A note is scribbled over the pile of highlighted topographical maps: "A silence made from a mighty sound is still a sound."

Rattana Vandy knows silence well. He grew up during the era of Cambodia's silence, the deafening echo of that followed the Khmer Rouge regime.

Vandy's exhibition Bomb...

"I think part of the reason I've never gotten mugged here," Rachel tells us, "is that I don't stay out late. And on the rare occasions I do, I never walk."

I nod. "I don't walk around at night in the States, so I'm used to it."

"Really?" Anna asks,...

The scene was set: Rome in autumn. An up-lit fountain in an ancient piazza. Lovers separated by an ocean (both physical and metaphorical) reuniting. A tentative hug, a bashful glance, hearts swooning with the purr of motorinos. Sparks would fly like those light-up toys the immigrants sell. There would be...

At a certain point during the Fame festivities, you realize you're not at a typical art opening.

This doesn't happen when you think it might. It's not while you're traipsing through the winding, white-walled streets the historical center of a forgotten Italian town to find the gallery. It's not when...

If you travel solo, they will ask you. Elbows perched and eyes hungry, they will lean in, as though towards some kind of truth, some answer, a hint at a riddle only the very lucky even get to ask: "But don't you get lonely?"

And I don't know about you,...