Issue 206
October 2019

‘We are no longer confined to providing the entertainment between trays of finger food at openings. Performance has become a perfectly normal modus operandi.’ – Pablo Bronstein



The October issue of frieze leads with a special portfolio on the state of performance art. What makes it so compelling as an artistic medium? Featuring: Yve Laris Cohen, Geumhyung Jeong, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Nástio Mosquito, Robertas Narkus, Alessandro Sciarroni, Nora Turato, Lee Wen and more.



Also featuring: Hilton Als on domination, revenge and longing in the films of Kara Walker; Glasgow-based artist and filmmaker, Luke Fowler, on his formative experiences, from the BBC to Patrick Cowley; Jennifer Kabat getting jazzed by the candid prose of dance critic Jill Johnston; Collier Schorr learning to dance in a specially-commissioned visual essay; Sean O’Toole sparring with language through the writings of William Kentridge; and Hendrik Folkerts on Dale Harding’s potent reflections of Australia.



Plus, 35 reviews from around the world, including Paula Rego’s major retrospective at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, and curator Susanne Pfeffer’s game-changing show, ‘Museum’, at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. And answering our questionnaire is avant-garde polymath Meredith Monk, whose masterwork, Quarry: An Opera in Three Movements (1976) was restored and screened at Anthology Film Archives, New York, earlier this year.



Cover image: Collier Schorr, Photographer as a Portrait, 2019, photograph. Courtesy: the artist, 303 Gallery, New York, and Stuart Shave/ Modern Art, London

From this issue

Some thoughts on transience, in art and life

BY Jennifer Higgie |

‘Kara Walker reinvents painting and drawing’s conventions, while talking about ideas that are epic in scale and deep in blood,’ Als writes

BY Hilton Als |

As the artist’s largest survey to date opens at Zeitz MoCAA and Norval Foundation, Cape Town, Sean O’Toole examines his dadaist lexicon 

BY Sean O’Toole |

‘People younger than myself will be under the false impression that performance has always been taken seriously’

BY Pablo Bronstein |

Karen Archey on Ligia Lewis and Alex Baczynski-Jenkins

BY Karen Archey |

In a special photo essay, the artist places her body ‘in the line of danger, admiration, rejection, description’

BY Collier Schorr |

The artist’s physically gruelling performances reflect on the black body and the possibilities of resurrection

BY Evan Moffitt |

The restless, rageful ‘No Home Record’ lures as much as it discomfits

BY Hermione Hoby |

The Singaporean artist’s provocative performances constantly challenged power and prejudice

BY Wenny Teo |

Fabian Schöneich on the artist’s new performance at Kunsthalle Basel

BY Fabian Schöneich |

Should we be enjoying ourselves as the world goes to hell in a handcart?

BY Jörg Heiser |

Q. What could you imagine doing if you didn’t do what you do? A. Reading all day 

BY ​Meredith Monk |

‘Surge’ finds uneasy resonances between the 1981 New Cross fire and more recent tragedies

BY Marek Sullivan |

Motion and migration in the paintings of Frank Bowling

BY Negar Azimi |

Mimi Chu on Robertas Narkus, Nástio Mosquito, Nora Turato and more

BY Mimi Chu |

From blues to jazz to the baroque – new fiction from Claire-Louise Bennett

BY Claire-Louise Bennett |

Johnston showed how writing was performance and politics at once

BY Jennifer Kabat |

In Harding’s paintings and sculpture, the past and the present merge in a potent reflection on contemporary Australia

BY ​Hendrik Folkerts |

In a new collection, the author of ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ updates her approach to feminism and psychoanalysis 

BY Erika Balsom |

Drawing on his dancer’s training, Laris Cohen radically presents his body simply ‘as is’ in his performances

BY Martha Joseph |

This year’s edition of the biennial in Moss, Norway, proves that it can trigger emotions but fails to show empathy

BY Chloe Stead |

Barbara Casavecchia on the 2019 Golden Lion-winning artist

BY Barbara Casavecchia |

From the BBC and the films of Robert Beavers to the poetry of Margaret Tait, the artist reflects on his formative experiences

BY Luke Fowler |

The artist’s extensive retrospective at the Migros Museum, Zurich, shows that the social diversity Willats portrays does not translate into an aesthetic diversity

BY Jörg Scheller |

As the playwright’s ‘Slave Play’ reaches a wider audience, Jameson Fitzpatrick looks at his work so far

