About

Tangents is an English-language online review platform focused on writing about the Dutch art scene — on what is happening both within the borders of the Netherlands and about Dutch-based artists presenting work beyond them. Born from a frustration with the prevalence of objectivity and imposing house styles in the majority of art writing commissioned by leading platforms, Tangents instead encourages contributors to approach criticism from within the specificities and focuses of their own writing practice. Tangents publishes a monthly review written by a writer from our stable of permanent contributors, who each takes a turn to write and (lightly) edit another's work.

Contributors:

Artun Alaska Arasli

Artun Alaska Arasli is an artist and writer based in Amsterdam. Presentations of his work include Bird-Time, bologna.cc, Amsterdam; Prose, Kantine, Brussels; Cardena: Warming Up, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; Porcupine, Jan Van Eyck, Maastricht; The Beauty Commission, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. His texts have been published in Le Chauffage, nY, Interjection Calendar (Montez Press). Since 2017 he has co-authored theater plays for i.a. NTGent, Toneelgroep Oostpol, and Het Zuidelijk Toneel.

Becket Flannery

Becket Flannery is an Amsterdam-based writer and artists who has written texts responding to the work of Marina Pinsky, E.T. Wang, Philipp Gufler, Alison Yip, and Kelly Akashi among others. His writings inhabit the textual spaces which frame and mediate exhibition spaces, often using these "paratextual" fields for experimental writing. He has been commissioned by Shimmer (Rotterdam, NL), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, BE), If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution (Amsterdam, NL), and Revue Initiales (Lyon, FR) among others. In addition to writing, he exhibits his artworks and installations under the name Becket MWN.

Rana Ghavami

Annie Goodner

Annie Goodner is a writer, critic and educator living in Amsterdam. She teaches theory and writing to design students at the University of the Arts, Arnhem, and frequently contributes to the international art press.

Amelia Groom

Amelia Groom is a writer and researcher. Recent texts have included an essay about Mariah Carey’s refusal to acknowledge time, a reading of Scheherazade’s practice of “oblique parrhesia,” an essay about rust co-authored with M. Ty, and a book on Beverly Buchanan’s swampy, ruinous environmental sculpture Marsh Ruins, which was published by Afterall.

Ash Kilmartin

Taylor LeMelle

Isabelle Sully

Isabelle Sully is an artist, writer and curator. Originally from Melbourne, she now lives in Rotterdam where she is the founding editor of Unbidden Tongues, co-curator of Playbill and assistant director-curator at Kunstverein, Amsterdam.

Nadia de Vries

Nadia de Vries is a poet and cultural critic. Her books include Know Thy Audience (2023), I Failed to Swoon (2021), and Dark Hour (2018). Her poems have been featured in the European Review of Books, The Poetry Review, and Hotel, among others. She also writes fiction in Dutch.