anna rafanan – artist, designer

On the Documentary Value of Art

4 July 202423 September 2024Art Studies

The concept of truth in art has been a subject of debate among art critics, historians, and philosophers for centuries. E.H. Gombrich and Roger Scruton are among the figures who have explored this complex relationship.

On the Location of Identity in Art Practice

30 June 202431 August 2024Art Studies

Often, an artist acts as a mediator between underlying tensions of self and other, belonging between self and community. The forms that emerge are a hybrid of the artist’s sensibilities, aims, and the influence of their environment.

Sharjah Biennial 15 Guidebook

30 August 202331 August 2024Commercial, Writing

For Sharjah Biennial 15, as a content writer for the guidebook, I contributed text for John Akomfrah, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Iftikhar Dadi and Elizabeth Dadi, Brenda Fajardo, mandla, Steve McQueen, Mame-Diarra Niang, and Khadija Saye.

Intimations in Precarity

28 January 20226 June 2024Art Studies

As an initial access, an entry point, I begin with the concept of tahanan, in light of the curation of Sa Tahanan Collective in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Alyx Arumpac’s Aswang as Counterspectacle

8 November 20216 June 2024Art Studies

The documentary film genre, through an analysis of Aswang (2019), evokes a reflexivity despite its self-determined spectacularity — a possible critique of the film medium as spectacle.

This is Now

25 August 202110 September 2022Writing

It was the rush. Of wanting to feel again after a long period of isolation. Of needing to find a connection to the outside world. “I will take it,” I said. “Any semblance will do.” What started as a deliberate conquest for affection became a serious evaluation of the self, the spaces we let ourselves […]