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Who is this woman looking out toward the sea? She could be me, she could be someone you know—I won’t say it’s you, I don’t know you. She’s probably white, possibly gay, but probably not. Able-bodied enough to climb down treacherous rocks to be near the water. She’s dealing with heartbreak or pending heartbreak; she either longs to be alone or is lonely. Nothing can stop her from this contemplation. This is why she looks

All images from Presença: We Are Here, a series of embroidered 16 x 20-inch photographs. Aline Mello, 2022. IT’S SUMMER BREAK after the first year of my MFA at Ohio State. I am living with my stepfather and mother in their house about thirty minutes outside Atlanta. I am thirty-three, but when I’m at Mamãe’s house, I revert to thirteen. When I cook something, she sucks in air through her teeth. You made that this

Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke in True Things (2021) Photo courtesy of BBC Films. A few days before Christmas, we met a friend at a fancy grocery store in Hudson, where people sit at a long table, drinking lattes and eating focaccia. We hadn’t seen our friend in a while. She looked happy in the way of people who have recently jumped out of an airplane. I said, “I was thinking about Jesus.” She said,

Cecily Brown. ‘Selfie,’ 2020. Oil on linen, 43 × 47 in. The Swartz Family Collection. © Cecily Brown. Can a painting be its own opposite? The works in Cecily Brown’s mid-career survey Death and the Maid are both abstract and figurative, canonically referential and hedonistically maximal, their carnivalesque palettes slashed with monotone grays. They are, at once, both surface and core. The show greets you with a large canvas titled Selfie (2020), which depicts a