In Conversation: Sheena Wagstaff and Shanay Jhaveri

‘Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values,’ the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah writes. ‘It’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.’ That rubric might have inspired this year’s Frieze Masters Talks programme in collaboration with dunhill, which celebrates creativity and conversation by bringing together leading artists and thinkers from disciplines as various as architecture and politics. For curators Sheena Wagstaff and Shanay Jhaveri, talking to artists has profoundly shaped their view of the world and its possibilities.

Sheena Wagstaff In these events we want to change the dynamic of ‘talk’ – which is usually one-sided – into ‘conversation’, which could be between two or three people. Shanay, you came to mind immediately to be my co-curator, as someone who would think beyond the standard parameters of this type of programme and make sure we included very different viewpoints – and also ensure an intergenerational conversation.

Shanay Jhaveri One panel to bear that out will bring together three approaches to ‘spatial thinking’, as we’re calling it. In Glenn Lowry, Nairy Baghramian and Julian Rose, we have a museum director, an artist and an architectural historian in conversation with each other. What is exciting is putting together a group of people who in ordinary circumstances might not find themselves in conversation but have shared sensibilities and passions, formed in different contexts, in different geographies, in different time periods – then seeing where and how they align.

SW It’s been vital to have an artist in every conversation. I think that’s something we’ve both learned as curators, whether in commissioning artists or working closely with them on exhibitions: the topics and issues with which artists grapple, quite apart from the formal niceties of the studio, are fundamental to all of us. Many artists are reluctant to talk about their work. They make it in order to speak about other things in different kinds of language, not least when they’re working in public spaces.

Artists can distil what we’re feeling into work that communicates what we can’t.

SJ So often when I speak to an artist, the notions that I’ve brought to their work shift. It’s not only that my understanding of their process deepens; it’s exposure to the intellectual milieus they have cultivated for themselves, which becomes revelatory. Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious how these inform their work, but you get a telling glimpse of how their sensibilities have been formed beyond their studio practice. When I commission an artist, arriving at the concept for the work means first delving into a range of topics. In the best cases, shared commitments and interests emerge: there’s a set of exchanges in parallel to the more pragmatic aspects of delivering a commission. When I worked with Alex Da Corte on the Roof Garden Commission at the Met, for example, we found common ground in trading texts and images about the moon!

SW That’s a very good example. Working with Isabella Ducrot on her Studio presentation at Frieze Masters, we exchanged emails about Heraclitus, who she quoted: ‘That which is opposed converges and the most beautiful of the weaves is formed by the divergences, and all things rise from the dispute.’ That type of conversation with artists is thrilling: it doesn’t feel obscurely intellectual, as they make it fundamental to understanding everyday life.

SJ It’s very satisfying to find yourself on the same wavelength as an artist. It’s one of the great joys of being a curator, to assist artists in making the world more intelligible to us. They can distil what we’re feeling into work that communicates what we can’t.

SW That’s absolutely true. It also relates to history and memory, which artists open up for us in ways we might not otherwise fathom. As William Morris wrote, ‘The past is not dead, it is living with us.’ It feels important to encourage this type of conversation at Frieze Masters. Conversation is a transaction, an exchange between two people that includes ideas but also, if it’s a good conversation, learning. A degree of humility, and the ability to listen and empathize, are prerequisites for a really good conversation. Those are quite rare commodities these days, especially at a divisive time in which people struggle to speak to one another with clarity or confidence.

SJ Yes. Visitors to the fair encounter an abundance of work, not organized as it would be in a museum or an exhibition. Creating a forum for conversation in the midst of that will hopefully unpick some prevailing tendencies, as well as paradoxes that emerge.

SW Frieze Masters is arguably similar to a so-called ‘encyclopaedic museum’ in the range of global art and artefacts it presents. Interesting questions sometimes come up in my conversations with artists visiting the fair – about Palaeolithic tools, for instance, and how far the fashioning of those objects to be functional fits within artistic criteria.

SJ It’s critical to have artists’ perspectives, but also, more broadly, to hear from them on the issues facing the field of art practice and the changing cultural order that confronts us, through reflections that range from the strident to the poetic.

SW I agree. The most effective governance-level meetings I’ve sat in have been at institutions that have artists as board members or advisors. I wouldn’t use the word ‘strident’, necessarily, but artists can certainly be forthright and speak to the reality of things. They don’t wield institutional agendas, which makes them essential to decision-making with respect to ethical stances on local and international issues. We would benefit hugely from the presence of artists in forums such as the DCMS or Arts Council England.

SJ But institutions need to be vigilant not to put the burden of responsibility on to artists. The voice of an artist, their opinion, shouldn’t be instrumentalized to do the work for the institution. The artist is an interlocutor, someone to offer perspective and guidance. At the end of the day, institutions need to be proactive, to take responsibility and be accountable.

SW ... Including the responsibility to respond to an artist’s challenge. There are situations in which commissioned artists take a principled position with respect not just to the function of an institution but also its cultural symbolism. This had long been a potent possibility for the artists I commissioned for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, from Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003) onwards, then for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s commissions – which began with Imran Qureshi’s remarkable blood-red painting on the roof of a museum he regards as a place of hope and regeneration, even as its objects were witness to the violence of history. In contrast, the deep crack that Doris Salcedo drove through the foundations of the Turbine Hall was a full-on assault on the idea of a museum and its geopolitical and ideological primacy. She was challenging the institution in the most fundamental way.

Perhaps ‘The Creative Mind’ conversations at Frieze Masters will offer similar challenges. I certainly hope so.

This article first appeared in Frieze Masters, London 2024 under the title ‘Conversation Piece’.

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^{Main image: Ionuţ Vancea, 2024}