This September, I was invited by BYREDO to celebrate the launch of their new Eau de Parfum, Future Memories. As part of the brief, BYREDO asked me to select a photographer who could speak to New York City and what we choose, today, to remember tomorrow. New York–based photographer Rafael Rios immediately came to mind.

Nostalgia is invoked by association. Sights, smells, and other anchors trigger a non-linear response to what was — and, at times, who was. An assembly of cues transports our minds elsewhere. But what happens before moments become memories? What becomes tangible when we reside in the immediate? What happens when we dare to find miracles in the mundane?

For "Family," Rios uses his camera to see, capture, and embrace the ones he loves most. In photographs taken between 1996 and 2006, memory is alchemized not through performance for the camera, but through hugs, direct gazes, and the intimacy of his family home in Brooklyn. What results is a series that is relatable, warm, and, for better or worse, shows a New York that is no longer. It's an invitation to linger, and to hold deep reverence for the fleeting moments that make up our lives.

If you're in the SoHo area, please stop by. It's something quite special. Many thanks to Rafael and his family for trusting us with this trove of images and objects. Thank you to the team at BYREDO, PUIG, Dollhouse, and everyone who invested in bringing this project to life.

Back in 2021, I was stuck in a cycle of wanting to die. I spent too many mornings in a row not wanting to go on, but feeling too tired to even make a move to get it all over with. After sinking into the dark place, I finally got on the phone with a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with type II bipolar disorder. My therapist at the time (who I swiftly fired) had told me I was just experiencing trauma-related symptoms. A lot of my adolescence was shaped by resilience, but this was something I knew needed to be taken gravely seriously. I've long been a wanderer, and anyone who's left home for whatever reasons knows that wallet-phone-keying through life can put your nervous system into a version of sympathetic psychosis. I was fighting, flying, and fawning.

That fall, I like to remember that I was faced with the grand decision of choosing to live. I got on medication, I ended my relationship, I moved house, I started a new job, I tried to get back with an ex (0/10 stars), and soon became a runner.

Five years later, I'd never written publicly about my diagnosis. Here and there, I wrote about having a mood disorder and penned pithy captions about surviving depression, but "coming out" was something else altogether. Up until recently, Kanye West was the poster child for bipolar disorder, and I didn't want to lose opportunities because of mine. So, I hid it.

Around late March of this year, I was on a train from France to Spain and couldn't stop crying. In managing my disorder over the last five years, I've come to recognize these signs, and I began reaching out to my anchors. I sent teary-eyed texts to my assembly of emergency contacts. I spoke as honestly as I could in therapy about what was going on. In short, I thought I was bigger than the program. At the time, I was pulling every lever to fix myself: a tool sharpened by my ongoing shame.

While I could “come out” on May 1, it was in mid-May that my period of recovery came to a halt. My mania symptoms broke through and, as always, unbeknownst to me, I was slipping. I forgot things, I started fights, I started to believe irrational things about the world around me. Simple disagreements felt like all-out attacks. I was drowning and I couldn’t even tell that my feet were wet.

It’s extraterrestrial, to say the least. I had given my everything to tightening up and still I found myself underneath this very costly disorder. Weeks later, I’m still torn up about it all. It’s hard to reckon with something that cannot be medicated, therapied, dieted, ran, prayed away. It is wherever I am and it sucks. I believe my worst thoughts and, as if for fun, my brain adds on new data to tell me my life isn’t worth living. Even recounting moments of mania physically hurts like wearing a corset lined with daggers.

I’m sorry that this newsletter is a bit of a downer. My Instagram post was filled with a lot more hope. I gleefully shared the names of other bipolar people making beauty of their diagnoses: Kehlani, Yung Lean, Jenifer Lewis, Chappell Roan, and Camoghne Felix. After posting, a dear friend texted me about how I’d free’d myself. With some distance now, I don’t feel anymore free talking about a diagnosis, but I do feel like the shape of my shame is no longer incarcerated by my inability to confront it.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been reading Alice Walker’s Gathering Blossoms Under Fire and in it she writes about writing, about love, about sex, about motherhood, about life, and explicitly about her own depression and suicidal ideation. In one of a few passages about ideation she writes, “One reason I should not kill myself is that I enjoy the beauty & wonder of the world/life much more than I could possibly enjoy the nothing-ness of death. Death is the ultimate bore. No grand canyons. No deserts. No great skies & cumulus clouds. No coming of Spring.” Thank GOD and Great Spirit for you Alice Walker, and for these reminders.

