Dear Reader
Well, hello! It’s certainly been a while!
Since the last email I sent out, I have had a few minor life changes, which include getting married and having a baby. Nothing too crazy.
It’s been ten eleven months since the birth of Zoe-Rose (and two months since I first started drafting this email, in full transparency). I’ve been trying to get back into the proverbial swing of things, as a freelance journalist, as a film-lover, as a runner and, now, as a mom. This weird thing happens where you want nothing to change and everything to change at the same time. Or at least that’s how it’s been for me.
One of the things I have missed is regularly writing these emails, which, if you’ve been with me for a while, started when the pandemic began. I moved to Brooklyn just before then, and I’ve stayed here, setting up roots with my little family within the small square footage of this lovely suburb that we somehow can still afford to live in (although who knows for how much longer…) I love Brooklyn, as I love New York, but I definitely have a new relationship to it now, as the mother of a tiny human being.
So! Why am I back in your inbox? The purpose of this newsletter is, as it once was, to let you know about some of the interesting things I’ve been covering, things that you can experience, too. I am also working on a few new ideas that I’ll soon share.
But one of the reasons I started the newsletter in the first place was also to capture a bit of that indomitable New York spirit, and so I wanted to share some of the videos I previously made as part of a series called The Rundown. In these videos, I would literally give you the rundown about a place or places while running. An apt name, eh?
Things change here so quickly, “in a New York minute,” as the saying goes. One day you’ll be running by something and the next day it’s gone. Making these videos felt like a way to capture some of the ephemeral nature of New York — the people and places that make New York, New York — and I hope to return to making new episodes very soon.
In the meantime, here’s a video that celebrates some art installations that are no longer around. Since New York just got a mini-bean of its own — aka a new Anish Kapoor sculpture that looks like a smaller version of the Chicago’s Cloud Gate (as seen in the intro photo) — I thought it could be worth revisiting his previous installation, Descension.
Staying with art, if you are currently in New York, or plan to be before June, there’s an exhibition that’s just opened for the next few months featuring the work of Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu that’s not to be missed. The whole of the New Museum is dedicated to showing her life’s work. On all floors of the museum, as well as its facade, you can see her evolution as an artist who has always been interested in pushing the human form, and breaking apart stereotypes to wrestle with ideas about gender, race and tradition. I wrote about the show here. My personal highlight in the exhibition is seeing one of the four sculptures she created for the Met’s facade back in 2019, up close.
Thanks for reading! See you next week!
Your neighbour
Nadia
Welcome back Nadia :)