Dee, Caitlin, and Peter check in on the 2026 Spring season where they actually get to spend most of their time talking about Feminist Potential titles! Episode Information Date Recorded: May 17th, 2026Hosts: Dee, Caitlin, Peter Episode Breakdown 0:00:00 IntroNeutral Zone0:01:36 MAO0:10:05 Daemons of the Shadow Realm0:16:28 Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When DrunkIt’s… Complicated0:22:16 Nippon Sangoku0:27:53 […]
It's a little before midnight and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.
Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.
(The meme? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share. Besides, this one's such a perfect summary of certain points I've been trying to make in recent posts over on the blog...)
I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.
I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.
And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.
President Donald Trump’s second Cabinet was never exceptionally diverse from the start. And in the past three months, four women have been fired or resigned. The first to go, on March 5, was ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Then, less than a month later, Trump ousted former Attorney General Pam Bondi. On April 20…
If you’re lucky, your family is still using great‑grandma’s red beans and rice, black‑eyed peas, and potato salad recipes. And if you’re extremely fortunate, those meals might still taste like home, even without her hands. But climate pollution has quietly made sure that the food on your plates is not the same food she was eating. Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is stripping nutrients…
A Sunday report in The New York Times revealed how the Trump administration is using a key government agency to shut down any efforts to regulate online betting markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket. According to the Times, the administration has stacked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with industry insiders who have systematically “mowed down” staffers at the agency who have…
When Miami Beach activist Donna Nevel was leafleting for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) last year at one of the biggest art fairs in the country, she was shocked to see a billboard-bearing truck emblazoned with her name and photo, along with the words “Jew hater.” Now, JVP is alleging that Miami Beach City Commissioner David Suarez spent $4,000 of his own money on three billboard trucks to…
A last-minute change from the Department of Justice (DOJ) has outraged disabled people and disability rights groups and could affect access to the ballot box come the midterm elections this November. The agency issued an interim final rule on April 20, pushing back a planned April 24, 2026, deadline for large municipalities to ensure their apps and online offerings are accessible in accordance…
Hovertext: The worst part about being a caveman is people constantly yelling questions about seed oil and fermented foods when you're just trying to relax.
For a long while, we’ve wanted to feature the poet-classicist George Economou — a friend of (and regular visitor to) the Kelly Writers House in his later years. Finally, Al Filreis convened three people to talk about Economou’s epic Ameriki: George Fragopoulos, Chloe Tsolakoglou, and Christos Kalli. Months in the organizing, the episode was co-curated by Christos.
Tens of thousands of Cubans rallied Friday in Havana to denounce the Trump administration’s indictment of former President Raúl Castro and threats to attack the island nation, whose socialist government has been preparing its citizens to defend their homeland and revolution against U.S. aggression. “No disrespect is shown to the heroes of the homeland!” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said…
Plans for a celebrity-backed “hyperscale” data center in rural Utah, so massive that it would consume more than double the state’s current electricity use, have generated an intense public and political backlash in a state where the motto is “industry” and a Republican supermajority tends to be deferential to development. The project, brought by “Shark Tank” TV personality Kevin O’Leary…
Critics are slamming the Trump administration for implementing a new rule that foreigners who apply for green cards must do so from abroad. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Friday announced that foreigners currently in the U.S. who want to establish permanent legal residency must first return to their countries of origin to apply for a green card.
Ibanged my head on the bars. It was 2:00 am. I was in a Brooklyn jail. Under the fluorescent light, other men slept on the bench. Each one of us was arrested for so-called quality-of-life crimes like drinking a beer on a stoop, blasting a radio, or being unhoused. I shook the bars again. The walls closed in on me. I had a hard time breathing. When I got out the next day…
East Jerusalem is days away from its largest forced displacement since 1967. Eight Palestinian homes are set to be demolished by the end of May — the highest number in a single month, according to the Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim since it began tracking such demolitions. “Soon, these will all be gone,” said Fakhri Abu Diab, a longtime East Jerusalem activist whose own home was demolished…
I skipped the New York art fairs this season. Went to none, not even the so-called "anti-fair" fairs. It was a choice, a kind of detox. And guess what? I don't feel like I missed anything. Soon after, a spate of auctions culminated in the record-breaking sale of a Jackson Pollock for $181 million at Christie's. I wasn't there either, and I had 181 million reasons to not care.
