© Arash Khaksari Hello, and welcome to the arts issue - this season’s theme is family. The idea took root while I was watching Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, the story of a family overshadowed by a domineering director father who returns home after a long absence and disrupts the fragile equilibrium. The subject matter is Chekhovian in its presentation, and the plot is made even more intriguing by the fact that lead actor Stellan Skarsgård is himself the paterfamilias of an extensive creative brood. I love any art that grapples with the basics. Save your big explosive plotline, I want tiny dramas about family relations, sibling dynamics and the filial loyalties and betrayals that tell us who we really are. Eldest daughters, toxic fathers, single mums and only children: the identities that we are bequeathed as babies may be clichéd, but they can also provide some of our most telling traits. 
© Arash Khaksari In this issue, we meet identical twins, baby sisters, mothers and, of course, Skarsgård – the big daddy of cinema – to explore family and its universal themes. Skarsgård claims to be the opposite of the parent he portrays in Sentimental Value. He’s far more giving, relaxed and non-confrontational, he says. Nevertheless, for every artist there is always the dilemma of how much you offer of yourself to others, and how much you pursue more selfish creative goals. Some artists can be monstrous and totally removed from normal interactions. Others like Skarsgård have preferred to “wipe asses” and do the cooking while they tried to do the work.  <img width='1' height='1' style='display:none;border-style:none;' alt=' src='https://images.passendo.com/t/2/8448/npc0d0xv@niepodam.pl/5824522933157968/0/0'><img width='1' height='1' style='display:none;border-style:none;' alt=' src='https://images.passendo.com/extt/2/8448/npc0d0xv@niepodam.pl/5824522933157968?pid=1'><img width='1' height='1' style='display:none;border-style:none;' alt=' src='https://images.passendo.com/extt/2/8448/npc0d0xv@niepodam.pl/5824522933157968?pid=2'><img width='1' height='1' style='display:none;border-style:none;' alt=' src='https://images.passendo.com/extt/2/8448/npc0d0xv@niepodam.pl/5824522933157968?pid=3'><img width='1' height='1' style='display:none;border-style:none;' alt=' src='https://images.passendo.com/extt/2/8448/npc0d0xv@niepodam.pl/5824522933157968?pid=4'> |  |
Loie Hollowell is turning motherhood into ‘cosmic energy’ | | | | 
© Jeremy Liebman Loie Hollowell has used her experiences of pregnancy and childbirth to create a feminist oeuvre that pulsates with “cosmic energy”. Victoria Woodcock enjoys a tour of the artist’s New York studio and finds it replete with squirting nipples, domed bellies and bold motifs that pertain to lady parts. At a stage when so many women struggle to align their professional and domestic identities, Hollowell has totally intertwined the two. Identical twins Elliot and Erick Jiménez, meanwhile, use their psychic connection to make richly symbolic photographs. Their work, exploring their Cuban heritage, draws on Spanish Catholicism, spiritism and the west African Yoruba belief system in which ibejí (twins) have their own deity. Musician Nell Mescal on heartbreak, Haim and her big brother, Paul | | | | 
© Keir Laird Nell Mescal is still best known as actor Paul’s little sister. But the Irish singer-songwriter, seven years her brother’s junior and just as ambitious, is carving out her own career. Chris Allnutt meets her following the release of her second EP, and as she is about to embark on a European tour. Bars, beaches and bravery – singer Yasmine Hamdan’s essential Beirut | | | | 
© Maria Klenner Chosen families are a different kind of touch point, as musician Yasmine Hamdan explains in How To Spend It In... Beirut. The singer moved around a lot as a child, only returning to the Lebanese capital as a teenager in the ’90s when the city’s “battle scars were everywhere”. Speaking to Arwa Haider, she says: “The ‘typical’ Beiruti traits seem paradoxical: bombastic yet resilient; edgy yet conservative; unbreakable yet worn.” Still, everyone keeps moving forward: “There is solidarity despite everything. Continuity… is a strength.” | | | | THREE MORE STORIES TO READ THIS WEEK | | |
