Arts news

• The pandemic captured in patchwork art – in pictures

  08-05-2021 18:00
  
  In Pinochet-era Chile, a group of women known as the Arpilleristas denounced the violent regime by creating patchwork images out of scraps. That movement is the inspiration behind a new show, All in the Same Storm: Pandemic Patchwork Stories ( 19 May-30 August) , a collaboration between the De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex and the local Refugee Buddy Project, founded by Rossana Leal. The patches, she says, express how people felt in lockdown: “fear, loneliness, gratitude to the NHS&rdquo
  
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• Decolonizing Rodin: America’s racial reckoning comes to a San Francisco art museum

  08-05-2021 12:00
  
  Wangechi Mutu’s I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? juxtaposes the Kenyan American artist’s large-scale, matriarchal works against neoclassical bustsThe racial reckoning that has swept the US for the last year has touched many institutions, high and low. But it’s only now, as the country reopens, that the results are becoming visible.Fine arts museums have grappled with questions of representation and cultural equity, as well as their historical role in imperialism and outright t
  
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• How rugby star Maro Itoje found his voice: ‘For black people, the road is often trickier’

  08-05-2021 09:00
  
  From highlighting black history to tackling everyday racism, the powerful athlete is determined to use his platform for changeJust under a year ago, Maro Itoje popped into his local branch of Waitrose to do some shopping. Despite being one of this country’s finest and most recognisable rugby union players – a 6ft 5in second-row forward who has played in a World Cup final and won virtually every major prize in the club game with his team, Saracens – he still enjoys the luxury of
  
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