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Matthew Rana

@mdrana.bsky.social
99 followers 153 following 32 posts

Poet and critic living in Stockholm. matthewrana.com

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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
“Hennix’s epistemic art treats knowledge not as a positive point of appearance but rather as something more elusive and contingent.” From my review of CC Hennix at Malmö Konsthall, now online at Frieze. www.frieze.com/article/cath...
frieze.com
The Negative Aura of Catherine Christer Hennix
At Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, the artist’s austere yet expansive practice interlaces mathematics, mysticism and sound to advocate for the power of absence
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ArtReview @artreview.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s spectral work anticipated the ways in which we tend to the wounds inflicted by nationalism artreview.com/theresa-hak-...
artreview.com
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Language of the Dispossessed
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s spectral work anticipated how we still tend to the wounds of nationalism
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
”Karlberg’s show stages painting as a ’success medium’, as Isabelle Graw puts it. That is, as a prop for self-promotion and branding, a device promising further movement, circulation, and exchange” from my review of Marie Karlberg’s exhibition at Issues Gallery in Stockholm.
kunstkritikk.com
Let’s Stay in Touch - Kunstkritikk
What does it mean to be important in the art world? Marie Karlberg’s Stockholm show answers the question, one oversized business card at a time.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
“While many are quick to dismiss the late-stage Khan as a psychotic […] I suggest that we read his final text as a psychodrama revealing the enmeshment of histories of colonization […] with problems of race within psychoanalytic institutions.” Noor Asif’s brilliant piece @parapraxismag.bsky.social
parapraxismagazine.com
Stranger than Faction — Parapraxis
Masud Khan’s Rewriting of Psychoanalysis Noor Asif
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
"Copjec believes that Islamic mysticism and the concept of the imaginal world get something deeply right about reality, contingency, and the nature of the image." Henry Clements on Joan Copjec’s “Cloud”: lareviewofbooks.org/article/joan-co…
lareviewofbooks.org
God and the Unconscious | Los Angeles Review of Books
Joan Copjec’s new book charts the conceptual affinities and historical convergences between psychoanalysis and Islamic philosophy.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
So, it turns out that the co-host of Sweden’s most popular game show is a family abolitionist. @genderhorizon.com @reproutopia.bsky.social
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
My review of Lutz Bacher’s first posthumous institutional solo show in Europe is now online at Texte zur Kunst 🔥✍️
textezurkunst.de
THE STRUCTURE OF AN ERROR Matthew Rana on Lutz Bacher at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo
Matthew Rana on Lutz Bacher at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Elite writing music.
shida-shahabi.bandcamp.com
Living Circle, by Shida Shahabi
7 track album
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
“Hejinian’s writing is an antidote, as it is ludic, full of love, released — offering us insight in a shimmering turning of the clock.” From Sarah Riggs’s searching review of Lyn Hejinian’s Lola the Interpreter. @weslpress.bsky.social
jacket2.org
“In a Temporal Panic” | Jacket2
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
The new issue of the Swedish psychoanalytic journal Divan is now available, featuring my essay ’Knutar av Akut Materia’, a ”sinthomatic” reading of Bhanu Kapil’s 2011 book Schizophrene.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Some new poems on Pamenar online.
pamenarpress.com
Matthew Rana
Matthew Rana is the author of Ardour: Poems from the Daud (Nion Editions, 2022). His critical writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Tripwire, Jacket2, and The Poetry Project Newsletter,...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
A masterwork of feminine jouissance.
open.spotify.com
LUX
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Critical Inquiry @criticalinquiry.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
"With an emotional register ranging from petulance to narcissistic neediness, the book dissects the field of the minor affects with discomfiting precision." New in review, Tan Lin on Steven Zultanski's Help: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/tan_lin_revi...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
from Samo Tomšič, The Labour of Enjoyment
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
”Börjel’s brilliance here is to extend this sense of personal tragedy to the collective and, most importantly, back again.” My review of Ida Börjel’s MA @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social for Tripwire22
tripwirejournal.com
A review of MA by Ida Börjel
reviewed by Matthew Rana in Tripwire 22 Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023 MA, by Swedish poet Ida Börjel, is a long abecedarian poem patterned after Inger Christensen’s Alphabet (1981). In twenty-nine sec…
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BDS movement @bdsmovement.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
The Palestinian-led BDS movement has updated our priority targets, pressure targets and organic campaign targets.
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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Gradually, the outline of Modi’s plan to remake Kashmir has come into sight. Under the slogan of development and to “transform” the state into an “industrialized territory,” the Indian government has sold land to Indian capitalists.
bostonreview.net
Seizing Kashmir - Boston Review
For decades India has refused to acknowledge Kashmiri demands for self-determination. Now Modi has a new strategy—a settler project.
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BDS movement @bdsmovement.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
These are the #BDS consumer boycott targets named in the ground breaking report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Read more: bdsmovement.net/news/naming-...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
“For the communities of the [Indus River] delta… drawing a map for someone is a gesture of hospitality and generosity. Within the fleeting line of a river, someone opens up their world, their knowledge, their memories.” Shahana Rajani in conversation with Nick Axel @eflux.bsky.social
