Issue 210
April 2020

In the April issue of frieze, Lucy Ives takes a close look at artists who made their homes into all-encompassing works of art; Steven Zultanski finds poetry in the perversity of cult video artist Steve Reinke; Tan Lin remembers the Chinese candies that framed his childhood in Ohio, with original photography by Roe Ethridge; Robert Glück revisits the dream journals left by his late partner, the painter Ed Aulerich-Sugai; Juliet Jacques talks to McKenzie Wark about new approaches to writing about trans identity; and artist and composer Tarek Atoui answers our questionnaire. Plus, 26 reviews from around the world, including Tschabalala Self at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Anna Bella Geiger at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

From this issue

Steven Zultanski on the Chicago-based cult video artist

BY Steven Zultanski |

Contributing editor Jonathan Griffin on ageing and fallibility

BY Jonathan Griffin |

The novelist and poet Robert Glück revisits dream journals left by his late partner, the painter Ed Aulerich-Sugai, whose life was cut short by HIV in the early 1990s 

BY Robert Glück |

Juliet Jacques speaks to the pioneering writer and theorist about her new book, ‘Reverse Cowgirl’, an ‘auto-ethnography’ of the self

BY Juliet Jacques |

After the loss of her husband, Dodie Bellamy discovered the make-up tutorials of one of YouTube’s biggest stars

BY Dodie Bellamy |

The new director of London’s Chisenhale Gallery on thinking like an artist, racial hierarchies in museums and how she nearly didn’t apply for the job

BY Rosanna McLaughlin |

Why generations of students at Cranbrook have made the pilgrimage to Bob & Hazel’s Ceramics in Pontiac, Michigan

BY Glenn Adamson |

As UK ceramics courses dwindle, Troy Town Art Pottery is providing paid weekend employment for a group of young trainees

BY Amy Sherlock |

On the occasion of her exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist speaks to Jessica Loudis about moving to Berlin and ‘shrimping’ rituals 

BY Jessica Loudis |

For John Boskovich, Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Florine Stettheimer and Niki de Saint Phalle, obsessive decor served as ‘preparation for a voyage to another plane’

BY Lucy Ives |

Poet Tan Lin recalls growing up in Athens, Ohio, with his sister, the artist Maya Lin – with specially commissioned photography by Roe Ethridge

BY Tan Lin |

Wandering Munich with the graphic designer Anna Lena von Helldorff, the author wonders what it means when time constantly overtakes us

BY Heike Geissler |

frieze senior editor Pablo Larios visits the home of the mother and daughter artists in the Guatemalan highlands

BY Pablo Larios |

The artist’s exhibition at Migros Museum, Zurich, reflects on the political uses of platitudes and truisms

BY Matthew McLean |

At the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, the artist’s methodical excavation of her own home results in deeply evocative paintings

BY Alex Jen |

At James Cohan, New York, sculptures made from materials collected at crime scenes indict a system of violence and exploitation 

BY Kate Green |

‘Out of Body’ – Self’s new solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston – rumbles with piqued, defiant portent

BY Lake Micah |

How archival footage at MAXXI, Rome, brings to life Ponti’s wit, intellect and erudition

BY Ana Vukadin |

An exhibition by the late American painter at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, explores the struggle between men and women’s desires 

BY Tal Sterngast |

The sculptor’s ‘homecoming’ exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive fuses Japanese aesthetic principles with Bay Area trippiness  

BY Fanny Singer |

A new exhibition looks back at the artists who resisted poisonous cultural narratives of the ’80s and ’90s with care, humour and style

BY Rosanna McLaughlin |

At Królikarnia, Warsaw, the artist imagines a world in which unique natural, cultural and recreational resources are protected instead of endangered

BY Dorian Batycka |

For her latest show at Kerlin Gallery, the artist incites a state of half-recognition reminiscent of Alzheimer’s 

BY Maeve Connolly |

At MASP and SESC Avenida Paulista, the artist’s survey asks who ‘belongs’ and who controls the national narrative

BY Camila Belchior |

The traditional and the technological combine to offer visions of our uncertain future

BY Skye Arundhati Thomas |

At David Zwirner, New York, the late painter’s work speaks frankly to a black audience without distracting appeals to white art audiences

BY Erica N. Cardwell |

The artist’s solo exhibition at GAO Gallery, London, is brash, demented and necessary

BY Lawrence Dodgson |

At Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, the artist’s painted grids speak to how memories are always mediated and wrought

BY Kristian Vistrup Madsen |

At Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, a world of quiet empathy is set against modernity, instantaneity and the desecration of wild Brazil

BY Paul Carey-Kent |

For her exhibition at Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, the artist reassembled disused advertising signs into abstract sculptures

BY Fabian Schöneich |

At Chapter, New York, collages on canvas and ceramic fuse references to Jewish mysticism and the history of craft

BY Amy Zion |

At Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, the artist’s paintings of the Sonoran desert span millennia of cultural references

BY Jennifer S. Li |

The movement wasn’t all hard outlines, puns and absurdism as a show in London reveals

BY Sophie Ruigrok |

Showing new commissions produced over a two-year period, ‘Modes of Encounter’ is an attempt to reset the relationship between artists, institutions and publics – that doesn’t quite come off

BY Alvin Li |

At Gladstone Gallery, New York, the colourful lives of gay icons comprise a cultural self-portrait

BY Shiv Kotecha |

The artist’s exhibition at PSM Gallery, Berlin, reflects on the relationship between body and mind

BY Sonja-Maria Borstner |

A play at London’s Cell Project Space on friendship, going off-grid, resistance, trans survival and not knowing what to do, but doing it anyway

BY Isabel Waidner |

In a retrospective at MAMCO, Geneva, rigour is underscored by play

BY Anya Harrison |

A retrospective at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo struggles to convey the collective’s energy and impact 

BY Andrew Maerkle |