Valeria Costa-Kostritsky is a journalist based in London. She currently works at openDemocracy, specialising in the post-Soviet sphere.

The invention of Frenchness

The national museum of immigration has a new mission – but it’s still housed in a building haunted by France’s colonial ghosts

Making a stand – the Russian artists saying no to war

Judging where to draw the line between maintaining a safe silence and tacitly endorsing the war in Ukraine has become a pressing matter

Carla Ecola, director of the Outside Project, lays memorial candles in Trafalgar Square as part of the Museum of Homelessness’s ‘Dying Homeless’ project (Photo: Anthony Luvera)

The streetwise ways of the Museum of Homelessness

From street actions to art exhibitions, the organisation empowers homeless people to tell their own stories

The statue of Sebástian de Belalcázar being toppled in Cali, Colombia on 28 April 2021.

The Spanish conquistadores heading for a fall in Colombia

Colombia’s indigenous communities are toppling statues of the Spanish conquerors to highlight past and present injustices

Social influencer: Emmanuel Macron announcing the launch of the culture pass for 18 year olds on TikTok.

Emmanuel Macron wants every teenager in France to go on a cultural shopping spree – but will they?

Every 18 year old in France has been given €300 to spend on culture

Is the French government about to criminalise photojournalists?

A proposed law will prevent journalists and the public from photographing the police – and follows widely publicised acts of police brutality, writes Valeria Costa-Kostritsky

Rate of return – is France’s commitment to restitution waning?

In a changing political climate, conversations about colonial history – and calls for action – are taking on a new urgency

Artists on a march to demand the restitution of the Ministry of Culture on June 15, 2020 in La Paz, Bolivia. Photo by Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images

Status anxiety – the battle over culture in Bolivia

The sacking of two museum directors and the axing of the ministry for culture is part of a wider struggle about who and what culture is for

Kené (detail) (2020), Olinda Silvano. Courtesy Dibujos por la Amazonía; © the artist

Peruvian artists address the Covid crisis in the Amazon

A project to raise funds for Amazonian communities also raises questions about the status of indigenous people in Peru

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in January 2020.

Trial by fire – the rush to rebuild Notre-Dame

Was the pledge to restore the cathedral in just five years a reasonable commitment or a rash promise?

Russian artist and activist Pyotr Pavlensky during a press interview in Paris on February 22, 2020. Photo by MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images

What is Pyotr Pavlensky playing at?

There is no shortage of theories about why the Russian artist leaked a sex tape that made a French politician drop out of the mayoral race in Paris

A summer of blunders at the French Culture Ministry

The sudden sacking of Nicolas Bourriaud suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the art world