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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

In the face of legal restraints, police repression, political violence and the pressures and insecurity precipitated by the pandemic, the feminist movement in Turkey has persisted in mobilising in the streets across the country Across several nights of the year thousands of bodies join in motion on the streets of major cities in defiance of police barricades to engage in stubborn collective joy The most recent Feminist Night March in Istanbul, which took place this year on International Woman’s Day on 8 March 2022, set itself against patriarchy, heterosexism, male violence, labour exploitation, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia and war The capillary of backstreets of Beyoğlu district sang with the movement of bodies, an accumulation of hope, hurt and protest articulated in the rhythm of shouted and painted slogans –‘Tie your hair Rapunzel, let the asshole use the stairs’; ‘There is shit in the fridge and a riot on the streets’; ‘Our labour, our body, our identity are ours’; ‘If you feel despairing, remember this crowd’ In the words of Saidiya Hartman, from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), ‘If you listen closely, you can hear the whole world in a bent note, a throwaway lyric, a singular thread of the collective utterance’   The feminist movement in Turkey connects itself to a long tradition of riotous chorus, whose shouts against violence and despair continue to echo through different passageways into the present day The Greek etymology of the word ‘chorus’ refers to a ‘dance within an enclosure’, a dance which is transmitted through different mediums – in the history of the street, in the pages of a book and the sharp lines drawn by the visions of women who came before Among this chorus, the voices of a generation of women writers from Turkey working in the 1970s and 80s, considered cult writers today, are still active participants in the feminist imagination These writers are distinct for their examination of the lives of women within the contours of their social and economic conditions – not tracing these contours, but testing their limits through foregrounding the inner lives and concerns of their subjects The

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

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feature

November 2014

Every Night is Like a Disco: Iraq 2003

Paul Currion

feature

November 2014

That day at Kassim’s, there was no music. There was almost no sound at all, not even the echoes...

feature

Issue No. 16

Scroll, Skim, Stare

Orit Gat

feature

Issue No. 16

1.   This is an essay about contemporary art that includes no examples. It includes no examples because its...

Art

October 2014

For the Motherboard

Vanessa Hodgkinson

James Bridle

Art

October 2014

Please click on the links below to download, print and assemble (instructions in slideshow above) Vanessa Hodgkinson’s For the Motherboard:...

 

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