Qui Xiaofei

Painting is one of the oldest art forms, with roots in prehistoric caves, ancient Roman villas, and Renaissance portraiture. Today, a new generation of artists experiment, innovate, and breathe new life into this enduring medium. From immersive exhibitions with massive wall paintings to quiet, minuscule compositions, Vitamin P4: New Perspectives in Painting brings together 108 artists from 44 countries, showcasing the best contemporary painters around the world. Nominated by high-profile art experts including museum directors, curators, historians, and critics, the featured artists range from established names to emerging stars. Each artist is represented by richly illustrated pages of their work, both individual paintings and exhibition views, as well as informative texts, giving readers an inclusive overview of their practice. Exciting, inspiring, and essential to followers of contemporary art, this new iteration of Phaidon’s renowned Vitamin P books offers the definitive guide to the medium of painting today

Flight as method: A sick women exchange in material encounters, and the time it takes to care

Following Johanna Hedva’s ‘Sick Woman Theory’ (2016/2022), this co-authored, epistolary essay theorizes and practises the letter-like ‘flight’ as an affective, attentive writerly form and intimate historical encounter, which makes possible new readings – speculative, slow, suspended – of the careworn lives, works, and representations of two ‘sick women’ subjects: Liliana Amon (writer, actress, portrait sitter, 1892–1939) and Cookie Mueller (writer, actress, portrait sitter, 1949–1989). Through a series of flights exchanged – which evolve across non-linear, murmuring timelines; projections through the air, eye, mind; through time and space – we bring archival research on and with Amon and Mueller’s sickened lives, works, and materials into cross-historical correspondence, tracing scenes and relations across the medical and non-medical that are both care-less and full-of-care. This is proposed as a queer-feminist research method that draws its reparative effects from looking, waiting and writing. In correspondence with our subjects’ own living, making and writing of belatedness, our flights seek to register and revitalize the possibilities of temporally deviant care – beside mothering beside sickness beside writing. In our shared flights, we dare to look at them as the mother and not-quite mother; to wait with them and the pressure-points for thought that they pose; and to do so in the endurance, remembrance, belatedness and ongoing goodbyes of our writing-as-flight, which in turn revitalizes the complexities of our sick women subjects’ creativities and cares

Softness is power: A feminist discussion and subversion of softness

I am known as a radical knitter. Knitting is a process stereotypically linked to women and the domestic, although much of my work is produced using industrial machinery, which is usually associated with men and masculine labor. Whichever process I choose, the work that I produce always comes off the needles the same way: soft. I am researching, and writing, about softness while simultaneously hand knitting with the softest yarns that I can buy. These are both natural (silk, wool, mohair, cashmere, and alpaca) and man-made (nylon, acrylic, and polyester), plus mixes of the two. The research is underpinned by my ongoing questioning of notions of “normality” and by an embracing of the non-binary: the subtleties and differences that lie between two defined points. I write as I knit, with ideas linking together like stitches on a needle that grow to become a single work. But I am a much more experienced and skillful knitter than I am a writer. Speaking to an artist friend about my struggles to write about knitting, he asked, “Why don’t you knit it?” All of the ideas contained within this written text are also embodied within my textile work, but many people in Western society don’t know how to “read” material objects. As a society we have long privileged sight over all other senses, and generally we value and trust the written word above all else

W(hole): An alternative perspective on weave structure visualisation

This thesis is an exploration into the notation of weave structures. To do so, it analyses weave geometries from the perspective of negative space — here referring to the empty area in-between vertical warp threads and horizontal weft threads. Central to the research are the questions: what is the potential role and value of negative space in weave structure visualisation and can a holistic approach to the visualisation of weave structure uncover a new understanding of cloth construction and properties? Sparse attention has been given to weave structure notation prior to the First Industrial Revolution. This suggests that early weaving knowledge was likely to be tacitly passed on and learnt through the experience of making. Today, the modern notational system — a grid-like matrix of coloured squares — only indicates the movement of yarns on the machine (chapter 03). While weavers understand very well this way of visualising weave structure, others outside of the discipline struggle to make sense of it or understand woven cloth’s fluid nature — hindering innovative engagement with the craft and limiting its construction methodology to what the machine can/not do. The thesis investigates the potential development of an alternative weave structure visualisation for others to understand the tacit and experiential knowledge that cloth creation necessitates; and for weavers to approach their craft in holistic ways. This could help step away from understanding weave structure notation as a sole manufacturing tool. Following a practice-led methodology based on a ‘make-think’ approach to research, the study focuses on visualising the ‘unseen’ by asking: what is it that is not being looked at? (chapter 02). In order to understand empty space as a ‘material’ space (chapter 04), research draws on concepts within textile theory, semantics, fractal geometry and architecture for the purpose of using negative space as a practical tool to investigate weave geometries. Weave structure visualisation is explored through making processes while also including digital methods often used in material engineering (chapter 05 and 06). Initially, two experimental case studies present qualitative exploration both in the physical and virtual realm. First studied as a ‘structure unit’ and then within a ‘repeat’, findings identify that negative spaces repeat themselves in irregular ways — challenging the core parameter of repetition. The idea that rigid construction principles that produce fluid woven textiles places weaving as an antithetical craft — a notion that inspired its binary model is then put into question. This was explored through grey nuances (chapter 06), which reveals empty and occupied space’s interdependence. The study finds that although grey shades hinders the readability of weave structures, the proposed visualisation highlights the importance of craft weaving methods in order to develop a more holistic understanding of the technique. By questioning the fundamental knowledge contained within woven cloth construction, this alternative approach enables the craft to open up to interdisciplinary research (chapter 08). This is pertinent in regards to the development of novel assembly systems, which increasingly demand non-linear and organic modes of thinking. As a result, the research has value for weaving and other disciplines that aim to find alternative ways of doing things

Maintaining Materials Toolkit

Dataset for Maintaining Materials Toolkit pape

The architectural casino: Conversations about colonial modernism in Haifa

After the First World War and under the British Mandate, Haifa grew from a small Ottoman port town into a regional metropolis and industrial centre around a deep seaport. The city was part of an open space that extended from Cairo to Damascus through Beirut, in a region where Syria, Palestine and Lebanon were part of the same fluid, interconnected space. During the Second World War, Haifa became a border town. Under French Vichy, the border between Lebanon and Syria ran sixty kilometres to the north and hardened only after the creation of Israel in 1948 and the wars with Lebanon. Haifa’s architectural modernism developed in relation to the city’s geopolitical environment. No building better manifests Haifa’s predicament than the modernist casino building, built in the city’s Bat Galim seafront district

Design for empowerment: Approaches and tools for strategic impact

Empowerment has long been regarded as a transformative force in design for social change. However, over time, it has been institutionalised, co-opted, and diluted by market-driven design approaches, reducing its impact and strategic potential. Design for Empowerment: Approaches and Tools for Strategic Impact revisits this concept in the context of the post-Anthropocene era, where escalating social and ecological injustices challenge conventional design practices. Edited by Laura Santamaria and Ksenija Kuzmina, this book critically examines how empowerment is understood, practiced, and evaluated in design today, making it more relevant to those who need it most. It provides a collection of essays and case studies that explore emerging theories, methodologies, and tools for Design for Empowerment, drawing on the experiences of design researchers, activists, and social practitioners working toward justice and systemic change. By foregrounding power analysis, participatory design, feminist and decolonial approaches, and climate justice, this book offers a range of strategic approaches for embedding empowerment into design-led social transformation. It aims to inspire a new generation of designers by providing both theoretical insights and practical methodologies, ensuring that empowerment becomes a deliberate and central objective rather than the incidental outcome of design practice