cultural highlights

For a long time, textile art was belittled as a women’s craft. A new exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam shows the subversive potential of this art form

With “Tender Photo”, Nigerian author Emmanuel Iduma has created a lively platform for visual art from around the continent

Paulina Sotomayor sang in a mariachi band for years, but today she mixes electro with Mexican folk music, cumbia, conga and afrobeats. This is her personal playlist to celebrate female empowerment

Vietnamese club culture has long been dominated by expats and tourists. But in recent years, local collectives and DJs have increasingly become involved in the scene - and their engagement goes beyond music and parties

Slovakian author Katarína Kucbelová spent two years visiting the seamstress Iľka in a remote village. Her episodic novel “The Bonnet” talks about tradition and village life, hidden racism and the social exclusion of Roma people

Francesca Ekwuyasi is a Nigerian writer whose debut novel “Butter, Honey, Pig, Bread” follows three women on a journey of love, reconciliation, and food. In an interview, she talks about living in the diaspora and writing about queerness and faith.

Colombia’s capital is home to a vibrant and political rap scene which reaches a large audience with its powerful lyrics

Raucous vocals, nature-loving lyrics, love songs or simply some proper rock: the Inuit playlist by Canadian musician Elisapie Isaac

In Uganda, even the dancefloor is politically contentious. The Nyege Nyege Festival and the Hakuna Kulala label provide the soundtrack for cosmopolitan Africa

“The Red Book of Farewells” by Pirkko Saisio is a creative big bang. It explores love and loss in Finland in the seventies

The beat booms and the lyrics are radically intimate. The rap music of the French-African duo Triplego is created in the space between the Maghreb and the banlieue

In his coming-of-age novel “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa”, Stephen Buoro shows how pop culture imported from the West reinforces post-colonial trauma. A conversation

Xi Xi’s novel “My City” takes readers back to Hong Kong in the 1970s.

In his debut novel, Jakob Guanzon explores the reality of the “working poor” in the US. An interview about fathers and sons, money troubles and the dangerous legacy of the American Dream