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Tausif Noor
Tausif Noor is a critic and doctoral student at the University of California Berkeley, where he studies modern and contemporary art history. His writing on art, literature, and visual culture appears in Artforum, frieze, The Nation, The New York Times and other venues, as well as in artist catalogues and various edited volumes.

Articles Available Online


Devil in the Detail: on Leesa Gazi’s ‘Hellfire’

Book Review

July 2021

Tausif Noor

Book Review

July 2021

British-Bangladeshi novelist Tahmima Anam’s debut A Golden Age (2007) tracks the early stirrings of revolution in East Bengal from the 1950s to the climax...

Art Review

May 2019

Simone Fattal, Works and Days

Tausif Noor

Art Review

May 2019

For the last five decades, Simone Fattal has produced works that refract the particularities of the present vis-à-vis a...

Jerusalem has a remarkably cohesive identity, in architectural terms Every building, from the Western Wall to the sleek hotels and high-rises in the newer parts of town, is constructed of the same sandy-coloured limestone, a measure put in place by British authorities who governed between 1917 and 1947 This surface uniformity connects Jerusalem with the wider Jewish landscape, across time and space: ‘Jerusalem stone’ has been a feature of the city’s architecture since ancient times, when residents collected blocks from the local quarry (now a bustling station) to build their homes, and it is used in buildings worldwide to symbolise connection with the holy city In 2010, a Brazilian Pentecostal church signed a reported £8 million contract with Israel, enabling them to import enough Jerusalem stone to build a $300 million, 55-metre-high replica of Solomon’s Temple – complete with olive groves, Ark of the Covenant and helicopter landing pad – in São Paulo   But the lights and sounds of Jerusalem’s streets tell a different story, one of conflict and contradictions At night, the tips of mosque minarets glow green against the neon lights of the city’s modern hubs, while muezzins compete not only with church bells but with busy traffic At the Western Wall, the plaza of prayer is split by a dividing wall which segregates the sexes, though tourists and worshippers are left to mingle On the women’s side, a bored sweeper patrols while tourists take selfies beside a woman in a headscarf, who mutters devoutly and touches the wall in reverence; nearby stands an incongruous lectern, hosting prayer books in all languages and a discarded plastic glass, half full of warm Coke Jerusalem’s Old City – just one square kilometre, with over 400 surveillance cameras crammed into crevices in the stone – is divided into Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters, pockets which define themselves both within and against the rest of the city   The differences between sectors are barely perceptible to outsiders: across the Old City, streets are flanked with marketstalls selling ubiquitous slogan T-shirts and babygros, where ‘Free Palestine’ hangs next to ‘SuperJew’, ‘Hello Jerusalem’ next to

Contributor

March 2018

Tausif Noor

Contributor

March 2018

Tausif Noor is a critic and doctoral student at the University of California Berkeley, where he studies modern and contemporary art...

INTERVIEW WITH ANAND PATWARDHAN

Art Review

July 2018

Tausif Noor

Art Review

July 2018

By the late 1990s a right wing government in the shape of a BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had come to power for the first time...
Danh Vo, Take My Breath Away

Art Review

April 2018

Tausif Noor

Art Review

April 2018

‘When you love, you are nailed to the cross,’ says a character in Rainer Fassbinder’s film In a Year of 13 Moons (1978). In...

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feature

Issue No. 11

Climate Science

McKenzie Wark

feature

Issue No. 11

Welcome to the Anthropocene, that planetary tempo in which all the metabolic rhythms of the world start dancing to...

Interview

Issue No. 2

Interview with Richard Wentworth

Ben Eastham

Interview

Issue No. 2

Richard Wentworth is among the most influential artists alive in Britain. He emerged in the 1970s as part of...

Art

March 2016

Seeing from behind: Park McArthur

Anna Gritz

Art

March 2016

In a public conversation between Park McArthur and Isla Leaver Yap that accompanied the former’s exhibition Poly at the...

 

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