Issue 248
January/February 2025

Linder acknowledges the female body as a site of pleasure and revulsion. Philippa Snow

The January/February issue of frieze writer Philippa Snow pens a tribute to artist Linder ahead of her retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London. Plus, Emily LaBarge, Lucy Ives, Amy Sillman and editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin dedicate a Festschrift to Joan Mitchell in honour of the artist’s centenary.

1,500 Words: Linder

‘There is something powerful about a woman who is capable of caring about style and substance, embodying beauty and expressing a beastly kind of anger.’ Philippa Snow reflects on the lasting influence of the artist’s feminist photomontages.

Festschrift: Joan Mitchell

‘Some strokes are lucky, some are unlucky; Mitchell paints over the unlucky ones, and then keeps going through this sea of unknowing that is making a painting.’ Four writers and artists celebrate the life and bold artistic practice of the late American painter.

Also featuring  

Zoë Hopkins profiles artist Renée Green ahead of her first major solo museum presentation in the US at Dia Beacon, New York. Joshua Segun Lean pens a thematic essay on the complicated politics of biennials. Plus, as he gears up for a major solo exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, Tarek Atoui speaks to musician C. Spencer Yeh about the role of education, collaboration and hospitality in his work.

Columns: Disobedience

Iarlaith Ní Fheorais profiles P. Staff whose discomforting practice interrogates quotidian violence, Kiri Dalena outlines the revolutionary power of speech as activist retaliation, Shiv Kotecha highlights Bassem Saad and Sanja Grozdanić’s performance Permanent Trespass (Beirut of the Balkans & the American Century), poet Holly Pester reviews Alva Gotby’s upcoming book, Feeling at Home (2025), which tackles the contemporary housing crisis, Andreas Petrossiants interviews Beatriz Santiago Muñoz on the potential of nonsense and disorder.

Finally, ahead of Paul McCarthy’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, London, Jonathan Griffin looks at his disturbing new video A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve, The Counter 2, 28:32 (2024). Plus, Amy Sillman contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists and associate editor Chloe Stead pens a postcard from Berlin.

From this issue

The artist and composer's playlist is a glimpse into his universe

BY Tarek Atoui |

The artist looks back on her years of activism and defiance against oppressive regimes

BY Kiri Dalena |

On her centenary, writers and artists consider the painter’s pioneering abstract expressionism and lasting artistic legacy

From early critiques at Wesleyan to her upcoming Dia Beacon show, Green’s work explores the complex intersections of race, memory and global exchange

BY Zoë Hopkins |

An urgent new book presents a housing vision centred on collectivity and communal living

BY Holly Pester |

In Sanja Grozdanić and Bassem Saad’s performance, memorializing violence becomes a defiant act

BY Shiv Kotecha |

Through film, installation and sculpture, the artist’s unsettling work reveals the horror within the medical-industrial complex

BY Iarlaith Ni Fheorais |

In a new video work, the legendary artist summons a whole slew of inhumanity among deranged, machine-imagined scenes

BY Jonathan Griffin |

A personal reflection on the artist’s feminist photomontages and their enduring impact ahead of a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery

BY Philippa Snow |

Is the mega-exhibition a form fundamentally unable to bear the weight of its own contradictions?

BY Joshua Segun-Lean |

The artist and composer on integrating pedagogy into his practice, rethinking instruments and preparing for his first solo exhibition in Italy at Pirelli HangarBicocca

BY Tarek Atoui AND C. Spencer Yeh |

The artist shares her revolutionary influences and how she depicts scenes from public lives 

In a complex exhibition at Z33, Hasselt, images and items from mass culture permeate the murals and installations on display

BY Lisette May Monroe |

The performance art biennial returns to Birmingham, featuring works that challenge the body’s physical and conceptual boundaries

BY Sam Moore |

At Museo Jumex, Mexico City, the artist investigates class and colonialism by appropriating markers of exclusion

BY Gaby Cepeda |

The 15th Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, forgoes a strict curatorial premise, suggesting that artworks should speak for themselves

At Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, the artist explores the convergence of biological and technological systems – and questions notions of technological transcendence

BY Jaeyong Park |

In pointillist drawings of women urinating in public at Guts Gallery, London, the artist captures moments of feminine solidarity

BY Ivana Cholakova |

The artist’s show at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, characterizes oscillation between detachment and connection as a contemporary condition

BY Stephanie Bailey |

At Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, the artists small-scale canvases depict refreshingly palpable scenes of queer desire

 

BY Louisa Elderton |

At the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, photographs from the artist’s ‘Exposures’ series encourage interpretive flexibility and plural perspectives

BY Stephen Frailey |

In a rich exhibition at Corvi-Mora, London, the artist draws on an eclectic set of references to reimagine cultural inheritances 

BY Nevan Spier |

At Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, Vienna, the artist presents a show whose engagement with water is inseparable from a deep sensibility towards Indigenous history

BY Ramona Heinlein |

In her first major survey at Sharjah Art Foundationthe senior Māori artist’s vibrant, political landscapes highlight global indigenous struggles

BY Rahel Aima |

An exhibition at Asia Society, New York, foregrounds Indigenous knowledge-holders as it brings together eight decades of work by Yolŋu artists

BY Lauren O’Neill-Butler |

In an immersive exhibition at Somerset House Studios, London, the artist reflects on the 2011 London riots and the struggle for agency

BY Ajeet Khela |

At Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, the artist guest curates an exhibition that tackles the history of gender bias in institutional acquisitions

BY Vanessa Peterson |

In a packed retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the artist’s depictions of everyday objects take centre stage

At its most moving, the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art asserts that expressions of joy in precarious times are no small feat

BY Cassie Packard |

This year’s Busan Biennale, inspired by David Graeber’s notion of ‘pirate enlightenment’, offers a glimpse into a world where progress can only be found outside the West

BY Terence Trouillot |

In his first solo institutional exhibition at Centro Pecci, Prato, the artist’s intimate vignettes honour queer sensuality

BY Lou Selfridge |

Once excluded from art history, the conceptual artist has her first US solo exhibition at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York

BY Madeleine Seidel |

After an election dominated by far-right rhetoric, curator Alexia Fabre’s eclectic network of artists presents an inclusive vision of French culture

BY Wilson Tarbox |

Her retrospective at the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances demonstrates a philosophy almost incompatible with the viewing methods of institutional exhibition

BY Simon Wu |

At Cecilia Brunson Projects, London, the artist uses theories from quantum physics to weave a narrative of human connection

BY Ellen Mara De Wachter |

Inspired by Joan Didion's novel, a new group show at Charim Gallery, Vienna, toys with the illusion of choice

BY Ivana Cholakova |

An ecofeminist show of 18 artists and collectives at The Brick, Los Angeles, decentres a male perspective – but ultimately can't get away from a human one

BY Jonathan Griffin |

In her comprehensive retrospective at EMMA in Espoo, Finland, the artist questions the limits of human understanding in the age of technology

BY Nicholas Norton |

The artists show at kurimanzutto, New York grapples with a transgenerational experience of a conflict that’s often overlooked and largely unresolved

BY Marko Gluhaich |

At Arcadia Missa, London, the artist’s painted radiator units become geopolitical abstractions that provoke a deeper interrogation of global power dynamics

BY Tara Okeke |

At Fridericianum, Kassel, the artist evokes racial power dynamics through objects and watercolours that hint at violence and containment  

BY Charles Moore |

At Night Gallery, Los Angeles, the artist’s sardonic creations reveal the human cost of imperial intervention and unchecked capitalism

BY Tara Anne Dalbow |

At Pilar Corrias, London, the artist blends sinister cultural references with a playful sense of humour, creating intricate visual narratives

BY Melissa Baksh |

In the artist’s debut show with Petzel Gallery, New York, eight gleaming, machinic sculptures upend expectations with flickers of strangeness

BY Brecht Wright Gander |

At Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, the artist’s majestic figures powerfully embody the syncretism of the Caribbean despite a cramped presentation

BY Thea Quiray Tagle |