Artist Bassim al-Shaker, who was included as part of the Iraqi Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, is profiled in the New York Times this week, detailing the artist’s story of oppression at the hands of Mahdi Army loyalists, and his life in Arizona, where he is currently working on a business visa to avoid several fundamentalists who nearly killed him earlier this year.  “He’s obviously very talented,” Says Rijn Sahakian an Iraqi expat representing the country’s artists abroad, “but we were also focused on saving his life.” (more…)

Luxury aviation company VistaJet recently commissioned artist Tom Sachs, working in collaboration with former assistant Van Neistat, to create a series of flight safety videos to be shown onboard the company’s fleet of airplanes.  Taking inspiration from Todd Haynes’s 1987 cult classic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which was shot with a cast of only Barbie dolls, the duo created a short using stop motion and dolls to reconceptualize the traditional airline safety film. (more…)