Issue 197
September 2018

Featuring: Wayétu Moore responds to the extraordinary life of Charles White in the form of a specially-commissioned short story; Media Farzin delves into the historical investigations of Jumana Manna; an artist project by Polish photographer Joanna Piotrowska; plus, Susanne von Falkenhausen on how international art festivals are engaging in contemporary politics, Hettie Judah on three artists whose work straddles the gap between the figurative and the abstract, Mika Rottenberg answers our questionnaire, and much more

From this issue

Needling, absorptive works animate a biennial in the midst of murky socio-political circumstances

BY Mitch Speed |

The Director of London’s ICA, Stefan Kalmár, on why publicly funded institutions must respond to the emergencies defining our world today

BY Stefan Kalmár |

This edition of the nomadic biennial has Palermo's Orto Botanico at its heart, exploring ideas of growth, cross-pollination, and hope

BY Jennifer Higgie |

At LA-based non-profit space JOAN, works by local artists Walter Askin, Elizabeth Bain and Sandra Vista embody theatricality in all its forms

BY Jonathan Griffin |

At Beijing's Magician Space, demonstrating how products are more than their simple functions and exploring the hegemonic power of language

BY Tom Mouna |

A short story by novelist Wayétu Moore in response to Charles White

BY Wayétu Moore |

The artist discusses the objects, ideas and artworks that have shaped her practice

BY Evan Moffitt AND Valeska Soares |

At Herald St, London, the artist presents paintings filled with smooth ovoid forms and the suggestion of a single, otherworldly light source

BY Hettie Judah |

In times of political turmoil, art is a necessary rebuke to escapism

BY Negar Azimi |

Recent paintings by Caragh Thuring, Phoebe Unwin and Clare Woods mine the tension between physical and imagined worlds

BY Hettie Judah |

From the musical traditions of Palestine to the global circulation of seeds, the artist unpicks the power structures that support even the most lyrical aspects of life

BY Media Farzin |

Found first in the pages of NME, an homage to the critic who brought an antic traduction of high French theory to the study of contemporary pop

BY Brian Dillon |

At MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, the Beijing-born artist blends socialist realism with conventions of lianhuanhua, palm-sized Chinese picture books

BY Alvin Li |

At Perrotin, Paris, the Colombian-born, Paris-based artist superimposes opposing ideologies to explore our politically distorted perceptions

BY Violaine Boutet de Monvel |

Even as right-wing politics increasingly tries to enforce them, remembering that nature and art know no borders

BY Evan Moffitt |

Q: What do you like the look of? A: ‘Soft, squashy stuff.’

BY Mika Rottenberg |

In her first solo show at Croy Nielsen, Vienna, the artist’s suspended delicate metal formations create a tension that vibrates with possibility

BY Kimberly Bradley |

At a warehouse in Berlin-Kreuzberg, commissioned by the KW Institute, the artist explores technology's mediation and manipulation of our identities

BY Tobi Maier |

At Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, the artists explore that which is hidden, forgotten, and oppressed in US culture – and within the psyche

BY Jacquelyn Davis |

A visual essay born out of a trip the Polish artist made three years ago to the South Caucasus

BY Harry Thorne AND Joanna Piotrowska |

The artist investigates the possibilites in lucid dreaming, transforming the interior of Warsaw's Galeria Stereo into an urban dreamscape

BY Krzysztof Kościuczuk |

At Vitry-sur-Seine's MAC VAL, the artist explores architecture's infliction of violence on the colonized and on those who suffer its legacies

BY Aaron Peck |

A 1926 boozy sketch for a commission intended for the League of Nations building in Geneva was declined for being ‘too bacchanalian’

BY Isobel Harbison |

Finding Trump-aping parallels with the extravagant, tragic story of Ludwig II, at Madragoa, Lisbon

BY Matthew McLean |

The Beijing-based artist’s films draw on the emotional strategies of pop culture to explore identity and belonging in a hyper-mediatized world

BY Alvin Li |

In a quiet mountain town in Trentino, Italy, the duo Brave New Alps is providing skills and support to precarious migrant communities

BY Alice Rawsthorn |

From ‘Sesame Street’ to Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA, the Glasgow-based artist recalls the TV and films that have influenced her

BY Margaret Salmon |

In her first Vienna solo, the artist blends understated textures, austere tones and bold gestures to a satisfying, yet elusive, effect

BY Max L. Feldman |

Disputes about city architecture and historical revisionism are raging, but political lines are not always so clear

