I confess. The Mobeen Ansari who appeals to me he still has not met. He lives within his artist’s soul and is preserved as a good bottle of wine (I know we are in Pakistan, but I’m Italian …). The Mobeen Ansari who appeals to me – the artist that since yesterday he exhibits at Satrang Gallery in Islamabad, please run out to see it – has not the face of national celebrities he likes to portray, and which are part of its first portfolio Dharkan (portraits of faces known and unknown, dedicated to minorities in his country, in preparation… read more →
Let’s take three “facts” and put them together, forcing a bit the hand, if you want. First. At the convention of the American democratic onstage there are Hillary and Bill Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea. It was already understood from the previous days that the media strategy experts of the candidate point on her character and emphasise the aspects of private life. So her husband Bill talked about the first meeting, the overcame obstacles (a not insignificant trinkets), the happiness of growing old. And then her daughter, who tells how the mother never forgot a goodnight kiss and how now the good… read more →
America that is preparing to vote for the presidential elections in November, is showing unusual faces. So much so that, as wrote in the Italian magazine Internazionale Daniele Boille about the new Ken Loach movie Daniel Blake (http://www.internazionale.it/opinione/francesco-boille-2/2016/05/15/cannes-ken-loach-blake-recensione ), the old is representing the new; so the new white youths fall in love with socialist elder Bernie Sanders, and many Afro Americans after all not despise Donald Trump. Youths and politics, but not only. There’s even sex. Here some thoughts and questions that reflect in the mirror the habits and sexual and emotional behaviour of America today, with the necessary… read more →
When in 1976 Helmut Newton published his first portrait White Women, there were in many to launch anathemas against the artist and who he would then awarded the prestigious Kodak Award. Because Newton had chosen to subject the female nude and, while putting at the service of the most prestigious fashion houses in the world his art, it was the naked body to dominate the lens, the image, the viewer. In that portrait it appeared – among others – a model on all fours on a bed, dressed in a leather saddle by Hermès, the look through the lens. In… read more →
There is no doubt that a part of the West is Islamophobic. At the same time part of the Islamic world against the Western world nourishes the same phobia is not only beyond doubt, but at the same time a short investigated phenomenon. The distinctions are always due. Always us to say that Muslims worlds are many and varied (and as the more religious and wise say that there are many Muslims, but only one Islam), we are many to debate long on female identity represented from wearing the veil or slavery imposed on those who are forced to wear… read more →
Easter Sunday mixed dangerously two events that took place in Pakistan, few time with the recent dramatic terrorist attacks in Brussels. A suicide bombers blew himself up in Lahore in the public gardens of Gulshan Iqbal, killing 63 people and wounding more than a hundred. On the same day about two thousand people poured into the main street of Islamabad, for a sit-in protest in front of parliament. The origin of it was the death sentence, executed in late February, of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the former Punjab Governor Taseer Salmaam, “guilty” of wanting to undo the crime… read more →
From Uganda, sent on a electoral observation mission, I confess to dedicate the little free time I have, and that night, to the American campaign. For the way in which it was conceived and the way it is carried out: if I think of the Italian countryside, where now the number of non-voters is outpacing that of the voters, the interest of the Americans – or I would say the best way it is represented – tells a great part of the US soul. I generally proceed in this way: I choose a candidate before the Iowa caucus, and I… read more →
It is love 3.0, which does not deal with Internet, social networks and dating in unknown sites. This is in the ability of those who are now more than adult, who live with a long way behind and feel fatigue: a job, a mother to look after, a day marked by the rhythms imposed by the city and by the choices they made in past years. Yet. And it is that one of a woman like many others who, in the midst of so much “doing”, realises that desire and love were only sleeping and they did not understand the… read more →
This article has been published on the last number of the magazine Leggendaria (www.leggendaria.it) The question is simple, the answer is not at all. Why the Kurdish fighters are so successful? Obvious the first observations that come to mind: because they are fighting for independence of their homeland, they are community leaders, they did not hesitate to take up arms to fight. They have become in no time an icon of contemporary, brave in battle as in social media. The world loves them, no harm. At the same time the iconography of this present time shows many other images of armed women:… read more →
Two days ago the Interior Minister of Pakistan Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on the sidelines of a meeting with the German ambassador Ina Lepel, said they had all good intentions of cooperating with the countries of the European Union to ensure the return of illegal immigrants and bring them to justice. The issue was not as simple as it sounds reading the newspapers. After the terrorist attack in Paris there have been many controversies and criticism of Islamophobia by the West, which have as a direct consequence of the increased control over the citizens of Islamic origin and the restrictions… read more →
