Eliana Willis

Just two weeks after picking up the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlinale, actor Tilda Swinton is already on to her next project. But this time, she is taking up the role as an exhibition curator.
The Oscar-winning actor is taking helm of “Supersonic Mediaeval,” an exhibition of British artist and designer Marianna Kennedy set to take place at Christie’s Paris from May 5 through 11. This retrospective delves into Kennedy’s practice and use of materials from resin and wood to bronze and Murano glass in her artisan oeuvre through the eyes of Swinton, who is a long-time admirer and collector of Kennedy’s work. This event is organized by PLVR Zurich.
Tilda Swinton, right, and Marianna Kennedy. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
“Marianna’s work has always sprung from and lived in, for me, a particularly sweet spot, one where the ancient and resonant meet the unknown and surprising,” noted Swinton in a statement. Earlier this month, she was presented the honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlinale, during which she gave a headline-grabbing speech.
The exhibition’s title, which playfully juxtaposes two seemingly contradictory concepts, pays homage to the actor’s admiration of Kennedy’s practice of skillfully blending art and craftsmanship, modernity and tradition, through her creation of objects such as carved and gilded mirrors and lamps.
“This is the landscape of the ‘Supersonic Mediaeval,’ invested in exquisite craftsmanship and joyful color and merging the familiar and the fresh: its atmosphere brings with it a breath to the heart of condition, renewal, and of bright new horizons ahead,” Swinton added.
The Canadian-born Kennedy went to the National College of Art in Dublin and furthered her studies at the Slade School of Art in London. In 2006, she began making her now iconic gilded mirrors at her studio in Spitalfields, London, where she is still based today. Her elegant body of work, made with refined, contemporary techniques and precious materials, are in the many private collections.
Marianna Kennedy’s mirror and lamp. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
Swinton and Kennedy were introduced by a mutual friend, and they were connected by a shared passion for collaborating with artisans, which involves the contemporary reinterpretation of historical craft techniques. Drawing inspiration from the houses and neighborhood of Spitalfields, which has a history of silk-weaving brought by the French Huguenot Protestants and is a culturally diverse area, the show is expected to carry a cinematic vibe, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in an imagined theatrical set while experiencing Kennedy’s work.
“I have always been inspired by Tilda’s unique artistic vision combined with a playful sense of collaboration. We both share a respect for craftsmanship and a love of beauty, bridging the gap between the past and present but always looking forward. For us, the past is always new,” Kennedy noted in a statement.
Throughout Swinton’s film career, she maintained close ties with art and artists. She made her film debut in Caravaggio in 1986, directed by Derek Jarman, who was also an artist whose works have been exhibited at galleries in recent years.
In 2019, she organized her first art show, “Orlando,” at the Aperture Foundation in New York as a curator. Named after Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same title, the exhibition featured more than 50 works by 11 artists, who explored the themes of identity and transformation in the book as well the 1992 film adaptation starring the Swinton. Last year, she played the role of a harried art-world outsider in the satire Problemista. More

What does a retrospective accomplish? A major show on Gabriel Orozco in Mexico City offers a new idea.
From an academic standpoint, an institutional retrospective exhibition is seen as a crowning jewel of an artist’s career, the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of work and oeuvre that has had an outsized influence on the state of artmaking. Typically, retrospectives are staged roughly, if not precisely, chronologically, showing how the artist started in one place and—traced through subsequent periods and bodies of work—ended up in another. A nice tidy package.
Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoe Box (Caja vacía de zapatos) (1993). Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris/Los Angeles.
But what if another, more valuable function could be found within the retrospective format? On view through August 3, 2025, Gabriel Orozco’s career-spanning exhibition at the Museo Jumex, “Politécnico Nacional,” all but abandons traditional considerations around what a retrospective can or should be. Instead, the retrospective is approached less as a case study of an artist and more as an open field of exploration, one where time, context, and medium are not presented hierarchically, but as entry points to the core tenants and recurring lines of inquiry of the artist’s practice.
The exhibition is curated by University College London Professor and Fellow of the British Academy Briony Fer, who has been a leading scholar on Orozco for more than two decades (she also curated a show of his work at White Cube Hong Kong in 2016). The artist and curator’s longstanding working relationship undoubtedly led to the ability for a more experimentally organized show. “This is an artist who is very open and has been very open to intellectual dialogue as well as to conversation and argument, that’s been very generative to me,” said Fer in an interview.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
The show comprises 300 objects (more if you consider that some works include dozens of objects themselves) installed across four floors plus the public plaza and terraces. A proverbial homecoming for the artist, the exhibition marks Orozco’s first major museum show in Mexico since 2006 (in an opening talk, he was quick to point out that though he hasn’t had a project of this scale in Mexico for some time, he has always maintained a presence in the country, continually returning from his forays around the world).
