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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...

AT NIGHT, THE WIFE MAKES HER POINT   No I don’t have Cindy Crawford’s legs I haven’t spent my life walking down runways in fashion shows, dazzled under the glaring lights of photographers My legs broaden as they reach the hip and in spite of my multiple efforts to don aerobic gear, work out and sweat, I  can’t control their tendency to widen like pillars ready to support a roof   No I don’t have Cindy Crawford’s waist nor her perfectly smooth and slightly concave tummy with the flawless navel at the center I might have had it once Once I  was even proud of that part of my anatomy That was before my son´s birth, before he decided to be born in haste and come into the world feet first, before the C-section and the scar   No I don’t have Cindy Crawford’s arms tanned, sculpted, each muscle shaped by the right exercise, the precisely balanced weights My slim arms have no more muscles than what are needed to type these characters, carry my children, brush my hair, gesticulate when I envision the future, or embrace my friends   No I don’t have Cindy Crawford’s breasts ample, round, C or B cup Mine are not so appealing in low cut dresses in spite of my mother’s assurance -a mother’s words- that breasts like mine, with no cleavage, had the classical beauty of Milo’s Venus     Ah! And the face How would I dare say I have a face like Cindy Crawford’s! The beauty mark just at the corner of the mouth Such impeccable features: the big eyes, the arched eyebrows, the delicate nose Out of habit, I’ve come to like my face: the elephant’s eyes, the nose with its flaring nostrils, the full lips, sensuous nevertheless All is spared with the help of the mane In this department, I can even beat Cindy Crawford I wonder if this affords you any consolation   Last, but not least, -and this is the weightiest piece of evidence- I don’t have Cindy Crawford’s behind: small, round, each half exquisitely outlined Mine is stubbornly ample, big, amphora or clay vase, take your pick, there is no way to hide it, all I can do is not to be shy about it use it to my advantage to sit comfortably and read, or be a writer   But tell me, how often have you had Cindy Crawford at your feet? How often has she given you

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

February 2014

Only Responsible to Their Art: Heilan and the Chinese Avant-Garde

Chen Wei

TR. Tu Qiang

feature

February 2014

Heilan was established for a simple reason: over the past twenty years, there has not emerged a single medium...

Art

July 2013

Redressing the Balance: Women in the Art World

Louisa Elderton

Art

July 2013

London is among the capitals of the international art world. Every day and night is witness to innumerable new...

feature

October 2013

The Good Soldier

Jess Cotton

feature

October 2013

Two hundred names are inscribed in a totemic list that opens Alice Oswald’s Memorial. The deaths of the Greek heroes,...

 

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