Kohli's work is inspired by the generative forces of nature-its cycles of growth, dissolution, and renewal. Central to the artist's visual language is Shakti, the transformative power of the divine feminine. Kohli uses the womb as a potent symbol of creation and possibility, exploring transformation within the eternal cycles of birth and death.
Appointed Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in December 2024, Kouoh had fully developed the theoretical framework of the exhibition, artist selection, editorial structure, graphic identity, and spatial layout prior to her passing in May 2025. With the support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia committed to realizing the project exactly as she had conceived it.
For 131 years, Pen + Brush has done more than maintain a doorit has insisted it remain open. Open to women, non-binary, and trans artists and writers long before inclusion became a fashionable refrain. On December 14, that legacy manifested not as history, but as lived experience through Revolution in Three Acts: A Sip and Tell, held within Pyaari Azaadi's formidable solo exhibition, Talkin' Bout a Revolutionnow extended through February 14, with its accompanying catalogue forthcoming in January.
The sculpture, "Untitled" (2022), by the late artist Radcliffe Bailey, is a striking visual metaphor for W.E.B. Du Bois's doctrine of double consciousness, the social historian's conceptualization of African Americans' racial positioning post-emancipation. In their orientation, the twin busts suggest the crisis of identity experienced under the duress of racism; the subjects' autonomous self-fashioning is at odds with their marginalized civic position.