Orozco’s role in facilitating Mexico’s recognition as an international powerhouse of contemporary art cannot be understated. In the early 1990s when Orozco was first rising to fame, Mexico was still best known for its advancements in Modernism, à la Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, or José Clemente Orozco (unrelated to Gabriel). Early works like La DS (1993), made from a Citroën DS car cut lengthwise and reassembled to be surreally slim, and Empty Shoe Box (1993), became exemplary of his practice, which centers on locating the fractures and intersections between art and everyday life.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
It is this specific element of Orozco’s artistic focus that underpins the present exhibition at Museo Jumex, where works from across his career comingle and are instead loosely organized on an elemental basis, or as Orozco refers to them, “constellations.” The top floor of the show brings together atmospheric, airy works, including ceiling fans with streams of toilet paper hanging from their blades (emblematic of Orozco’s wry sense of humor), and the floor below presents bodies of work with a decidedly earthy, vegetal sensibility. In the first-floor gallery are aquatic works, including one of his iconic whale skeletons (another of which, Mobile Matrix [2006] hangs at the Biblioteca Vasconcelos across town). And the museum’s basement level is the “compost,” reflecting a buildup of ideas, voices, and overlapping media. The star of this lower level is a video work that mimics the format and style of viral videos on TikTok.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
Despite the show’s massive size, parsing through decades of Orozco’s work was no small feat, involving going back into the artist’s archives and meticulously tracing the elemental aspects of various works from across decades.
“The only thing that I was not so sure about is that there were so many works, because you know I have worked a lot, and I have done a lot of different things,” Orozco said. “But [Fer] was just ‘yes, and this and then this and then this and that. And then we combine this with that.’ All the dynamics of co-relationships and putting so much research into finding pieces … The museum wanted to have a really ambitious show, and a very complete show. It was the one thing that I was a bit worried about. But she was so happy choosing works. I can see that she really likes my work. I think maybe she likes it even more than me,” he added wryly.
Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoe Box (Caja vacía de zapatos) (1993). Photo: John Berens. La Colección Jumex, Mexico
Dotted throughout the show are some of Orozco’s most recognizable works, such as his “Samurai Tree Paintings” (2004), geometric abstractions with circular, diagrammatic designs that recall compositions he had toyed with years earlier on everything from graph paper to airplane tickets. These are juxtaposed with pieces such as Árbol nuevo (2006) illustrating how the inspiration behind the works lives on, ever-evolving, ever-adapting. Examples of his large-scale “Working Tables,” like Working Table, (Tokyo) (2015–2023) bring to life the intimate details of his process, displaying collections of various found and made objects, scraps of materials, partial works, and sketches, conceptually held together by the artist’s pursuit of finding the connections between things.
In the museum courtyard, Ping Pond Table (1998), a four-player construction of a ping pong table playable by visitors, has been reproduced with native water-based plats at its center, alluding to Orozco’s interest in games and penchant for the playful and humorous. Adapted from its original installation featuring lily pads, the work conveys a message that is perhaps even more potent today than at the time of its creation.
A new iteration of Gabriel Orozco’s Ping Pond Table (1998) is installed in the plaza of Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Photo: A. Olsen.
Art history, like much of the humanities, bears an impulse to categorize, codify, define, and place things (artworks, artists, periods of time, etc.) in little boxes. In “Politécnico Nacional,” Orozco and Fer resist such inclinations and instead consider the oeuvre holistically. In turn, the show can be understood more as a practice-based framework or roadmap from which visitors can freely explore the tactics and methodologies of the works—and how the implication of each has changed or stayed the same in the time since it was made.
“It changes the way I think about art history,” reflected Fer on the show. “For years I’ve been very dubious about the art historical construction that the meaning of the work is constructed when it’s produced…And everything about this work defies that. That sense of how meaning transforms, and I got very interested in temporality and time. I even in [the exhibition catalogue] called one of his techniques not a conventional technique, but time and temporalities … in the sense that everything is always in the process of changing through time.”
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
The exhibition’s installation underscores chronology’s backseat role. Across the floors, works from across the periods and places of Orozco’s career comingle, offering new insight into the heart of his practice.
