Issue 237
September 2023

‘There are a million different ways to confront a garment.’ – Bárbara Sánchez-Kane 

The September issue of frieze focuses on art and fashion with a specially commissioned fashion editorial by KK Obi and Jebi Labembika that explores how the surfeit of second-hand clothes influences local style in West Africa. Plus, Evan Moffitt travels to Mexico City to profile menswear designer and performance artist Bárbara Sánchez-Kane ahead of her latest presentation at kurimanzutto gallery in New York.  

Interview: Grace Wales Bonner 

‘I’m trying to resist a singular way of looking; rather, I’m hoping to create something to convene around.’ Grace Wales Bonner speaks with frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin about the spiritual potential of archiving.   

Roundtable: Turning Heads 

‘I knew I needed to figure out why I was in fashion, because I hated the culture. I loved the craft and the people I worked with, but the overarching system was hideous.’ Culture writer Rosalind Jana talks with designers Sinéad O’Dwyer and Adeju Thompson and artist Paul Kindersley about how their respective practices resist ideas of mainstream fashion. 

Columns: Threads 

Phoebe Philo reflects on how the career and legacy of Isa Genzken has shaped her own; Fiona Bae asks what actual skateboarders feel about the rise of skate culture in South Korea; Tan Lin writes about Shanzhai Lyric, a collective launched in 2015 who find poetry on the streets of New York’s China Town; Rhonda Lieberman looks at the rise of the artist model. Plus, Jeppe Ugelvig examines why fashion has entered the business of art.  

Finally, frieze assistant editor Sean Burns discusses a portrait of fashion and trans icon Amanda Lepore by David LaChapelle. Plus, 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

How the artist duo challenge the gentrification of New York’s Chinatown

BY Tan Lin |

Sean Burns on living with a cherished David LaChapelle portrait of the fashion icon

BY Sean Burns |

The performer shares her soundtrack to preparing for a night out

BY Amanda Lepore |

A look into the intersection of luxury, culture and marketing through brand-owned museums

BY Jeppe Ugelvig |

From Andy Warhol to Derek Zoolander, how the catwalk became a space for self-branding

BY Rhonda Lieberman |

The British designer discusses the importance of sculpture, sound and archives to her practice

BY Andrew Durbin |

KK Obi and Jebi Labembika craft a fashion editorial exploring how second-hand clothes have influenced local style

BY KK Obi AND Jebi Labembika |

For Phoebe Philo, the legendary artist is a benchmark of style

BY Phoebe Philo AND Marko Gluhaich |

The designer seeks to empower female and queer bodies by deconstructing garments

BY Evan Moffitt |

How the city’s skateboarders are radically reshaping its fashion landscape

BY Fiona Bae |

At the Brooklyn Museum, New York, more than 300 items from 1950 to present day capture the global impact of artists from the continent

BY Mebrak Tareke |

Sinéad O’Dwyer, Adeju Thompson and Paul Kindersley discuss how their respective practices defy the mainstream

A survey of the artist’s revolutionary drapo flag-making at the Fowler Museum at UCLA situates her within the canon of her craft and country

BY Vittoria Benzine |

At Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, the artist’s solo exhibition takes viewers from the desert into the jungle via the ocean

BY Mitchell Anderson |

At Kunsthalle Praha, a group exhibition traces bohemian living from post-war Paris to New York, Tehran, Vancouver, Beijing and, finally, Prague

BY Noemi Smolik |

Created as a memorial to suffering, this year’s iteration sees a shift in both the exhibition and the city toward a new historiography

BY frieze |

At Barbara Wien, Berlin, the artist reevaluates his love of Leonard Cohen in light of the musician’s stance on Palestine

BY Louisa Elderton |

At Gasworks, London, the artist envisions a time when half the world’s population is living in a tropical climate 

BY Nevan Spier |

At the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Naarm/Melbourne, the artist’s videos, drawings and found objects engage subversive wordplay and internet culture to undermine gendered, racialized and colonial institutions

BY Hilary Thurlow |

At Galleria Massimo Minimi, Brescia, an intervention by Formafantasma celebrates the practice of archiving by looking at how we remember, categorize and read the past

BY Giovanna Manzotti |

At the centre of the artist’s exhibition at Paris’s Bourse de Commerce is a sophisticated collage of her life in film

BY Sean Burns |

At Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden, the artist’s gravity-defying sculptures create a series of unsettling encounters

BY Cathrin Mayer |

At Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, the artist recontextualizes artifacts from the country’s colonial and religious past

BY Camila Belchior |

At Between Bridges, Berlin, a retrospective of the late artist's work serves as a memorial to his too-short life

BY Andrew Durbin |

A grotesque new group show at Sadie Coles HQ, London, addresses sexual power dynamics but tends toward outdated provocation

 

BY Thomas McMullan |

At Hauser & Wirth, New York, Mark Bradford shows new paintings alongside video work and sculpture that probes histories of race, land and migration

BY Zoë Hopkins |

The artist’s survey exhibition at Tel Aviv Museum of Art paints a nuanced picture of a life of itinerant creative production

BY Kimberly Bradley |

Justin Bieber meets Pierre Bonnard in the artist’s new erotic, collage-inflected paintings at Gaga & Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles

BY Logan Lockner |

At Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, the artist’s enveloping installation is at once archaic yet futuristic

BY Gabriela Acha |

At MOCA Toronto, the artist presents research-driven sculptures and installations that explore relationships of mutual care and harm between humans and the environment

BY Neil Price |

At The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, a group show of ceramics explores the influence of the 1960s San Francisco funk movement on artists today

BY Daniel Felsenthal |

At Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, the artist’s portraits play with the idea of cinematic dissolve to reframe female figures from history

BY Emily Steer |

At Phillida Reid, London, a series of elegant ink drawings prods at the art world’s social anxieties

BY Tom Morton |

At Auto Italia, London, David Aruquipa Pérezs photographic archive is an intergenerational and transcultural ode to street activism

BY Dylan Huw |

At Templon, New York, the artist presents caricatures that illustrate the ever-present violence in contemporary society

BY Folasade Ologundudu |

At Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, the artist shares a more nuanced and melancholic vision of Hercules, one of art history’s most triumphant figures

BY Wilson Tarbox |

At Modern Art Oxford, the artist’s monumental new film examines 15 judges working in England and Wales 

BY Cathy Wade |

At The Drawing Center, New York, the artist presents papercut scenes of homoerotic couplings inflected with conventions of the Chinese craft

BY Isabel Ling |

At the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, the two South African artists present multi-media works that memorialize anti-Apartheid resistance

BY Ian Bourland |