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4 weeks ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
The images in Yorgos Lanthimos’ first photography exhibition were captured while the filmmaker was shooting Kinds of Kindness (2024) and Poor Things (2023), but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them. Except for the actress Hunter Schafer in one stark portrait, all of his subjects remain anonymous. Synecdoche abounds, fitting for a director whose plots, on paper, read like the premises for riddles (most often delivered eloquently).
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1 month ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
Sontag famously wrote about the photograph as a means of securing ownership over an ethereal past. Her words come to mind as one moves through Hailey Heaton’s “Hissyfit,” which reckons with the erosion of memory (and therefore history) through dementia.
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1 month ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
It’s not uncommon that an art show claims to deconstruct the human form and challenge societal notions of beauty. Derrian Pharr’s innovative “I Am a Bloodstone” makes good on this promise. The otherworldly heroines in Pharr’s works (made with pastels and prisma pencils) fail to conform even to conventions for fantastical species (fairies, mermaids, et al.). Hair takes on the texture of feathers or fur, or coils into a tail.
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2 months ago | 
adolescent.net | Brittany Menjivar
If you’ve met me even briefly, it will come as no surprise that I was a theater kid growing up. I still remember the choreo from musicals I performed in back in high school—so whenever I walk into a bar and don’t see anyone on the floor, my heart sinks a little. Stud Country finally gave me an excuse to dust off my dance shoes.
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2 months ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film Adoration follows a half-Arab teenager who weaves a fictional story about his father orchestrating a terrorist attack, causing a stir within his suburban community. Adapting it would be a difficult task in any case—not just because of the weighty subject matter, but because the plot is rather convoluted, involving a meddling drama teacher with her own secret history.
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2 months ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
Per the exhibition text, “The Monster,” a multi-media group show at Pace Gallery, deals with the abstract creatures from early nightmares rather than the metaphorical “monsters” that haunt our adult existence. Childhood logic filtered through an adult POV often lends itself to singular images—so I was frustrated to see how many of the works curated relied on similar representational heuristics for terror and otherness.
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2 months ago | 
artillerymag.com | Emma Christ |Brittany Menjivar
The damsel in distress; the innocent vindicated. These are relatively common motifs when it comes to trauma and recovery, yet Paz de la Huerta’s beautifully bizarre paintings make them feel new. Women and girls embrace while crowded by angelic creatures and wild animals, with nary an inch of negative space. Any cutesiness is countered by the artist’s penchant for frenzied maximalism—a princess’s pillows, for example, blend into a woman shielding her face and a small white dog.
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Feb 5, 2025 | 
adolescent.net | Brittany Menjivar
As long as Instagram exists, we’ll have a love-hate relationship with the infographic. During the early months of 2020, grid posts breaking down social justice issues and other large-scale crises were all over the platform; with the passage of time, they’ve become less trendy, for better or for worse.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
hardcopy.online | Brittany Menjivar
Sloppy, Rax KingNonfiction, July 29, 2025I've been following food writer and cultural analyst Rax King for years. In past ventures, such as the podcast Low Culture Boil and debut essay collection Tacky, she's explored the appeal of lowbrow culture from the Cheesecake Factory to Guy Fieri.
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Dec 6, 2024 | 
hardcopy.online | Brittany Menjivar
She wears black plastic glasses with narrow rectangular frames; whether they’re prescription or not is unclear. Her blazer covers a button-up shirt with the top button undone. Her skirt falls to her knees but clings to her hips in just the right way; maybe a slit up the back or side reveals a sliver of skin. She’s the office siren—at least, that’s what the Internet would have us believe. Like many contemporary fashion phenomena, the “office siren aesthetic” exists mainly in collective fantasy.