BY Jameson Fitzpatrick |

Hernandez catalogues the avenues and intersections that make Los Angeles a city, and not only a web of connections between the area’s freeways and suburban sprawl

BY Jennifer Piejko |

At C3A, Córdoba, the artist explores the strategies of theatre and its relation to the audience

BY Rafael Barber Cortell |

From political caricatures to self-contradictory statements by Donald Trump, this year’s edition of the biennial pays tribute to the potential of satire

BY Emily McDermott |

With the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi, an exhibition at Leipzig’s GfZK sheds light on the aftermath of the tragedy

BY Louisa Elderton |

The artist’s solo show of tapestries at Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne are invocations of an erstwhile era 

BY Sophie Knezic |

In curator Susanne Pfeffer’s latest, ‘Museum’ speaks to our moment of funding scandals, museum protests and social media outrage

BY Sarah E. James |

At Studio Voltaire, London, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley take aim at #mefirst capitalism and the gospel of self-care

BY Rosanna McLaughlin |

In the artist’s largest survey to date, science fiction and narratives of black resistance offer a vision of a more inclusive future

BY Esmé Hogeveen |

Artist Candice Lin connects the conditions of slave labour involved in building the drug trade’s infrastructure to the continued Orientalizing representations of the drugs themselves

BY Rainer Diana Hamilton |

Drawing from Martian landscapes and the notebooks of a closeted lesbian science fiction writer, the artist shows us how far we humans have yet to go

BY Lauren DeLand |

The artist’s survey at the Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, links life on microscopic and cosmic scales with moments of spiritual self-searching and reflection

BY Natalie Haddad |

How the artist’s work expressed the feeling of being silenced

BY Zoe Pilger |

At Remai Modern, Saskatoon, the late carver and Kwakwaka’wakw Chief’s sculptures are an indictment of destructive consumerism 

BY Natasha Chaykowski AND Mercedes Webb |

A force in the late ’80s and ’90s, the photographer and critic receives her first solo show in over 22 years at Autograph, London

BY Rianna Jade Parker |

Abidi’s comic, deflationary videos undercut the pomp of state politics

BY Greg Nissan |

Wesselmann’s sculpture attempted ‘to pick up a drawing by its lines and carry it’ into the world

BY Olivia Rodrigues |

The influence of op art leaves scant trace of the artist’s hand, but otherworldly unease pervades his repetitions and reflections

BY Mary Huber |

The Belgrade-born sculptor developed a language that acknowledged a world in flux

BY Louisa Elderton |

The only woman affiliated with the Arte Povera movement resisted machines, definitions and permanence

BY Hans Ulrich Obrist |

Amid widespread civil unrest, a timely show at Para Site speculates on the future of labour and politics in our technological age

BY David Markus |

At the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, ‘Where the Oceans Meet’ looks at the ‘creolizing’ of cultural influences across continents through the lens of Édouard Glissant and Lydia Cabrera

BY Alpesh Kantilal Patel |

The artists in ‘Time Forward!’ at the V-A-C Foundation in Venice speculate on what the future might bring

BY Barbara Casavecchia |

A show at Gagosian, London, pairs the pop master with the early twentieth-century eccentric, beloved of Duchamp

BY Harry Thorne |

The late artist rejected state censorship while presaging our image-saturated age

BY Fernanda Brenner |

Shamefully, the artist was not awarded a solo show in the art-world capital until six years after his death

BY Jack McGrath |

At HB Station in Guangzhou, the artist offers a shattered version of domestic bliss

BY Hera Chan |

A new show asks what it means to be radical in our age of spectacle

BY Daniel Culpan |

The first, long-overdue European survey of work by the East Coast painter opens at Modern Art, London 

BY Nicholas Hatfull |

The artist’s tent city at Hauser & Wirth, in rapidly gentrifying downtown LA, is a ‘parody of pious politically activist art’ 

BY Jonathan Griffin |

A survey at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum displays the Austrian artist’s expert linking of social concerns and surrealism

BY Steven Zultanski |

The Belgian sculptor’s new work in San Gimignano reflects on mortality, medieval assertions of power and the migrant crisis

BY Paul Carey-Kent |

Found stashed under her bed when she died, the spiritualist’s drawings and embroideries go on show at William Morris Gallery

BY Chloë Ashby |

A show at Fondation Cartier, Paris, brings together works by young artists from across the continent

BY Wilson Tarbox |