Issue 225
March 2022

‘Berlin has always been divided, so it’s important to find forms of solidarity.’ – María Inés Plaza Lazo  

In the March issue of frieze, Carina Bukuts chairs a roundtable conversation on the future of Berlin’s institutions, with contributions from curator and writer Anselm Franke, the co-founder and editor of Arts of the Working Class, María Inés Plaza Lazo, the director and founder of CCA Berlin – Center for Contemporary Arts, Fabian Schöneich, and artist Sung Tieu. Plus, Edna Bonhomme speaks to Carolyn Lazard ahead of the artist’s exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. 

Dossier: What’s Next for Berlin? 

‘All of the dominant models, the desire for representative prestige and appeals to the city’s symbolic role are completely stuck in the 1990s.’ Following a series of new appointments for Berlin’s museums, frieze associate editor Carina Bukuts discusses the future of the city’s institutional landscape with curator Anselm Franke, critic María Inés Plaza Lazo, curator Fabian Schöneich and artist Sung Tieu.

Conversation: Carolyn Lazard and Edna Bonhomme 

‘For me, bodies could also be explored through how they interface with economic, carceral and diagnostic systems.’ Ahead of their debut solo institutional exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, artist Carolyn Lazard speaks to Edna Bonhomme about avant-garde film traditions, the aesthetics of access requirements, and finding community with Black disabled artists. 

Also featuring    

Adam Mazur reviews the rise of right-wing art in Poland as the Law and Justice Party systematically eliminates opposition within the country’s institutions. In ‘1,500 words’,  Alexander Kluge reflects on Walter Benjamin's favourite film and the pleasure machines of Coney Island. And Carina Bukuts profiles Rabih Mroué, whose solo show at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, opens in mid-February. 

Columns: Front Lines 

Fernanda Brenner discusses Brazil’s overlapping art and activism initiatives with the co-founder of À Reviravolta de Gaia, Mariana Lacerda, and artists Camila Motta and Cafira Zoé. Ian Bourland speaks to Kellen Johnson – a member of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s security team – about a new exhibition he is curating at the Maryland institution. Caitlin Chaisson profiles The Forge Project – an Indigenous-led initiative – focusing on their exhibitions, programming and fellowships as part of the Land Back Movement. Mariam Ghani interviews Rahraw Omarzad about Afghanistan’s current situation and future art scene. Plus, SAKA (Artist Alliance for Genuine Agrarian Reform and Rural Development) contribute a diagram situating their creative practice within the broader realm of political expression for land rights and justice. 

Plus, Gazelle Mba responds to a single work by Rachel Jones and the latest iteration of our Lonely Arts column. And, finally, we re-instate a popular frieze format Going Up, Going Down, charting what’s hot and what’s not in the global art world. 

Subscribe now  and explore nearly 30 years of editorial on  frieze.com

 

 

From this issue

Celebrating the author and filmmaker’s 90th birthday, frieze invited him to reflect on Walter Benjamin’s favourite film and the pleasure machines of Coney Island

BY Alexander Kluge |

On the occasion of the artist’s first solo exhibition in Berlin at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Carina Bukuts writes about his 20-year practice of deconstructing the image politics of war

BY Carina Bukuts |

Kellen Johnson speaks to Ian Bourland about how his work on the museum’s security staff has informed his decisions for curating a show at the BMA

BY Kellen Johnson AND Ian Bourland |

Fernanda Brenner looks at three activists groups challenging Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous government

BY Fernanda Brenner |

The Filipino artist-activist collective shares a chart outlining their organizing strategies

BY SAKA |

What lies beneath a grin? Gazelle Mba uses the artist's latest painting to investigate this philosophical question

BY Gazelle Mba |

Set under the context of a new Taliban regime, Mariam Ghani speaks to the artist about how the once sustained arts in Afghanistan will ensue  

BY Mariam Ghani AND Rahraw Omarzad |

With nearly every museum in the grip of contemptuous Law & Justice loyalists, what is the future of contemporary art?

BY Adam Mazur |

As their first solo institutional show opens at the Walker Art Center, Carolyn Lazard speaks with Edna Bonhomme about avant-garde film, Blackness and disability

BY Carolyn Lazard AND Edna Bonhomme |

Wie sieht die Zukunft der zeitgenössischen Kunst im Lande aus, wenn fast jedes Museum in den Klauen der verächtlichen Parteiloyalisten von „Recht und Gerechtigkeit“ ist?

