Mona Chalabi's Ten Lives Puts Money at the Center of Art

Pulitzer Prize-winning Iraqi-British artist Mona Chalabi opens her first book with a confession about cash. "I wrote this book because I was paid a shitload of money to write it," Chalabi writes in Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are (2026) — or tried to, before her editor stopped her. The line sets the terms for a book about wealth and economic inequality in America, told through Chalabi's data-driven, hand-drawn practice.

Hyperallergic Associate Editor Lakshmi Rivera Amin interviews Chalabi about her process and about how class and inequality shape journalism, art and daily life. Chalabi has built her career on a refusal to look away. "As an adult and as a journalist, I have stared shamelessly," she says.

Her visualizations have taken on targets few illustrators touch: the scale of Jeff Bezos's wealth, the Israeli government's starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, and the racial and gender biases embedded in museum collections. Ten Lives extends that project to American wealth itself.

The takeaway: Chalabi's book argues that what people own determines who they become — and she starts with her own paycheck.

What else happened this week?

Three art-world stories broke across the news section:

• The only handwritten manuscript of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech goes to auction at Christie's in January 2027, with estimates reported as high as $10 million.
• French authorities found six stolen Pablo Picasso prints under a pile of clothes in a home on the French Riviera.
• Ohio State University called off its review process on removing billionaire benefactor Les Wexner's name from campus buildings, despite the founder's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Is sexy art back in Chicago?

Critic Lori Waxman asks the question directly in her feature "Is Sexy Art Back, or Is It Just Me?" The piece surveys sex in the air in Chicago, from Willem de Kooning's miserable nudes to Alexandra Barth's "hot and bothered" architecture.

Waxman loads the essay with art-historical judgments — has anyone called de Kooning's drawings "slasher sketches" before? — plus discussion of glory holes and sexy architecture. She also offers observations on life, including that "female middle-age libido sets at either zero or 1,000, on a scale of one to 100."

Associate Editor Lisa Yin Zhang, who edited the piece, noted the contrast with Chalabi's interview: "Funny — as an editor, my favorite thing is not stopping my writers." Waxman declined to make the piece a personal essay about her own sexuality. "Maybe after everyone's dead," she said.

What's showing?

Raed Yassin's exhibition "Warhol of Arabia" reimagines Andy Warhol's 1977 visit to Kuwait and a bygone era in the Middle East, Greta Rainbow reports.

At the Met Museum, "Chasing Clouds" traces the technical problem of capturing clouds at photography's beginning. Julia Curl calls it "a pleasing romp" through that early challenge.

Museums are also marketing harder than ever. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is promoting a show of 300-plus unique works by Marcel Duchamp, including the permanently installed masterpiece "Étant Donnés."

Another sponsored exhibition, "Overexposed," examines how the concurrent emergence of cinema and X-ray technology transformed how we see the human body.

What about books?

M John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel The End of Everything, becoming the first science fiction writer to take the award, the Guardian reports.

In Hyperallergic's own books section, Will Heinrich reviews an ancient Chinese ink painting — a piece he calls a Zen Mona Lisa — and the review becomes a journey through his own past.

From the archive, Elyssa Maxx Goodman's Glitter and Concrete returns to view. The history demands readers take drag seriously as a cultural art form that responds to, critiques, and forms a crucial part of American history, Zac Thompson writes.

What are people reading elsewhere?

• Dalit activist and writer Yashica Dutt reports in New Lines Magazine on the wave of progressive South Asian American leaders taking office across the United States.
• The New Yorker's weekend essay on Merritt Tierce's piece about an affair with an economist has generated online discourse at least as interesting as the piece itself.
• Longreads notes that nine out of 10 time capsules go missing — and that an International Time Capsule Society exists.

What did members say?

Reader Denise Sanabria responded to Hyperallergic's story on the new Met Gala theme with a pointed question: "Is it going to come across like Martha Stewart's Halloween costume?"

The through-line of the week is money: Chalabi's book on wealth, a $10 million King manuscript, and a billionaire's name kept on university buildings all point to the same subject — who can afford culture, and who owns it.