Issue 228
June/July/August 2022

‘I hope that this edition of Manifesta will provide opportunities for young regional artists and make them the focus of the international media spotlight.’ – Šejla Kamerić

In the summer issue of frieze, ahead of Manifesta in Kosovo, writer and curator Viktoria Draganova, curator Adela Demetja, professor Branislav Dimitrijević and artists Šejla Kamerić and Dardan Zhegrova consider what the exhibition might mean for art production and cross-border collaboration. Plus, Shiv Kotecha profiles artist Tony Cokes ahead of shows at Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein, Munich.

Roundtable: Manifesta 14

‘For Westerners, the word Balkans implied something very dangerous – a messy territory.’ – Branislav Dimitrijević. Thirty years after the break up of Yugoslavia and 22 years after Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, the nomadic biennale is returning to the Balkans.

Profile: Tony Cokes

‘Police brutality, anti-Blackness, American war crimes: these are some of the violences that Cokes’s videos explicitly address.’ – Shiv Kotecha. Tony Cokes uses music and theory to challenge contemporary anti-Blackness and the legacies of US imperialism. Shiv Kotecha asks: Can you still dance to it?

Also featuring  

In the features: Ela Bittencourt investigates the influence of surrealism in global cinema against a backdrop of political instability, focusing on three films, Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966), Bang Bang (1971) and Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyena, 1973); Victoria Adukwei Bulley speaks to Grada Kilomba, the 2021-22 resident artist at BoCA, Lisbon; in ‘1,500 words’, Trisha Low enters the world of performance artist Bob Flanagan via new work by Xandra Ibarra.

Columns: The Desert

Vanessa Peterson speaks to members of Limbo Accra about their collaborative interventions into deserted building sites throughout the city; Orit Gat ventures into the treacherous world of online deserts; Kathleen Shields speaks to Robert Weathers, the groundskeeper tasked with maintaining Walter de Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977); Mariam Elnozahy examines the cultural offer and plans for Egypt’s new capital city. Plus, Róisín  Tapponi considers the theme of thirst in Arab cinema.

Plus, Stephanie LaCava responds to a single work by Meriem Bennani. Finally, Going Up, Going Down charts what’s hot and what’s not in the global art world and the latest iteration of our Lonely Arts column.

From this issue

Roisin Tapponi looks at how contemporary Arabic filmmakers use thirst to inspire their practices

BY Róisín Tapponi |

The artist looks to Bob Flanagan for new forms of radical love

BY Trisha Low |

As the Internet keeps evolving, Orit Gat reflects on what's left behind

BY Orit Gat |

Five curators and artists consider what the arrival of the nomadic biennial could offer the region

Victoria Adukwei Bulley speaks with the artist about psychoanalysis, storytelling and how new languages can unpack historical trauma

Ela Bittencourt investigates the ways in which film directors in the 1960s and 70s used surrealism as a way of interrogating unstable political moments and reimagining the future 

BY Ela Bittencourt |

Dominique Petit-Frère recounts how Limbo Accra supports artist communities and came to transform unrealized developments across Ghana

Mariam Elnozahy looks at the way opera has shaped Egypt’s cultural landscape and influenced the country’s new city for arts and culture

BY Mariam Elnozahy |

On the occasion of the artist’s Nottingham Contemporary exhibition, Stephanie LaCava takes a closer look at her film Life on the CAPS

BY Stephanie LaCava |

Shiv Kotecha profiles an artist whose practice has challenged US imperialism and anti-Blackness through language and music

BY Shiv Kotecha |

Robert Weathers, longtime caretaker of Walter De Maria’s landmark artwork, speaks on his experience with the installation and its evolving public perception

BY Kathleen Shields AND Robert Weathers |

At Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, the artist's collages destabilize the notion of the Strong Black Woman

BY Natasha Marie Llorens |

At Museum Ludwig, the second iteration of the late artist's first comprehensive European retrospective unpacks his experimental approach to material, time and space

At Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, the artist looks at the history of the Fordlândia colony in the Amazonian rainforest in relation to Bezos's megacorporation

BY Margarita Lila Rosa |

Based on choreography by Trisha Brown, the artist's solo exhibition at Zilberman, Berlin, references and revives performance practices

BY Emily May |

At Museo Jumex, Mexico City, the artist’s first institutional survey in Latin America celebrates the tenderness between friends, family, lovers and objects

BY Ricky Amadour |

At Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, the artist reimagines our celestial and natural worlds in a suite of new paintings 

BY Rebecca Rose Cuomo |

Opening at a time when severe flooding north of the city, the exhibition uneasily aligns with a state of national emergency

BY Wes Hill |

Laden with scenes of sex, the artist's new paintings at Croy Nielsen, Vienna, test the border of the disturbing

BY Krzysztof Kościuczuk |

The artist’s latest show, at Corvi-Mora, London, depicts men stripped of their social identities

BY Paul Clinton |

At Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, the artist confronts the representation of Black figures in Western art history, erasing the white nobility

BY Lauren Dei |

Building on the feminist themes of Deborah Levy's 'Real Estate', the artist’s solo exhibition at Istituto Svizzero celebrates women relegated to the side-lines of history

BY Ana Vukadin |

At the Kingsborough Art Museum, New York, a group show advocates for collective, cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure that no one is without a place to call home

BY Andreas Petrossiants |

At Green Art Gallery, Dubai, the Iranian artist Nazgol Ansarinia reimagines the city’s urban decay in various shades of blue

BY Nadine Khalil |

Jonathan Watkins’s triumphant swansong, after 23-years at the helm of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, is the kind of historical show normally reserved for big public institutions

BY Tim Smith-Laing |

The first edition of the Parisian festival brings together twenty-seven artists who grapple with technologies of image-making

BY Aaron Peck |

‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ is a comprehensive overview of one of the 20th century’s most influential movements

BY Juliet Jacques |

At Cordova, Barcelona, the artist's backwards-running wristwatch evokes a well-worn sci-fi conceit to explore desire, consumerism and remembrance

BY Max Andrews |

The late artist’s touring retrospective arrives at the Baltimore Museum of Art, showcasing her colourful, large-scale abstractions

BY Dereck Stafford Mangus |

Organised across five venues, the fourth iteration of the event seeks to place Indigenous cultures and practices front and centre

BY Ashish Dhakal |

At the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City, the art/activism group presents a large installation in support of Indigenous rights

BY Ian Bourland |