After rolling days of basking sun, Summer is slowly drifting to sleep for another year. It has been a season with resemblance to pre-isolation times, a distant cousin to the racing-paced lives we lived pre-pandemic. But the past is the past and can never return. In the release of covid-19’s chokehold, we arm ourselves with hope and imaginations to envision alternative futures, whether pleasure-driven, dystopian or AI-generated, art is a tool that creates visions of what could be.
In this issue of ArtPaper, young artist Emma Grima speaks about the radical power of bodily autonomy and pleasure can change our lives, while Giulia Privitelli’s review of Tonio Mallia’s work ponders a bleaker version of the future. Architect Erica Giusta writes about the questions surfacing now that AI-powered art has landed in the hands and screens of the public. Meanwhile, Christine Xuereb Seidu explains how Ivorian artists are using their work to imagine future realities and their places in them. The rest you’ll have to discover and read in the following pages.
Sam Vassallo Journalist, activist and artist. Berlin: +356 99022398