I’m still seeing what my diagnosis can do, and what I can do with my diagnosis. I want to say that I am proud of myself, or that I am free. I think saying either feels like bullshit. I’m terrified. And yet, if I’m really, truly honest, fear aside, I also feel similar to Alice. I’m bored by the idea of giving up. I’m far more curious about the coming of Spring.

Matt Lipps, Where Figure Becomes Ground, 2019

In this large-scale series, Lipps selects and cuts out iconic 1990s fashion campaigns from women’s magazines and combines them with documentary photographs culled from US Camera Annual, a magazine published between 1938 and 1969 for a largely male audience of professional and amateur photographers. As revealed by the glossy reflections of scotch tape, the works are created by analog means. The artist cuts paper with X-acto knives, layers the fashion shots on top of the documentary pictures, creating a visual puzzle where inside becomes outside. By these means, Lipps challenges the clichés of both genres and ultimately implodes a series of polarities: shallow commerce versus deep investigation; ephemeral style versus timeless documents; and femininity versus masculinity.

Read more.

A few weeks ago in therapy, I had what some might consider a breakthrough.

For the past few years, I've been mean to myself and I mean really mean. My sticks and stones have been replaced by automatic weapons. I've critiqued my body, my love life, my clothing, my diet, and especially my spending habits. Left to my own brain, I've felt like a total failure, and some weeks it's hard to live with what feels like an overwhelming truth (no matter how many of my amazing friends tell me otherwise).

As of late, I've been flying by the seat of my pants as I navigate nomadism. In my highest mind, I want to call myself a nomad, but in my most vulnerable moments, I feel more like a vagabond. These feelings don't come from a place of kindness, but from a visceral, festering wound that has been well-fed. Because I have elected to live far away from home, I am finding myself without a space to regulate, and it's starting to take a toll.

My therapist is always reminding me to zoom in when I'm overwhelmed, and these feelings arise. They're trained in somatic therapy or therapies that "posit that our body holds and expresses experiences and emotions, and that traumatic events or unresolved emotional issues can become 'trapped' inside."1

In sessions, whenever I monologue about life or whatever feels most urgent, my therapist will ask, without fail: How does this feel in your body-mind? If I allow it, we'll sometimes even do physical movement to return to that connection. I’ll hold up my hands as if in a prayer pose, and gently touch pinky to pinky, then ring finger to ring finger, slowly melting my hands into themselves.

On one hand, I appreciate the challenge of leaving my analytical brain and being drawn back into my body. Because I take mood stabilizers, it can be very difficult for me to feel big feelings for very long. As such, my analytical brain often takes the front seat, applying logic to whatever emotions are coming to the fore. I don't sit with a feeling for long before I go into clinical mode: I feel A. Why? What needs to be done? How long has this been present? Whose fault is it? That last question tends to be the most operative, because my brain —judge and jury— knows without a shadow of a doubt that everything is some version of my fault. I’m guilty because I’m not smart enough, wise enough, cool enough, hardworking enough. Enough, enough, enough. Some call this the inner critic, and let me tell you: mine would put Siskel & Ebert to shame.

In a recent session, we had a conversation about my inner critic that has stuck with me: I jokingly seriously told my therapist, "If I ever met my inner critic, I would push her down a flight of stairs." She paused and said, I don't know if you'd do that to a child.

Before that moment, I had never considered that my inner critic might not be as big and grown-up as I am. After their comment, I started imagining my inner critic as a stack of little-me's — almost Little Rascals-style — all piled into a Burberry trench coat, shouting from the peanut gallery. A little grouping of Kimberly’s of past years with sticky fingers, with knocked knees, with gentle eyes.

