican ironwork called rejas, found in working class neighborhoods like the one where she grew up. She reveals the often ignored African foundations of post war motifs and challenges hegemonic erasure of Puerto Rico’s colonial condition.
Yng-Ru Chen is the visionary art world influencer transforming the art scene in Boston and beyond.
Documentary filmmaker Stephanie Johnes has received accolades, awards and standing ovations wherever she screens her latest film Maya and the Wave, which took over ten years to complete. This month, it plays at the Angelica Film Center's Village East location and you won't want to miss your chance to catch the wave.
Ubiquitous and seemingly benign, the common grid stealthly forms the basis for much of the way Western society organizes information, designs space and represents reality. Throughout history artists have used the grid as a guide in their representational work and as a form through which to comment on the aesthetic, ideological and personal issues of their times. Female artists especially have creatively co-opted the grid with great success. Here, we explore some of the artists who painted beyond words, tested infinity and exploded the grid and everything it represents.
Modernity's most intrepid symbol continues to inspire, provoke and spur artists working today.
Ina Archer collects, studies and reintroduces historical representations of blackness across various mediums. Her watercolors of racially charged cloth dolls pack serious historical-social commentary behind simplistic style and technique. Don’t be fooled, these paintings represent more than child’s toys. If she could talk, what would “Liberated Long Legs” say to me?
On the occasion of her first residency at the private print studio Stone Hill Press, Misstropolis talks with Boston area visual artist Linda Pagani about process, constraints and the power of quiet work in a noisy world.
In a new show at Gallery NAGA on Newbury Street in Boston, Powell Fine Art Advisory curates works by 18 New England artists who consider the contemporary implications and inspiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th century poem “Address to the Moon.”
Hew Locke’s ambitious, layered, often overwhelming installation “The Procession” makes its North American debut at the ICA Boston’s exhibition space The Watershed. Like the complex march of history, the figures in Locke’s strange parade charge on despite the atrocities and manipulations they’ve suffered, evidenced by the artifacts they wear.
Jennifer Rochlin’s show “Paintings on Clay” at Hauser + Wirth brings materiality, color and frank storytelling to sculptural pottery. A show full of impulse, humor and poignancy, “Paintings on Clay” catapults the artist to new heights of significance at a time when writings on the body, about the body and empowering the body are of the most urgent significance to women.
The public art nonprofit Now + There announces their bold plans to rebrand and reframe the organization as the Boston Public Art Triennial. As the city of Boston celebrates a momentous opportunity to connect communities and spark conversations about historical misrepresentations and urgent social issues, the team behind the inaugural Triennial discusses their collaborative vision and how they will bring it to life.
Boston based multidisciplinary artist Yu-Wen Wu charts a course through some of the most complex and important issues facing our city and our planet today. Global migration, assimilation, identity, climate change, female labor and gaps left in the history of the Asian American experience all find elegant purchase in her work. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, video and site specific installation, Wu exposes new possibilities in the relationship between art and science and maps a way through longing toward hope.
From up-cycled and repurposed textiles, artifacts, and salvaged treasures, Brooklyn based sculptor and mixed media artist Tau Lewis creates otherworldy figures who populate a mystical imaginary realm. Using labor-intesive, time-consuming practices including hand-sewing, dyeing, carving, quilting and weaving, Lewis evokes ancient mythologies from the African diaspora to create a bold and hopeful future out of carefully collected remnants of the past.