Instead, I kept thinking of pioneering performance artist Linda Montano, who's now 84. She invited our contributor Taliesin Thomas into her home-shrine in Upstate NY, welcoming her in a devotional chicken costume. God bless "Chicken Linda." I urge you to read this profile.
I was also thinking about Gabrielle Goliath's exhibition Elegy, now on view at a church in Venice after the South African culture minister banned it from the country's pavilion for political reasons. I'm glad to report that the video installation only benefits from the alternative location and reaches deep into the heart. Aruna D'Souza was there too and wrote an excellent review.
Oh, and did I tell you that Hyperallergic won the New York Press Club journalism award for Noah Fischer's comic "A Prospect Heights Ghost Story"? Supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, it was the final part of a series that focused on the artists, activists, and organizers on the front lines of the housing justice movement in NYC. Congrats to Noah, and thank you all for your continuous support. Enjoy reading and have a wonderful weekend.
Pioneering performance artist Linda Mary Montano gave me a tour of her home-shrine and a glimpse into her lifelong spiritual quest through art. | Taliesin Thomas
Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi, and Hollywood star Nicole Kidman were all part of a record-setting $1 billion evening sale at Christie’s on May 18.
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has revealed six commission proposals for a monument celebrating the legacy of groundbreaking jazz vocalist Billie Holiday.
Thousandshave submitted complaints decrying the right-wing smear campaign against British-Nigerian photographer and arts trustee Misan Harriman.
Sarah Lucas’s new public sculpture “VENUS VICTORIA” outside Manhattan’s New Museum subverts the mostly male history of public monuments.
The city of Paterson, New Jerseyunveiled its new Gaza Square with a sculpture by artist and activist Kyle Goen. “Gaza Love” (2014–) commemorates the city’s large diasporic Palestinian community at a time of profound loss.
Roberto Lugo, a spoken-word poet and renowned potter, unveiled a two-part public monument to Puerto Rican culture in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter).
The Stonewall National Monument was named one of the most endangered places in the United States in an annual list put out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
He repurposed bygone cartoon characters and gave them new life with a queer, magpie sensibility, which still pops two decades after his death. | Brian Karl
An exhibition in Chicago celebrates the painters, writers, and performers who sought freedom in the city of light and left an indelible mark on its history. | Daria Simone Harper
Still in Sound Sound artists compose sonic and multisensory interpretations of abstract paintings for this new exhibition at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado.
The recent shift toward figuration on book covers may reflect a broader desire for physical presence — proof of the artist’s hand in the digital age. | Tara Anne Dalbow
A novel lampooning the art world, Megan O’Grady’s meditation on art and living, the man who defined color in the dictionary, Nan Goldin’s tender photo essay, and more.
The show, New York’s only art fair dedicated to contemporary Asian art, featured uniquely tender subversions of this year’s topical theme. | Isa Farfan
Art Movements — Enigmatic art dealer Larry Gagosian gets the documentary treatment, Pace gets the Brancusi Estate, the Louvre’s new architects, and other industry news.
In Memoriam — we honor F. John Sierra, a champion of Chicano art, Valie Export, an Austrian feminist artist, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, a painter and Civil Rights luminary, and others.
A View From the Easel — artist Lavett Ballard organizes exhibitions and transforms wood in the former chemistry lab of a high school-turned-community center.
Required Reading — a mysterious LA guerrilla artist, Whistler and gold paint, remembering Totó La Momposina, the art of photographing queer nightlife, AI agents turn Marxist, and more.