This realization led to what feels like a genuine breakthrough.

Rather than being in constant opposition with my inner critic, which really just adds to the pile of self-hatred… I'm now a bit more attuned to the fact that even she needs some nurturing. Maybe she's lonely. Maybe she's scared. Maybe she's just hangry and needs a home-cooked meal. More and more, I'm challenging myself to stop weaponizing my analytical mind and to make room for questions instead of conclusions.

Conclusions feel like safety, like control, but I know, somewhere deeper, that this is a lie I’ve told myself for a long time. This need for control invites sharp words toward myself and those I love very deeply. I move into an immediate posture of offense before allowing myself the room to pause and access more than a surface feeling.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to rewrite my inner dialogue overnight, but this reframe has genuinely helped me, and I hope it might work for you too. We’re all caught in a constant cycle of hurting and healing and contrary to what we’ve believed for so long, there’s no prize at the end. I often gawk at people who have “graduated from therapy,” because, to me, the work of tending to yourself never has an expiration date. Yes, we can hold ourselves to high standards, but we can’t forget the gesture of holding, or we’ll just be pushing ourselves out of moving vehicles with no safety gear.

I not so humbly describe myself as “a woman of words,” which really just means: I love to YAP. I love to chat shit, to share philosophy cribbed from podcasts, and I even love to eavesdrop on others as they yap.

Lately, Portuguese lessons have been ripping me a new one. Conjugating verbs, curving my mouth to reveal new sounds, and constantly making mistakes has been necessary, urgent work.

To keep me in the game, I started reading Dr. Kató Lomb's Polyglot: How I Learn Languages. Dr. Lomb famously knew 16 languages, many of which she learned in her 30s and 40s. In it she writes, "Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people."

What's most true about language learning is that it stems from our desire to connect. As humans, we crave it. While tools like Google Translate and whatever AI doohickeys get us through quick transactions, learning a language … and truly leaning into the chaos of it … is one of the most romantic things the human brain does. It makes us brave. It makes us choose our words wisely. It can trip us up, but sometimes it's necessary to slow all the way down. There are couples who have been together for years without fluently speaking each other's languages, and yet their connection holds because they work to find their own language. The sweet slippages in between are what bond them. The foundation of good loving is a work of comprehension. On the whole, learning implies a lack of knowing, which also implies room to grow and mature.

We cannot let this fall by the wayside. We need to fail into connection far more than we need to get it right.

In addition to formally learning languages and how to learn languages, I've recently developed the habit of researching the etymology of words. This week's word has been desire.

Desire comes from the Latin desiderare, composed of two parts: the prefix de-, meaning "of" or "from," and sidus, meaning "star" or "constellation." The composition implies a longing or waiting for what the stars will bring, often linked to ancient astrology or navigation. Before this, I'd always equated desire with something corporeal, but I’m moved by this celestial re-imagining.

What we desire is so much more than a yearning. When we let it be, desire is more like a grander connection to the great beyond. We’re all created from stardust and so maybe what we desire is with and within us all along.

Below, I’m including a few of the tabs that opened in my mind as a result. To know me is to know that I am both a woman of words and a woman of well-curated tabs.

1: Emerson Rocha, The Blue Where Yemanjá Reigns (2024)

I recently reposted this amazing artwork from Altagracia Alvarado's substack. This work, created by Emerson Rocha and entitled The Blue Where Yemanjá Reigns (2024), immediately re-emerged in my mind when I thought to start this etymology series. Rocha's interpretation of the orixá Yemanjá, covered in stars, struck me. Yemanjá's name is derived from the expression YéYé Omó Ejá: "The Mother whose children are fish." I'd originally wanted to draw a direct connection between this interpretation of Yemanjá and the idea of being born from the stars, but I don't want to speak to what I don't know nearly enough about. What my affection for this image did lead me to, however, is a two-part essay by my beloved T. Lax, Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York — Searching for Iemanjá: On the Move in Brazil — a deeper dive on Yemanjá, her lore, and what makes her such a powerful force spiritually and culturally. Go read it and delight.

