The May issue of frieze is out now. Cover artist is New York and Los Angeles-based painter, Janiva Ellis, whose psychologically fraught conflations of pop are on view at this year’s Whitney Biennial; also featured is the enigmatic artist-persona, Natascha Süder Happelmann, who is representing Germany and queer cyberfeminist pioneer Shu Lea Cheang in conversation with artist Zach Blas about her project for the Taiwan pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
We’ll Burn Your Pavilions
“The rise of the artist genius is not so much older than the nation-state.” As the 58th Venice Biennale opens, what kind of cultural fallacies and biases are being perpetuated? Ben Mauk unpacks the work of Natascha Süder Happelmann and the problem of representation in large-scale exhibitions.
Machines of Loving Grace
“To obscure the omnipresent surveillance of queer bodies, we need to morph and transpass gender binaries.” Shu Lea Cheang talks to Zach Blas about strategies for rerouting technologies of confinement and control.
Also featuring:
Sarah Manguso contemplates the work of Vija Celmins and the art of reckoning with silence. Tony Cokes encodes Kodwo Eshun’s memorial lecture for Mark Fisher into a hypertext for the issue’s visual essay. Kadish Morris investigates the power of personal histories, archives and the legacies of colonialism through the work of Barby Asante, Libita Clayton and Ashley Holmes. Nil Yalter talks to Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu about her four-decade career and the political awakening in her art. Jennifer Higgie teases out the symbolism of the abandoned mini-chateaux of the Burj Al Babas – a failed property development in north-western Turkey. Barbara Casavecchia looks at how artist Renato Leotta is using moonlight, waves and dry-stone walls across the Mediterranean coastline. Andrew Durbin delves into the ruptured painted worlds of Janiva Ellis. And Naomi Beckwith, Osei Bonsu, Jörg Heiser, Simon Njami and Sean O’Toole pen tributes to the pioneering work of Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019).
Columns and Reviews:
Andrew Durbin unpicks our propensity for cliché in times of crisis; Juliet Jacques considers recent developments in transgender literature; Jörg Heiser laments the “ghostly ventriloquism” of contemporary-art-related online feuds; Sierra Pettengill remembers Agnès Varda’s revolutionary fusion of life and film; Amy Sherlock considers why the legacy of the pattern and decoration movement is being currently re-evaluated in survey shows across Europe and the US; Olivia Laing pens a column on fan art, looking at Andy Warhol’s early drawings and Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s cabaret performances; director Zacharias Kunuk discusses his 30-year career making films about Inuit life ahead of his project for the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Ellen Mara De Wachter looks at how archival collections are being re-animated via new technologies; and Erika Balsom reflects on the recent boom in print-only magazines dedicated to experimental film.
Plus, 29 reviews from around the world, including reports on neo pre-modernity in four non-profit spaces in London and Gretchen Bender’s first posthumous retrospective at Red Bull Arts New York.
Answering our questionnaire is curator of the 58th Venice Biennale, Ralph Rugoff.
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