At the extreme, on the top floor, a recent work, Ánima / Anima (2023) is hung on the wall beside the artist’s personal suitcase, replete with luggage tags and worn-off labels, which Orozco placed there on one of his last walkthroughs before opening. Brought on his most recent trip to Mexico City, and placed specifically next to this work (which references ancient Mexican imagery and symbolism), the addition reflects the continuing inspiration for new work inspired by way of revisiting another within the context of the exhibition.
“Both works are our cultural baggage because we do carry a lot of luggage and we need to know when to leave,” Orozco explained. Incongruities balanced by unseen connections in the world around us are a cornerstone of the artist’s work and the addition speaks to how this process of sousing out these intersections in his work—both old and new—is ongoing. No work is inherently fossilized within the time and place it was created.
Gabriel Orozco, Árbol nuevo (2006). Collection Isabel and Agustín Coppel.
The show’s title speaks to this egalitarian sensibility. Orozco took inspiration from the nearby Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and more broadly polytechnic education, which is geared toward applied sciences like engineering, but notably has no courses on art. For Orozco, this is a shortcoming, as shown in much of his work there are significant intersections between artmaking, engineering, music, computer technology, history, and so on.
In the context of the present exhibition, the retrospective format by way of Orozco’s practice itself is transformed into a type of school, one that forefronts accessibility, malleability, and a hope to inspire rather than indoctrinate in a particular pedagogy or canon. In the same way, an artist or art historian might have one takeaway from the exhibition, and an engineering student or architect might have another. Its aims are generative, rather than purely reflective.
Speaking on the show overall, Fer said, “It’s for a wide audience but never underestimate them. Never patronize them. And in a way, there are very specialist audiences and then there is this very wide public and some of that public is not knowledgeable about art, but if you make a good enough show, it will work for those different audiences.” More

Right now, at the Gibbes Museum of Art, an Alexander McQueen ombre creation is rubbing shoulders with a Hokusai print, and a Molly Goddard dress with a Joan Mitchell. Fashion legend Dapper Dan, meanwhile, is brushing up against painter Barkley Hendricks.
These artworks and fashion pieces are among the many that the Charleston institution has paired for “Statement Pieces,” an exhibition exploring the centuries-spanning dialogue between the two fields. Co-curated by Gibbes’s director of curatorial affairs Sara Arnold and the VP of Barrett Barrera Projects Kelly Peck, the show spotlights artworks from the museum’s permanent holdings and designs from the latter consultancy.
Installation view of “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The show, Arnold told me over email, “offered an opportunity to recontextualize our collection, and to bring world-class fashion design to our galleries.” It’s a sentiment echoed by the museum’s director Angela Mack, who told me: “Embracing other art forms as opportunities to interpret or enhance our understanding of the visual arts only broadens our understanding and increases our ability to reach new audiences.”
Childe Hassam, April (The Green Gown) (1920). Photo courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The art-fashion couplings were devised with Arnold first selecting a group of artworks with stylistic throughlines, before Peck proposed some potential pairings. Peck also delved into the museum’s online database to identify artworks that might match objects she hoped to showcase.
“This was not simply a process of artwork dictating fashion or vice versa,” she told me. “Rather, it was a dynamic conversation between the collections.”
Left: Molly Goddard, Green Tulle Dress with Embroidered Flowers, Autumn/Winter 2017 Collection. Photo: Jonas Gustavsson / courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art. Right: Joan Mitchell, Series: July 25 I (1966). Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
The curators created the combinations, Peck added, based on visual similarities, whether in form, color, or texture, as well as research into the artist’s and designer’s bodies of work. “This ensured that the final pairings had both visual congruence and conceptual depth,” she said.
Indeed, most immediately, a visitor’s eye is drawn to the aesthetic connections between a garment and an artwork. The structured appendages on a red dress from Comme des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection is echoed in the textured bulbs on a 2020 stoneware sculpture by Donté K. Hayes; the gold of a Gucci mini-dress is reflected in an 18th-century portrait by Benjamin West, in which landowner Thomas Middleton stands draped with a rich ocher fabric.
