Stories about painting, sculpture, architecture, history

 🇯🇵💃 Jun Takahashi, the Japanese fashion designer, brought a mesmerizingly enchanting atmosphere to his Undercover Spring/Summer 2024 collection, titled “Deep Fog,” at Paris Fashion Week. Set in a parking lot, the show featured a series of tulle-wrapped chandeliers lying on the floor as if they had fallen from the ceiling, creating a surreal and almost fairytale-like backdrop. Opera music accompanied the models as they walked the runway, sporting a mix of flowing monochrome outfits and neon yellow sweaters, followed by vibrant suits and coats with giant prints. A few Undercover pieces even echoed the black tulle that wrapped around the chandeliers. To close the show, Takahashi sent three glowing dresses down the Undercover runway, decorated with terrariums of roses and butterflies. Source: designboom

🦪 🇦🇪 Farah Al Qasimi, an Abu Dhabi-based designer and artist, has created an installation of giant rainbow oysters on the seashore, a sonic ode to the sea. Farah Al Qasimi has named it Homesick. The cluster of iridescent oyster shells echoes with the hum of longing along the Abu Dhabi waterfront. The oysters are made from machined aluminum, coated in shimmering paint, and create a soundscape that evokes the ingrained relationship between the Gulf people and their waters. “Homesick honors the pearl diving tradition that has shaped the economic and cultural landscape of the Emirates,” says the artist. Speakers embedded in each pearl emit a soothing five-channel composition that conveys songs of longing, reimagining the traditional chant sung by pearl divers’ wives to wish for a safe return home. The sculpture is one of more than 50 interventions scattered across the Emirates. The soundscape is inspired by Tob, Tob Ya Bahar, a traditional song sung by women who waited for the safe ret...

 🇲🇲 Bago (Myanmar; Burma/Myanmar) is a Buddhist theme park where everything is “big and bright”. A constellation of the largest statues: the largest Buddha, the tallest, the longest, the straightest... appears among trees and meadows, in inhospitable terrain or under appropriately arranged canopies. All of them are strange images, as if new, painted in bright colors and a little... a little kitschy. Bago is located 80 km northeast of Yangon, and is the capital of Pegu County. The city of Bago was once the main seaport and capital of Lower Myanmar. But the city was destroyed, and only at the beginning of the 19th century it was partially restored. Although after that, the city was repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes, so it was very difficult to return the former grandeur and beauty of these places. But still, the city is open to tourists, and pleases with the variety of its attractions. The main attractions of Bago can be easily seen in one day. For an independent excursion to Bag...