2: “You Are My Starship” by Norman Connors

The absolute banger "You Are My Starship" by jazz drummer, composer, arranger, and producer Norman Conners is one of those songs where, when it plays, you don’t need to know the words to know the words. I wonder if there's a theory for this—specifically within Black culture. I often feel something like a sonic inheritance in songs by Al Green, Frankie Beverly and Maze, Patti LaBelle, and others. I never stopped to learn the lyrics, but through some osmosis of Blackness they sit in my bones.

Oh, oh, you are my starship
Come take me up tonight and don't be late
Yes, you are my starship
Come take me up tonight and don't be late
And don't you come too soon

3: “Daystar” by Rita Dove from Collected Poems 1974-2004

Rita Dove's "Daystar" remains one of my favorite poems of all time. I first came across it in college in a class with Dr. Kevin Quashie, author of The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture and Black Aliveness, Or A Poetics of Being. Any chance I have to mention him, I do. Without Dr. Quashie's tutelage, I cannot imagine having become a writer. At the time, we were also reading Gwendolyn Brooks's only work of fiction, Maud Martha, another book I absolutely adore and highly recommend.

"Daystar," much like Maud Martha, opens a portal into the subconscious of its protagonist. Beyond its gorgeous prose, Maud Martha's structure always struck me: beyond a few choice moments, Maud Martha is largely muted and doesn't engage in much dialogue. The book's storytelling exists entirely within her mind and purview. Similarly, Dove's protagonist in "Daystar" silently carves out a moment for herself in the middle of her day. She finds mindfulness. She builds a palace. She finds a place to be nothing, pure nothing, in the middle of the day, and in that nothingness she finds both desire and fulfillment.

Daystar

She wanted a little room for thinking;
but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.

So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children’s naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch –
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf. Other days
she stared until she was assured
when she closed her eyes
she’d see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour – where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

I am, in many ways, the king of quitting. Before Pace, I’d only ever held one other job for that long. Maybe I’m avoidant. But movement has been the organizing principle of my life since my early teens, when I elected to go to boarding school. At 12, I knew I wanted to see more of the world, and that by hook or crook, I would find my way there. I was going to school six days a week, taking night classes on Wednesdays, and a year later I was enrolled at St. George’s School in Newport, RI — far from everything and everyone I knew.

For most people, that kind of rupture might insight a mental collapse. For me, it was the beginning of a unique, third sight. I have come to know myself through changes in environment. I know who I am because, of course, I am with myself all the time. Over the years, I've come to love and to hate her — but still, she never leaves me.

Applying to and getting accepted into the program was a great challenge to my look-and-leap lifestyle. Not only did I apply to graduate school, something I'd convinced myself I needed, but I applied to a program in London as an international student. I want to pause here to say: please hug anyone in your life who has moved to a new country. Going through the motions, the costs, the logistics — all of it confirmed that I may be both intellectually and emotionally inept. I have always held deep compassion for migratory experiences, but the trials of moving freely between two English-speaking countries had me on my very last leg. For reasons too tedious to recount, I couldn't apply for a student visa and pursued an artist's visa instead. It was hard. It was expensive. And for so much of my life, I haven't shied away from hard.

I was a kid in Gifted & Talented. I am a perfectionist. I am hard-headed. However, the difficulty of this process was a mixed blessing.

You see, my life is one of tremendous privilege. I have time on my hands. I have people to hold my hands. I have a full belly. I have every reason to believe in the power of God. And, as such, I have to be for real when every sign is screaming no. And so, I let go of the “dream.” But not before I sublet my beloved apartment in New York and quit my relationship, my job, and left behind every safety net I'd assembled: all at once.

I was in a low of lows, but again, still privileged enough to pack my essentials and chart into a year of “yeah, sure” and “well, why not?” Since last August, I’ve lived on the road. I’ve stayed on friends’ couches, in their childrens’ bedrooms, in apartment shares and while I’ve done very little staying, I’ve been confronted with myself in ways that I haven’t felt since I was thirteen.