Donté K. Hayes, Sanctuary (2020) and Comme des Garçons Red Dress from Spring/Summer 2015 on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: MCG Photography, courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
Sometimes, these graphic links surfaced shared approaches between designer and artist. For instance, Arnold highlighted how the partnering of Romare Bearden’s abstract canvas Untitled (Green) (ca. 1950s) and a severe Serena Gili ensemble turned up more than visual correlations. “A closer investigation of the artists’ practices reveals their shared intuitive approach,” she explained. “Each relies heavily on memory, family tradition, and an interest in experimentation and innovation.”
Serena Gili, Cashmere Beaded Top and Fiberglass Skirt (2012) and Romare Bearden, Untitled (Green) (c. 1950s) on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
A host of fashion designers featured in “Statement Pieces” have taken cues from art history—McQueen, Peck noted, was known for his “engagement with art”—but so too have artists relied on fashion to denote identity and authority.
Note, say, Thomas Sully’s portrait of Sarah Reeve Ladson, seen decked out in a fur-trimmed coat and colorful turban, nodding to her exotic sense of style and her association with the arts; or Barkley Hendricks’s Ms. Johnson (Estelle) (1972), in which the crisp lines of his sitter’s everyday wear convey “an attitude and ease of style,” in Peck’s words, and in turn a profound individuality.
Barkley Hendricks, Ms. Johnson (Estelle) (1972).Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
“In some sense, fashion is an artistic medium we all engage with on varying levels daily,” said Arnold. “Bringing these fashion objects into conversation with paintings and sculpture or other mediums traditionally considered fine art not only expands how we define art but awakens us to how we look at all art, and the significant role it plays in our everyday lives.”
“Statement Pieces: Contemporary Fashion Design and the Gibbes Collection” is on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art, 135 Meeting St, Charleston, South Carolina, through April 27. More

A massive bronze sculpture by Thomas J Price will soon stand tall in New York’s Times Square, accompanied at night by his stop-motion animations on the plaza’s famed billboards, in conjunction with his first major solo show at Hauser and Wirth in New York.
The sculptural work, Grounded in the Stars (2023), depicts a Black woman wearing everyday clothing and standing 12 feet above the ground, in a slightly contrapposto pose with both hands on her hips. The work emerges from Price’s ongoing deconstruction of preconceived notions about identity, demonstrating how Black individuals can claim space on their own terms.
Thomas J Price’s Grounded in the Stars (2023) is seen with a person for scale. Photo courtesy of Kunstgiesserei St.Gallen
The sculpture, Price told me over email, was designed to integrate into such a setting as Times Square, which brings together various histories and cultures. It aims to represent the diversity of visitors at the Crossroads of the World and address the traditional representation of marginalized communities in public spaces.
“I hope Grounded in the Stars will instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity,” he said.
The figure in the sculpture isn’t based on a real person—rather it is a composite of images and observations referred to by the artist in sculpting the work. Price said its identity is intentionally open-ended so people can see it without assumptions or stereotypes.
Thomas J Price. Grounded in the Stars. (2023). Photo courtesy of Kunstgiesserei St.Gallen
“The work is a composite fictional character, unfixed and boundless, allowing us to imagine what it would be like to inhabit space neutrally without preconceived ideas and misrepresentation,” he said.
And in a world full of shallow communication, soundbites, and mixed messages, this sculpture is meant to bring back a sense of human connection, he said. It explores the gap between what people see in the world around them and what they feel inside.
As for the animations, they will run on more than 90 billboards throughout the famed area from 11:57 p.m. to midnight nightly. They come from his ongoing “Man Series” of “plasticine heads” presented against stark black backgrounds. The heads come to life with subtle facial movements.
Portrait of Thomas J Price. Photo by Ollie Adegboye
“I was drawn to Thomas J Price’s work for Times Square because of the novel ways in which he imparts a sense of reverence for people’s everyday humanity,” Jean Cooney, the director of Times Square Arts, said in an email, adding that the works “summon power.”
At Hauser and Wirth, Price’s show, “Resilience of Scale,” will present five such towering figures with a large-scale photographic work comprising 18 separate framed images. As in Times Square, the exhibition invites viewers to navigate the space and make circuits around the works—”positioning themselves within the artist’s narrative,” reads the press announcement, “rather than merely observing from a distance.”
Thomas J Price’s Grounded in the Stars will be on view in Times Square at Broadway and 46th Street, April 29–June 17. The animated works will be shown nightly May 1–31.
“Thomas J Price: Resilience of Scale” will be on view at Hauser and Wirth, 134 Wooster Street, New York, April 24–June 14. More

“Singular meanings are not always the best,” Helmut Lang told me. It’s a statement befitting a sculptor whose works defy simple explanation.