A federal jury has found Daniel Sikkema guilty for his role in the murder-for-hire of his estranged husband, the New York art dealer Brent Sikkema.
The 75-year-old gallerist was stabbed 18 times in his Rio de Janeiro townhouse in the early hours of January 14, 2024, in a brutal crime that shocked the art world and left Sikkema's loved ones searching for answers.
The main suspect was soon identified as Alejandro Triana Prevez, a Cuban security guard and delivery driver living in Brazil who claimed that he had been contracted by Daniel Sikkema to commit the crime. He was arrested by Brazilian law enforcement four days after the incident.
Prevez remains in prison awaiting trial. Reached by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news of today's verdict, Prevez's lawyer said, “Mr. Alejandro Triana believes the sentence delivered justice, since Mr. Daniel was the mastermind behind the crime and repeatedly threatened him in order to have the murder carried out.”
In March 2024, Daniel Sikkema was arrested in Manhattan on charges of passport fraud. He was later charged with counts of conspiracy to commit murder for hire and conspiracy to murder a person in a foreign country.
During the five-day trial this week, prosecutors accused Daniel Sikkema of hiring a hitman and plotting Brent's murder amid contentious disagreements over money and a prolonged, acrimonious divorce. In a December 2023 voice note, one of several messages cited in court, Daniel Sikkema allegedly said, “Well, he can take all the time he wants. Let’s see if … instead of getting divorced, I end up a widower, which would suit me much better.”
Police reports said they had found a selfie Prevez had taken in Sikkema’s kitchen and that the investigation also confirmed phone calls between Prevez and Daniel Sikkema using a burner phone. The defense team did not deny that Daniel Sikkema had sent Prevez roughly $9,000 around the time of the murder, but argued that the payment was for work Prevez had performed for the couple in Cuba.
Hyperallergic has reached out to Daniel Sikkema's defense attorneys for comment.
Brent Sikkema co-founded Sikkema Jenkins Gallery — now renamed Sikkema Malloy Jenkins — with his business partner Michael Jenkins in the early 1990s. He was known for cultivating extensive relationships with artists including Kara Walker, Sheila Hicks, and Vik Muniz.
“The tragedy of Brent Sikkema’s death now has a meaningful measure of justice as a unanimous jury of New Yorkers has held Daniel Sikkema accountable for this senseless, cold-blooded murder,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a press statement.
In Columbia University’s MFA show, artist Alejandro Valencia loudly names the elephant in the room: The Manhattan school’s institutional failure to come to terms with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
“DYNAMO (RATM01)” (2026) is included in the Visual Arts + Sound Art Class of 2026’s thesis exhibition, on view at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery through this Sunday, May 24. The work resembles an engine room, alluding to the institution's hidden machinery. Its three modules feature sundials, evoking the university campus’ iconic central landmark, but compressing and constricting what they precariously hold.
Columbia’s 2026 graduating MFA cohort had to weather a storm on the way to their degree. The class matriculated in the fall of 2024, following the April 30, 2024, forced clearings of the university’s student encampments protesting the genocide in Gaza. The aftermath was intense — more crackdowns, protests, arrests, and humanrights violations from ICE that kept the campus environment hostile.
The cohort got off to a divisive start. According to Ridwana Rahman, another MFA student, she had printed out several posters that read “Free Palestine, Long Live the Intifada” during the 2025 spring semester. She and several of her classmates then chose to hang them on their studio doors. A few days later, an undergraduate student ripped them down. Another MFA student then replaced their poster, only to have it ripped down again.
The first section of Valencia’s piece on view features a keffiyeh that belonged to Rahman, who wore the headscarf during protests against the Gaza genocide on campus and who shared keffiyehs with students to wear in class photos, as well as at last year's opening for the 2025 cohort show. She was part of the 2025 cohort, one year ahead of Valencia.
The first section of Valencia’s piece features a keffiyeh worn by a student to protests against the Gaza genocide on campus.