In this “yeah, sure” year, I've been in and out of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Milan, São Paulo, Rio, Doha, Los Angeles, Florence, Charlotte, Miami, Chicago, and most recently, Bali. Along the way, I've taken photos, made gratuitous Instagram posts, but I have yet to write a travel blog or make a vlog. As we know, contemporary internet culture has produced this insistence that every moment must be performed, packaged, and shared, and by my third move I was over the expectations. Over the past fifteen years, I've built a career as a curator and, at the same time, over the past eight, I've also made the majority of my money as an influencer. This means my economy survival is, quite literally, one of sharing. Influencing keeps the bank account accounting. Influencing puts me in the most extraordinary rooms. Influencing makes the making worth making.

Right? And yet, I can simply not be fussed.

Lately I've been watching travel vlogs — women in my age group sharing their day trips, their long stays, their outfits, their meals, the places they've been stranded. And with every click, I can't quite see myself doing the same. In my travels, I've also been slowly reading Johny Pitts' delicious Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. I love to take in these methods. But I have yet to find the form that lets me both remember and remember. In Bali, where I spent twenty-one days completing a yoga teacher certification, I lived in a small community within a small radius, and I kept a daily gratitude journal. Its pages hold everything from I am thankful for Bad Bunny to the things I should have said in arguments with people I love tenderly. This has felt like enough.

Last night, in the wee hours, I planned a trip to Sevilla to see América. Conexiones diaspóricas en la colección Jorge M. Pérez curated by the brilliant Hélio Menezes at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo. Mayhaps, I’ll bring my fancy camera. I’ll hold my arm out and I’ll talk to it. It all feels slightly wrong in the way new, cringe, and challenging things sometimes do.

For now, I’m moving so fast I’m still working out where I am each morning. But I suppose it might be time to begin making some sense along the way.

Let’s see how this goes.

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Sharif Waked
Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints, 2003

Chic Point is a seven minute video that ponders, imagines, and interrogates "fashion for Israeli checkpoints." Set to the backdrop of a heavy rhythmic beat, men model one design after another in an exploration of form and content. Zippers, weaved nets, hoods, and buttons serve the unifying theme of exposed flesh. Body parts - lower backs, chests, abdomens - peek through holes, gaps, and splits woven into readymade silk and cotton t-shirts, robes, and shirts. Raw materials and standard clothes are transformed into pieces that follow normative fashion standards while calling them into question.

As the sights and sounds of the fast paced catwalk dim to a close, the viewer is transported to the West Bank and Gaza. A series of stills taken from the years 2000 to 2003 display Palestinian men traversing the profoundly violent but highly common Israeli checkpoint. One man after another lifts shirts, robes, and jackets. Some kneel shirtless, others naked, with guns poised at their exposed flesh. Men in Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Kalandiya, Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, and Gaza City wrangle with the Israeli state’s security apparatus.

Firas Shehadeh, Like an Event in a Dream Dreamt by Another—Insomnia, 2025

Insomnia is the second iteration of Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another. It explores how Palestinian players transform RPG games into acts of defiance and worldbuilding, not as escapism but as survival. In Palestine, where sleeplessness is imposed by the constant hum of drones, wakefulness becomes both a curse and a battleground. Rejecting the role of an NPCs in a rigged game, Palestinian modders hack, rewrite, and reclaim their narrative, asserting their agency through play. The game is no longer a colonial fantasy; it is a contested ground where Return is the endgame, and resistance is written into the code. The film traces the lineage of colonial violence from Turtle Island to Palestine in Los Santos.

Descanso is an anti-monument that invites us to think about a paradigm shift. It is a replica of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Plaza Colón in Madrid, fallen and completely invaded by invasive weeds and plants (local and migrant) that gradually devour the figure in a colorful and harmonious feast.

The installation is conceived as a territory of rest from this colonial and violent legacy, an invitation to leave behind anachronistic heroisms that celebrate the violence exercised on different peoples, and to give way to life and to a new era more in harmony with others and with nature.