BY Adam Mazur |

Launched in the summer of 2021, the Indigenous-led initiative promotes exhibitions, programming and fellowships as part of the Land Back Movement

BY Caitlin Chaisson |

After a series of new appointments for Berlin’s museums, Carina Bukuts discusses the future of the city’s institutional landscape with Anselm Franke, María Inés Plaza Lazo, Fabian Schöneich and Sung Tieu

At Halle für Kunst Steiermark, a thematic group exhibition underscores how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our relationship to the home

BY Chloe Stead |

At Ordet, Milan, the artist's works based on the circulation and consumption of energy speak to the power of relations

BY Barbara Casavecchia |

At Dortmunder Kunstverein the artist critically reflects on the institutionalisation of racism in Germany

BY Stanton Taylor |

At Efremidis, Berlin, the artist's new series of lenticular prints revisits the controversy surrounding Kristen Visbal’s Fearless Girl (2017)

BY Claire Koron Elat |

At Travesía Cuatro, Mexico City, the two artists illuminate the three-storey gallery space with projected video animations and magic lanterns

BY Anna Goetz |

At Jan Mot, Brussels, the artist's still lifes reanimate his 1987 installation at New York’s Cable Gallery, giving tangible proof of his fictional narrative

BY Emile Rubino |

An overdue show at Tate Modern, London, focuses on the artist’s preoccupation with theatre but fails to enliven her previous triumphs

BY Allie Biswas |

At Karma International, Zurich, the artist’s new series of prints allude to the trauma of grief

BY Brit Barton |

At CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, the artists wooden works commemorate the links between the region’s wine industry and its colonial history

BY Oriane Durand |

This year's iteration of the international exhibition is impressively global in its curatorial reach but the impact of some works diminishes in cross-cultural adaptation

BY Ela Bittencourt |

The artist’s debut UK exhibition at Pilar Corrias, Savile Row, delights through spinning environmental ethics with a grotesque sensibility

BY Gabriella Pounds |

The painter's institutional debut at the Dallas Museum of Art relies on biblical references to soften the distinctions between the spheres of creation

BY Logan Lockner |

At Mumok, Vienna, the artist uses the elephant as a symbol for the human cost of the textile industry in Taiwan

BY Francesca Gavin |

At MONITOR, Lisbon, the artist's series of experimental paintings mix historic events, current affairs and personal memories

BY Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva |

An ambitious exhibition in Los Angeles invites different interpretation of feminism to promote a collective resistance to systemic sexism

BY Natalie Haddad |

A survey at Chishang Art Centre, Taiwan, positions the artist’s tenderly crafted landscapes alongside his lesser-known depictions of handsome young men

BY Christopher Whitfield |

At Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, the painter displays the medium's expansive possibilities with subtle disturbances in composition and colour

BY Camila McHugh |

At Galería Curro, Guadalajara, the artist presents an immersive installation featuring neon sculptures and photographs visualizing the malleability of time

BY Rebecca Rose Cuomo |

A characteristically understated exhibition at The Modern Institute uses light and domestic materials to allude to inimical forces at play in the home

BY Helen Charman |

An exhibition at Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago, showcases the painter’s unfussy yet intimate studies of behaviour and mundanity

BY Alex Jen |

A joint retrospective at KW Institute for Contemporary Art and daadgalerie, Berlin, displays the US-based artist’s critical passion for the artefacts she uncovers

BY Pablo Larios |

At SculptureCenter, New York, the artist’s new, K-Pop inspired, video sees revolution as an illness

BY Travis Diehl |

The artist’s retrospective at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, considers how smells can speak to discourses around capital, class and colonization

BY Timotheus Vermeulen |

An intimate show of 12 paintings at Salon 94, New York, showcases the Egyptian-born artist’s dreamlike tableaux 

BY Cassie Packard |

At Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, the artist presents a suite of hand-sewn paintings affectionately depicting day-to-day domesticities and family life

BY Hayoung Chung |

At Bonner Kunstverein, the late Filipino artist’s first European retrospective is a poetic tribute to an oeuvre that refuses to be categorized

 

BY Ben Livne Weitzman |

The solo exhibition at Maureen Paley, London, expands the artist’s long-established interests in animism, cosmology and non-Western folklore traditions

BY Adjoa Armah |

A modest survey at the Museum of Modern of Art, New York, celebrates the trailblazing career of an often-overlooked fluxus artist

BY Jane Ursula Harris |

The 19th edition curated by Eoin Dara sees artists pen love letters in Ireland through conversations about cruising, gender and the internet

BY Iarlaith Ni Fheorais |

At London’s Photographers’ Gallery, a retrospective of the US artist is an intimate yet unsentimental look into a bygone era

BY Julie Hrischeva |

An ‘anti-retrospective’ repositions the artist’s work as a meme-presaging détournement of late capitalism’s spectacular logic

BY Jessica Baran |