10 Artists on Working, Living and Creating Through Loss 10 Artists on Working, Living and Creating Through Loss
The New York Times
Jesmyn Ward, Bridget Everett, Sigrid Nunez and seven other writers, actors, musicians and filmmakers talk to us about grief — how they’ve experienced it and how it has changed them.
When Jesmyn Ward was writing her 2013 book, “Men We Reaped,” she could feel the presence of her brother, who had been killed years earlier by a drunk driver. She still talks to him, as well as to her partner, who died in 2020.
“This may just be wishful thinking, but talking to them and being open to feeling them answer, that enables me to live in spite of their loss,” she told me.
While filming the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” Bridget Everett, playing a woman mourning the loss of her sister, was grieving the loss of her own. Working on the show was a way to still live with her, in a way, she said: “There’s something that’s less scary about sharing time with my sister when it’s through art or through making the show or through a song.”
One of the many things you learn after losing a loved one is that there are a lot of us grieving out there. Some people are not just living with loss but also trying to create or experience something meaningful, to counter the blunt force of the ache.
We talked to 10 artists across music, writing, photography, film and comedy about the ways their work, in the wake of personal loss, has deepened their understanding of what it means to grieve and to create.
In the months leading up to the election, Donald J. Trump sat for a slew of casual and unconventional conversations with podcasters and streamers. We watched them all.
In the last year, museums, book festivals, arts journals and other organizations have experienced bitter discord over what qualifies as tolerable speech about the conflict and its combatants.
John Krasinski may not have the raw energy of Glen Powell, but a collaboration with the stylist Ilaria Urbinati has paid huge dividends.
The star of Jacques Audiard’s showy new musical about a trans Mexican crime boss, Karla Sofía Gascón, adds soul to the melodrama. Zoe Saldaña also shines.
The powerhouse soprano, already a company stalwart at 37, still seems to be figuring out a character whose moods change on a dime.
The artist’s works are the subject of two New York shows, at the Metropolitan Museum and the Jack Shainman Gallery.
The YouTube star has a coffee company, a podcast and a new collaboration with Warby Parker. One thing she isn’t doing much? Posting.
The FX series strives to capture the complexity of its subject: the long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.
Nora Holt was a pioneer of Chicago’s Black classical music scene. A friend of Josephine Baker, she later became a blues singer in Parisian nightclubs.
In the film “Conclave,” the costume designer Lisy Christl clothed an army of catty cardinals, from their miters down to their quirky glasses.
The sprawling PST festival of more than 70 exhibitions doesn’t quite live up to its theme of art and science colliding. But there is a handful of impressive entries.