In the installation, Rahman’s keffiyeh is smashed by two sundials on opposing sides, converting the school’s Class of 1885 memorial and beloved campus meeting spot into a symbol of oppressive constriction. Rahman is currently under criminal investigation for allegedly participating in a protest inside the Butler Library on May 7, 2025. After her arrest, which Hyperallergic independently verified through public records, she was one of the more than 70 students disciplined by Columbia. Rahman was immediately banned from campus, evicted from her studio with little notice, and denied her MFA degree, despite having fulfilled the program's requirements.
In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, a Columbia University spokesperson said, “In compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), neither the School nor the University can disclose information related to student records outside of approved directory information.”
Visual Arts Department Chair Naeem Mohaiemen added, “In the face of many challenges, we still encourage students to explore complex, contradictory ideas through artwork in their studios. I was Ridwana Rahman’s MFA Thesis Chair, and her performance and installation based project ‘Revert’ was one of the most thought-provoking works in the 2025 MFA Thesis Exhibition at Wallach Gallery.”
Details of Alejandro Valencia's “DYNAMO (RATM01)” (2026)
In the second section of Valencia’s installation, pencils oppose and threaten each other with their sharp tips. These two graphite phalanxes evoke the fierce divisions within the student body about how far to go in speaking out against the genocide.
The third module features a broken microphone and an industrial punchcard overlaid with the late Edward Said’s hand. Said was a Palestinian scholar, Columbia professor, and one of the luminary founders of post-colonial studies. His mic has now been cut; Said’s voice no longer resonates in a university policy that muffles voices that defend the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to simply exist.
A speaker within Valencia’s installation collages the sounds of bombs dropping, the rumble of subway trains from gentrified Harlem, and protest audio, rendering it all in a distorted hum. This soundtrack evokes how Columbia’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy flattens and distorts events.
“I was meditating on the larger forces constantly at work — the forces that resist, and the forces that oppress — and how that dialogue transforms our notions of history,” Valencia told Hyperallergic in an interview at the gallery.
Left to right: Works by Christine Miller, Arel Lisette, and darylina powderface
Other artists in the show also address Gaza, albeit less explicitly. Many engaged with wider questions of race, gender, sexuality, and wealth on a personal level, spotlighting their search for some defiant joy in this bleak cultural moment. Everyone is entitled to tell their story. Some of the works’ self-referentiality felt overly passive, like standing by and watching while your house is on fire. These muted responses, perhaps, demonstrate how fascism quietly chills dissent.
Recent reporting in the Columbia Spectator reveals a wider campus culture in which speech regarding the genocide in Gaza is routinely silenced. Was it so inevitable that Columbia would cave to pressure from the Trump regime, suggesting that international students self-censor? ICE agents entered the university housing of Mahmoud Kahlil and Ellie Aghaveyva without a warrant and detained them, all while the university worked towards a reinstatement of $400 million in Federal Funds. With a $15.9 billion endowment, Columbia could have afforded to fight Trump as Harvard University did, but it chose not to. Apparently, when push comes to shove, it’s still the King’s College.
Columbia’s MFA students weren’t told that certain subjects were off limits. What they faced was worse. International students risked their freedom if their art addressed the genocide too directly. Were American citizens any safer? Many students resorted to self-censorship — whether consciously or unconsciously — to remain safe under the Trump regime’s menacing watch, which makes Valencia’s work all the more courageous.
After a day of Googling why my back hurt (sedentary computer lifestyle, inflamed SI joint), it only made sense that the art fair I attended the same afternoon would contain some element of human-technology body horror.
When I arrived at the Thursday press preview for Focus Art Fair, dedicated to Asian art and held at Chelsea Industrial through Sunday, May 24, it seemed fitting that I would walk into a lobby filled with digital elements. I immediately met a recording of myself on a computer screen, but this version of me had a giant eyeball superimposed on her.
