I was four years old when the Twin Towers fell, and my memory is a mishmash of confusion: my grandmother picking me up early from Pre-K, a pillar of smoke out the rearview window, asking my father why we suddenly had a sticker of the American flag on our car.
I was too young to understand then, but 25 years later, I’ve got a better view. In today’s featured piece, art world figures including artists Shahzia Sikander, Wafaa Bilal, Rina Banerjee, Michael Rakowitz, and our very own Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian recount their heartwrenching experiences of 9/11 and its fallout, from being surveilled by the NSEERS program to losing a family member to a forever war. But the future need not be as dark as our past — multiple contributors also mentioned the election of Zohran Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, as a milestone event that hopefully marks a better path.
Also today, the Rabkin Foundation named the winners of its 2026 prize, including our regular contributor Damien Davis, who has meditated on losing an archive, crushing debt traps, and more in our pages. Congratulations!
Plus, I’d also like to introduce you all to a new format we’re debuting: pocket reviews! At 250 words, they’re playful, pithy, and portable. Read yours truly on I Want Your Sex, in which Olivia Wilde plays a contemporary artist/ scammer/ dominatrix. Yes, it’s every bit as engrossing (and ridiculous) as it sounds.
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
Artists Reflect on 9/11 and the Wounds of the “War on Terror”
Every year on September 11, New Yorkers pay tribute to the victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center — and to the wounds of the weeks and years after. That period was defined by grief, rebuilding efforts, and, almost immediately, a vicious campaign of Islamophobia and surveillance whose effects reshaped the world as they knew it. Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal recalls, “I sensed at once that the comfort and security Americans had long taken for granted were gone.”
Bilal is one of several artists from Muslim, South Asian, and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) communities whose lives were indelibly altered by the United States’s weaponization of the 9/11 attacks to pass the PATRIOT Act and justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Twenty-five years into “never forget,” Hyperallergic asked artists, curators, and culture workers to share personal and artistic reflections on how that day shaped their lives. These are their stories. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin
OCAD University Presents Canada’s Pavilion at the 2026 Gwangju Biennale
“Skennen’kó:wa ken? (Do You Carry Great Peace?)” is on until November 15, 2026.
News
- In acknowledgment of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Brooklyn Museum installs “Free F’All” (1997) by Caribbean-American artist Michael Richard in the lobby for public display.
- Hyperallergic contributor Damien Davis receives the 2026 Rabkin Prize, alongside seven other arts writers.
- Tschabalala Self’s “Lady in Blue” is unveiled as the latest sculpture for the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square in London.
- Art Movements: Kathleen V. Jameson is the Speed Museum’s new director, the New Museum gets new board members, The Met acquires Alison Rossiter works, a David Hockney show breaks records, and more.
Pocket Review
A Portrait of an Artist as a Dominatrix
“I Want Your Sex” is a caricature of the art world more than an actually incisive critique, but it’s funner that way. | Lisa Yin Zhang
Art Books and Scholarship from the National Gallery of Art
Discover thoughtfully designed exhibition catalogs, insights from leading art historians and conservators, collection highlights, and more.
ICYMI
15 Museum Exhibitions to See Across the US This Fall
Tony Cokes’s riffs on the video essay, a Grandma Moses retrospective, and Abbas Akhavan’s US museum debut are among the shows to look forward to this season.