As a Colombian artist this installation has a special symbolism for me. Colombia etymologically means “the land of Columbus”. It was so named by the independence fighters (mostly white men descended from a European caste) who after winning a long war against Spain, wanted to dedicate the country to Christopher Columbus, a great paradox like the rest of our history. This work, between sculpture and landscape, also functions as a kind of return: here is your hero, we no longer need him. We need instead a rest from that legacy, a rest from those heroisms of cruelty of yesteryear.

— Ivan Argote

While the exhibition doesn’t open to the public until September 6, there’s already a cornucopia of auxiliary happenings—exhibitions, fairs, performances, and countless opportunities—to glimpse the vast creativity unfolding across Latin America. Though Brazil looms large in the global cultural imagination, many here (and across the region) remain disparagingly impacted by distance from the art epicenters of the United States (read: New York) and Europe. The result is often a very you had to be there kind of deal. With that in mind, between cocktails, openings, dance floors, and dinners, it’s my intention to bring you along for the ride. I am fortunate to see much of the world, but few places have educated and inspired me like São Paulo.

As a primer: biennials are most easily described as the “Olympics of Art.” The model, established in Venice in 1895, was initially conceived to spotlight Italian artists with a biennial exhibition of Italian Art (Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale) marking the silver anniversary of King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy. In the early 20th century, the event became increasingly international. By 1907, countries began installing national pavilions—the first being Belgium—which already hints at the Biennale’s complex, problematic history. (For context, Chanel even dedicated a season of the podcast CHANEL Connects to the Venice Biennale last year. I joined my beloved fellow critic Andrew Durbin for the season’s opening episode.)

A half-century later, in 1951, Italian-Brazilian industrialist Ciccillo Matarazzo spearheaded the creation of the São Paulo Biennial, hosted ever since in the pavilion that bears his name in Parque do Ibirapuera. More on that later. For now, here are a few highlights from my first two days of exploration—because, in true fashion, I went straight from the airport into the bustle of it all.

Stop 1: SP-Arte Rotas
Described as “an art fair that moves with the times,” SP-Arte functions as a vital meeting point for the artistic community, promoting exchange and strengthening the circulation of visual arts within Brazil while expanding to the international market—firmly situating Brazil in the global circuit. Rotas, one of two presentations of SP-Arte, launches in the days leading up to the Bienal and serves as a platform for connections, movement, and discovery. Featuring 60 curated projects, organized by the fair’s artistic director Rodrigo Moura, it is, in my humble opinion, one of the world’s cooler fairs.

Below are a few highlights that made the journey to ARCA worthwhile:

Galeria Marco Zero (Recife, Brazil)

Yehudi Hollander-Pappi (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

VERMELHO (Lison, Portugal)

Cristina Guerra Gallery (Lisboa, Portugal)

Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi has long been one of my favorite abstractionist painters. I can’t quite remember when I first encountered his work—definitely on-line—but I do remember seeing it in person for the first time at Tate Modern. Gosh, there’s nothing like that first time.

His use of color, line, and scale has always drawn my eye and heart. For me, encountering his work feels like a soft tap on the shoulder: a reminder that whichever museum houses his work might just have a collection that is worthy of closer attention, that their galleries deserve a slower pace, and that my presence and patience are essential tools for viewing. Context is everything. As a viewer, I know what I like and what I don’t, but I also know that when I rush, I risk disenfranchising my own experience of art. I’m always grateful to the artists that stop me right in my tracks.

Today is Day 857 of the war in Sudan. El-Salahi was born in 1930 in Omdurman, one of several towns in eastern Sudan that remain in dire need of aid and our collective awareness.

This month, proceeds from subscriptions will go to Basmat Wasl, a volunteer-led organization that has worked tirelessly to distribute drinking water in Gedaref and meals in Gedaref, Omdurman, and Jareef. As of last week, Basmat Wasl announced on Instagram that they have run out of funds to continue operations.

If you are able, please consider making a donation to their PayPal, here.