The interactive installation, "What if two eyes don't work together?" by South Korean artist Hwia Kim, is the first taste visitors get of the fair's fourth edition theme, "human-technology coexistence." This thematic anchor felt topical, and even corporate, given that one of the fair's leading sponsors was the technology conglomerate LG Electronics.
Hwia Kim's "What if two eyes don't work together?"
This year, Focus features more than 40 galleries and presenters highlighting artists from Asia and its diaspora, though not all participants fit that description.
Right after watching my torso turn into a glitching eyeball, I was surprised to encounter the disarmingly warm Ukrainian-born F-Twins (Anna and Valeriia Lyshchenko). The identical twin sisters create together, speak together, and are the founders of the Primarealism art movement together in response to a perceived growing cultural desire to outsource critical thinking to AI.
The sharply intelligent artists talked me through their pieces displayed at the Opening Gallery's entrance booth: "You Don't Have To" (2026), a painting portraying a hand removing a blue nail from another in a statement of self-determination over difficult circumstances, and "To save the first, you have to see the night sky of me" (2026), a black charcoal and gold-leaf on paper work. Their practice, they explained, extends the sense of interconnectedness they feel between themselves as twins to the broader world.
F-Twins (Anna and Valeria Lyshchenko) in front of their works "You Don't Have To" (2026) (top) and "To save the first, you have to see the night sky of me" (2026)(bottom)
In a more political work at Opening Gallery, an IV-type contraption dripped hibiscus juice over a miniature white model of the Himalayas-born artist Annu Yadav's installation "This Land is Wounded" (2025), a commentary on the militarized border between India and Pakistan.
Annu Yadav's installation "This Land is Wounded" (2025)
At the nearby Jakupsil's booth, I found Taezoo Park's "Hacked Snoopy" (2025), a small-scale sculpture featuring the cartoon dog, embellished with electronic chips, sitting atop a copy of Nicholas Negroponte's pivotal 1995 book Being Digital.
Next to Snoopy, I saw "Yellow Candle with Sony 5-303W" (2024), a vintage television with its naked technological guts exposed to the viewer.
" These are neglected technologies," Brett Lee, the gallery's founder, explained to Hyperallergic. “[Park] is saying that all these digital beings, they live forever; it's kind of a memorial."
Taezoo Park's dejected, techy Snoopy
While trying to avoid grating electronic music coming from a flatscreen TV in the middle of the fair, I almost missed Japanese icon Kento Senga, a visual artist and member of the boy group Kis-My-Ft2.
A small crowd gathered around him and his translator as he described FiNGA, his signature character with two fingers for ears. The popstar described sharing his artwork with his grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's, as a way to connect with her.
Japanese pop icon Kento Senga (right) explaining his FiNGA series.
In a quieter part of the venue, I met Folana Miller, director of Galerie Shibumi, seated before Ari Kim's large-scale painting "Back When the Tiger Smoked" (2025). The oil-and-ink-on-wood composition portrays two long-braided nude figures, the larger of which embraces the other.
"It's a historical piece that outlines connection," Miller said of the piece. "It's obviously a human connection, but these two figures could literally be anything. It could be two men, it could be a mother and a daughter."
Marina Zeballos (left) and Folana Miller (right) stand in front of Ari Kim's large-scale painting "Back When the Tiger Smoked" (2025)
One could not travel far without seeing an oppressive LG screen. Big Tech's heavy, sponsoring hand was palpable. The further I advanced in the venue, the more skeptical I became of artworks that actively incorporated big screens, rather than critiqued them.
Still, the art on view that honored human or supernatural connections outshone the more technical works as uniquely tender subversions of the very theme that brought them together.
" 'What is art?' is always the question that we're trying to answer,” said Galerie Shibumi manager Marina Zeballos, “and I think art is anything that a human makes.”
James Chuang's "Steams and Stiches" (2024) at Yveyang Gallery's booth
Kento Senga's FiNGA characters
Taezoo Park's "Yellow Candle with Sony 5-303W" (2024)Focus opened for a press preview on Thursday afternoon ahead of its evening VIP event.
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