e-flux.com
New Silk Roads - Shahana Rajani - The Fleeting Line of a River
Colonial maps and hydraulic technologies attempted to reorganize these mobile, water landscapes into a propertied and regulated geography. But in this soaking ecology, quite literally, the logic of th...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
The new issue of Texte zur Kunst is now available, featuring my review of Dora Budor’s exhibition ‘Fidelity’ at Beau Travail, Stockholm
textezurkunst.de
Issue No. 138 / June 2025 "Exhibition Politics"
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Andreas Petrossiants @apetrossiants.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
thenation.com
The Many Lives of Joshua Clover (1962–2025)
How the militant, poet, political theorist, organizer, and giver of gifts refused to die.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Amazing. Julius Eastman @newamrecords.bsky.social
open.spotify.com
Julius Eastman, Vol. 2: Joy Boy
Julius Eastman · Album · 2022 · 6 songs
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
☁️ is finally here! @mitpress.bsky.social
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
“This is more than a rushed centralization of resources by an efficiency-driven conservative government. It is a move to weaken both the independence and the forcefulness of Sweden’s cultural imagination.” Natasha Marie Llorens for @eflux.bsky.social on recent shifts in Swedish cultural policy.
e-flux.com
Political Capture of the Arts in Sweden - Notes - e-flux
Natasha Marie Llorens on the right-wing effort to control the arts sector in Sweden.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
”The ambivalent meanings ascribed to the djinn make the djinn a vital material-symbolic object that can be read to represent the encounter with difference and impasse.” From Perwana Nazif’s fascinating piece @parapraxismag.bsky.social
parapraxismagazine.com
Appearance of a Djinn — Parapraxis
Islam, outside and in psychoanalysis Perwana Nazif
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
“For the most part, Pain’s approach is intensely observational, in keeping with the idea of accueil, or welcome, a radical kind of listening practiced at La Borde.” Nicholas Gamso on the films of François Pain, now on view at JOAN gallery in LA. @eflux.bsky.social
e-flux.com
Nicholas Gamso on François Pain - Criticism - e-flux
In 1966, a young medical student named François Pain won an internship at the experimental Clinique de La Borde, outside the town of Cour-Cheverny
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
“For Malkani, the sacred is political and resonates with the ways in which protest is inscribed within acts of veneration and prayer.” My review of Zahra Malkani’s stunning exhibition ‘Sada Sada’ is now online at Frieze.
frieze.com
Zahra Malkani’s Hum of Ecological Reverence
At Konsthall C, Stockholm, the artist’s sound installation examines the environmental damage of regional river systems, calling for collective mourning and remembrance
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Look out world, Bhanu Kapil has a new blog…
wasjackkerouacapunjabi.blogspot.com
Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi?
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
“Here, the notes are much sweeter – what, to my untrained nose, seems like the overwhelmingly funereal scent of lilies or perhaps something like bubblegum.” My write-up of Bjarne Melgaard’s collaboration with Norwegian perfumier Malbrum at VI,VII Oslo is now online @artreview.bsky.social
artreview.com
The Artworld’s Latest Fragrance, With Notes of Tragedy
In ‘Abuse Is the Beauty of the Working Class’, Bjarne Melgaard’s olfactory experiments evidence an irrepressible artist at work
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 16/01/2025
‘Trump is an early warning signal. He’s a phenomenon of transition, only half adjusted to emerging reality.’ T.J. Clark on Trump and the society of the spectacle: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
T.J. Clark · A Brief Guide to Trump and the Spectacle
The politics of an empire in decline are invariably a mixture of the cruel and the ludicrous. (Ask the Brits.)...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Excellent long read from 2002 on the disgraced psychoanalyst Masud Khan.
bostonreview.net
Return of the Repressed - Boston Review
The strange case of Masud Khan.
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
“If the Beatles​ cast a shadow over pop songwriting from the 1970s to the 1990s, every decade since has belonged to ABBA” from Chal Ravens’s terrific piece in @londonreview.bsky.social
lrb.co.uk
Chal Ravens · Twinge of Saudade: Abbamania
Abba became a vehicle for a kind of wholesome perversity, a nonconformist conformism: two picture-perfect couples...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
“It’s a novel, then, about sublimation, the conversion of the artist’s drive into form.” R.D. Hamilton’s review of Renee Gladman’s ‘My Lesbian Novel’ @friezeofficial.bsky.social
frieze.com
Renee Gladman Fulfills Literary and Romantic Desires in ‘My Lesbian Novel’
The author's metafictional exploration of the romance genre is a satisfying act of sublimation for both narrator and reader
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
“For better or worse, it seems that there have been a flurry of misreadings of Cha’s work. I would argue […] that perhaps Cha’s text actually opens up to misreading or creative reading.” Soyoung Yoon in November magazine’s excellent round table on Theresa Cha.
novembermag.com
November: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
with Dawn Chan, Jennifer Gayoung Lee, Irene Hsu, Juwon Jun, Eunsong Kim, Lauren O’Neill-Butler, Rachel Valinsky, and Soyoung Yoon, "Her legacy isn’t lost, but continuously with us in various shapes an...
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
So pleased to have my work included in Tydningen 53/54: Neutrality, edited by the incomparable Jen Hayashida!
tydningen.com
nr. 53/54: Neutralitet/en (gästred. Jennifer Hayashida)
Tydningen nr. 53/54: Neutralitet/enRed. Jennifer Hayashida116 sidor (170 x 240 mm) I detta nummer av Tydningen har de medverkande på olika vis svarat mot neutralitet/ens obenägenhet att kännas vid …
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Matthew Rana @mdrana.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Terrific conversation with Eunsong Kim @hyperallergic.com podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/h...
podcasts.apple.com
Robber Barons, Marcel Duchamp, and Big Museums’ Dirty Little Secrets
Poddavsnitt · Hyperallergic · 2024-11-19 · 58 min
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