Issue 198
October 2018

Viviane Sassen pays homage to Lee Miller in a specially commissioned visual essay; Tavia Nyong’o unpacks the identity politics behind Luke Willis Thompson’s latest video; and Osei Bonsu talks to the legendary sculptor and performance artist Senga Nengudi about race, representation and the liberating qualities of nylon hosiery.

Plus, 37 exhibition reviews from 30 cities, including reports on David Wojnarowicz at New York’s Whitney Museum and ‘Hello World’ at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof. Answering our questionnaire is Martha Rosler, whose retrospective at New York’s Jewish Museum opens in November.

From this issue

An exhibition at House of Gaga / Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Los Angeles shows cyborgian sculptures that are combos of mechanics and organic matter

BY Travis Diehl |

Poet CAConrad looks at the ways in which the artist addresses the corrosive role of empire in our daily lives

BY CAConrad |

To celebrate the publication of Neil Tennant's collected lyrics, Michael Bracewell pays homage to the pop group 

BY Michael Bracewell |

A concise retrospective at König London explores the transition of the artist’s paintings and extends her short-lived career into the present

BY Mimi Chu |

From Budapest to Liverpool, a resurgent far-right poses a great threat to cultural freedom

BY En Liang Khong |

The artist explores the influence of myths and tales on present-day Georgia at Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn

BY Noemi Smolik |

At TG, Nottingham, a selection of photographs from the late 1990s raises questions about self-portrayal in a time before Instagram 

BY Amy Sherlock |

A collaborative exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Art + Practice, Los Angeles, explores the lesser-known ephemeral works of the sculptor

BY Ian Bourland |

At the end of July, the footballer announced his resignation from the German national football team – why?

BY Jörg Heiser |

An exhibiton at Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, is dedicated to two of New York’s most influential galleries of the 1980s

BY Chris Wiley |

Julia Scher’s disconcerting 1991 immersive installation which surveilles its visitors is rebooted - and upgraded - at DREI, Cologne

BY Stanton Taylor |

The legendary sculptor and performance artist talks liquid sculpture, the politics of dance and the liberating qualities of nylon hosiery

BY Osei Bonsu |

On the eve of his two retrospectives in Paris, the artist discusses the works that have shaped his practice and thinking

BY Roee Rosen |

The fallacies of ‘community building’, online and IRL, in the work of Cécile B. Evans

BY Cal Revely-Calder |

In his first institutional exhibition at Pérez Art Museum, Miami, postcolonialism in South America collides with the legacy of the Confederate South

BY Alpesh Kantilal Patel |

At Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, an exhibition presents art from the turbulent interwar years as an archaeology of knowledge

BY Kito Nedo |

The artist reflects on the sounds that have shaped their thinking

BY Evan Ifekoya |

In the tanks of a Victorian bathhouse, the Turner Prize-winning Assemble have created a contemporary art gallery at Goldsmiths, London

BY Crystal Bennes |

Q: What do you like the look of? A: ‘Looks aren't everything.’

BY Martha Rosler |

A new film uses a sculpture by the late Donald Rodney to reflect on the many tales of race and class that are etched on the skin 

BY Tavia Nyong’o |

Following a joint residency at CERN, the artists' collaborative show at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart looks at science from a layman's perspective

BY Kirsty Bell |

Exploring the lingering effects of war, censorship and colonialism on art collections – where do museums entangled in complex histories go from here?

BY Jörg Heiser |

Storms arise, the boat pitches and rolls, passengers are literally and figuratively tossed together

BY Emily LaBarge |

At Coda Culture, Singapore, the artist explores questions of authenticity and agency through sobering, yet tender, documentation of her transition

BY Wong Binghao |

At San Sebastián’s Tabakalera, hypnotic multimedia installations suggest non-human intelligence can function as a generator of meaning, not just as a tool

BY Alejandro Alonso Díaz |

At Bildmuseet, Umeå, the artist’s meticulous, elegant photography interrogates both the natural world and the nature of the human gaze

BY Matthew Rana |

The work of John Hanson, Rob Nilsson and Fred Lonidier establishes a dialectic between a leftist melancholy and a more forward-looking politics

BY Andrew Durbin |

To celebrate the publication of Neil Tennant’s collected lyrics, Michael Bracewell reflects on one of the great synth-pop groups 

BY Michael Bracewell |

Discovering the painter’s complex, intimate documentation of recent Albanian history at the National Gallery of Arts, Tirana

BY Amy Zion |

Currently the subject of a retrospective at El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Buenos Aires-born artist plays with size – and expectation – to probe the ‘other situations’ of modern life

BY Brenda Lozano |

At Galleria Civica’s satellite space, Modena, the artist’s first retrospective explores the latent possibilities of ‘togetherness’

BY Barbara Casavecchia |

Natural and manmade phenomena intermingle, producing dreamlike forms in the artist’s solo show at PKM Gallery, Seoul

BY Yujin Min |

At CRAC, Sète, a group show interrogates both the cultural inscription of gender, and the essentializing tendency of earlier feminist debates

BY Alex Estorick |

Homoerotic vulnerability marks the late artist's delicate portrayals of imaginary men at Delmes & Zander, Cologne

BY Moritz Scheper |

A survey of Tish Murtha’s work at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, shows the compassion and conviction of the late documentary photographer

BY Anna Coatman |

Works by 13 Aboriginal artists prompt reflection on the 1828 atrocity, one which represents the countless other colonial battles fought in Australia

BY Wes Hill |

The artist draws on psychoanalysis and an ancient calendar to explore the idea that life has a predetermined narrative at Barbara Wien, Berlin

BY Harry Thorne |

Six-years in the making, the comprehensive ‘Museum of Obsessions’ tracks the life and work of the prolific and enormously ambitious curator 

BY Sam Thorne |

At Gasworks, London, the sea is an archive of disaster, but one containing depths of potential 

BY Tendai John Mutambu |

For the first show at S1 Artspace's new home in the Brutalist housing estate, two photographers who documented it in the 1960s and ’80s

BY George Kafka |

The LA-based artist’s videos, sculptures and photographs frame public drinking as an issue of gender, race and class

BY Eliel Jones |

Two decades of challenging public space and laying bare latent anxieties in our cultures’ machismo, at Es Baluard museum, Palma

BY Vanessa Thill |

In a Victorian-era baths in Glasgow, the artist stages her largest performance project to date, featuring a 24-woman swim team

BY Chris Sharratt |

Dating from 1949 to the early 1960s, the works which grace the stately home feel comfortable in the ostentatious pomp of its baroque interiors

BY Anya Harrison |

Michel Auder’s show at Martos, reminds us why, despite the optimists, art was never going to find its raison d'être under the current regime

BY Andrew Durbin |

In ‘Clothes Line’, at London’s White Rainbow, the artist explores improvisation, social groups and the minute fluctuations of the day to day 

BY Cal Revely-Calder |