BY Oliver Elser |

A retrospective at Munich’s Museum Brandhorst charts the artist’s career from the 1980s to the present, from ‘fem-trash’ figures to abstract forms

BY Daniela Stöppel |

At Schloss, Oslo – located in a former Porsche workshop – car windows becomes canvases for mystical scenes of origins and afterlives

BY Timotheus Vermeulen |

A beautifully spare presentation at Lomex, New York, uses a tangle of haberdashery-esque materials to invoke transcedent scenes

BY Rahel Aima |

The Cherokee/Choctaw artist explores the contemporary possibilities of Indigenous art at Denver Art Museum

BY Christopher Green |

At Berlin’s Zilberman Gallery, reflections on the power asserted by technological progress: can anyone make it stop?

BY Hili Perlson |

On show at WIELS, Brussels, the artist's textiles are modes of conscious reparation, through which damage and disrepair become precious artefacts

BY Ellen Mara De Wachter |

‘Art is not CNN,’ says Banu Cennetoğlu – new works produced with London’s Chisenhale Gallery ask: are you paying enough attention?

BY En Liang Khong |

Works from the Pinault collection in the newly-renovated Couvent des Jacobins, Rennes, revisit the crises of the 20th century 

BY Figgy Guyver |

The artist shows a muscular blend of figuration and abstraction at Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, and Philadelphia Fabric Workshop and Museum

BY Glenn Adamson |

The artist brings subtle grandeur to Dortmunder Kunstverein with a series of luxuriant installations, alluding to pleasure, pain and transcendence

BY Moritz Scheper |

Held across three Baltic cities for the first time, why did this edition make no attempt to say something to – or about – its host region?

BY Orit Gat |

The Australian artist’s first institutional show at Artspace Sydney includes a library, a meeting place and workshops on ‘mindful eating’

BY Helen Hughes |

Works by Ryan Gander and Rehana Zaman showed it was the people of Liverpool who formed a thread through some of the most successful projects

BY Tom Emery |

At Lehmann Maupin, New York, the artist's immersive installation and paintings from the 1970s commemorate forgotten indigenous histories

BY Evan Moffitt |

At Piper Keys, London, the artist and musician shows intimate depictions of domestic labour

BY Izabella Scott |

At Focal Point Gallery, video-maker Ed Webb-Ingall and The British Free Cinema remind us how quickly our civil liberties can be taken away 

BY Rosanna McLaughlin |

The artist-cum-fashion designer takes cues from the DIY downtown New York aesthetic for her upcycling show at Overduin & Co., LA

BY Simone Krug |

At Kunstverein Düsseldorf (and on WeChat), the artist creates personalised horoscopes for a kaleidoscopic array of characters

BY Scott Roben |

Exploring the legacy of the radical 1960s London gallery in a group show curated by kurimanzutto, Mexico City, at Thomas Dane, London

BY Philomena Epps |

Grappling with America's colonial past through a feminist lens at Locks Gallery, and the historic Lemon Hill Mansion, Philadelphia

BY Becky Huff Hunter |

At Vancouver Art Gallery, the curator brings to light the insidious normalization - and romanticization - of North American nuclear development 

BY Elliat Albrecht |

A double solo show in a luxury Shenzhen shopping mall poses questions about the spectacle-driven nature of the space it occupies

BY Ming Lin |

At Kunstverein in Hamburg, the artist presents a vision of futuristic societies, mixing hard facts and pure fiction to disorienting effect

BY Chloe Stead |

At Richard Saltoun, London, two artists share the belief that rhythm is a trait of the body and women’s bodies are too closely policed

BY Cal Revely-Calder |

The LA-based painter’s exquisite skewing of Renaissance and biblical scenes at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London

BY Mimi Chu |

Otherworldly sculptures warp the spaces and histories they occupy, in shows at Clearing and Salon 94, and for the Met Roof Garden commission

BY Shiv Kotecha |

Vibrant works by the self-taught Brazilian artist, recently unearthed over two years of research, take centre stage in São Paulo

BY Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva |

From Glenn Ligon’s first solo exhibition in Italy, at Thomas Dane Gallery, to a unique project in an ancient Roman aqueduct

BY Barbara Casavecchia |

At Museo Jumex, Mexico City, a dense survey of work disrupting oppressive power dynamics in formerly colonized regions

BY Layla Fassa |

The artist's tightly choreographed show about surveillance culture at Koppe Astner, Glasgow

BY Chris Sharratt |