A group of Lang’s oblique sculptures has just landed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles for the exhibition “What remains behind.” They appear as alien forms in the concrete-lined minimalist space. A low figure appears crouched and contorted with creases and folds; another, a monolithic slab, stands in a corner, its face alive with mysterious indentations. More significant than what they represent, though, is what they hold.
“The object and its integrity,” Lang said, “are the most important.”
Helmut Lang, fist I and fist IV (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist.
Lang’s works have been constructed out of such materials as foam and latex, steel and resin—what he called “not the usual suspects” when it comes to sculpture. Their former uses and purposes, he said, are given new heft by the artist’s hand.
“I just simply find it more inspiring as it is also more challenging,” he added of his choice of materials. “The emotional weight comes in by what I do with them, and I prefer the outcome not to have predetermined meaning. Materials are just materials despite their past.”
Helmut Lang, consenting position (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
The Austrian artist, of course, has had a long history with unconventional materials. His eponymous fashion label, founded in 1986, was characterized by minimalist tailoring and severe silhouettes, as much as its use of fabrics from rubber and metallics to thermochromic textiles. Lang’s deconstructive approach to design—combining dinner jackets with tracksuits, juxtaposing horsehair against silk—also helped dismantle the boundary that long separated luxury and street fashion.
Since retiring from the fashion industry in 2005, Lang’s art practice has blossomed. Not long after, he began showing his Delphic sculptures—towering columns created out of fabric scraps, stacked objects built out of rubber tires, reliefs made with memory foam—all bearing out his experimental approach.
“What happens during the work process, intellectually and form-wise, is that I approach a piece with an imaginary idea which I have not experienced and therefore remains innocent, waiting to be explored,” he explained. “This emotion results in a flow of works or procedures that can be interrupted at any point. These are condensed, layered, broken up, and again collected and suddenly taken over by another.”
Installation view of “Helmut Lang: What remains behind” at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, Los Angeles, 2025. Photo courtesy of MAK Center.
The material responds too: “At any given moment, loss of control takes effect. If the sculpture is strong enough to fight back, that is often a good moment to stop.”
The form of sculpture has captured him, Lang said, because it afforded “the most possibilities of expression.” For years, too, he maintained a fond friendship with sculptor Louis Bourgeois—she appeared on his label’s 1997 campaign and he included a choker she designed in 1948 in his 2003 runway show. Elsewhere, he has reflected on how she affirmed his approach to material. Memory, Bourgeois once said, is a “form of architecture.” Lang’s works compact impressions past, present, and those yet to come.
Helmut Lang, fist II (detail) (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
At the Schindler House, the exhibition is towered over by a pair of fist-like sculptures, their bodies sharply folded, bound, and gnarled. Even as they challenge singular meaning, they invite exploration. A viewer is enticed to move around the works, to inspect their every cut and dent. The point, said Lang, is to trigger “more questions, not answers.”
“Once the work is handed over to the public, it becomes many lives,” he added. “Everyone is experiencing what one sees depending on their current potential and that is where the personal dialogue comes in. It is beneficial to leave the safety of former experiences behind, which leads to endless layers of opportunities.”
Helmut Lang, kleine Portrait Arbeit I (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
The meaning of his sculptures could also very well change with the environment they’re displayed in, he said—but in ways that remain, as always, open.
“I am willing to let a space violate the sculptures and avoid the trap of beautifying the object. I want to think that a sculpture will eventually be placed in different contexts and will respond for better or worse each time,” he said.
“Also, one cannot always choose where it will end up and I don’t want to be consumed by that fact. There is something interesting about not always being in control beyond the creation of the object.”
“Helmut Lang: What remains behind” is on view at Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, California, through May 4. More

Thirty years ago, Yoshitomo Nara was a young Japanese artist living in Germany emerging on the international art stage. Today, Nara is one of the world’s most famous artists and a market star with a massive following. This transformation did not happen overnight; it was rather a gradual process developed over time. This journey is reflected in his latest solo show at Blum, coinciding with Frieze Los Angeles this week.
Titled “My Imperfect Self,” the exhibition is more than just a presentation of Nara’s experiments with clay; it is also a meditation on his evolving artistic practice after gaining fame outside of his native Japan with his pivotal 1991 painting The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand. The show marks the 30th anniversary of “Pacific Babies,” Nara’s first presentation in the United States held in 1995 at the L.A. gallery, then known as Blum and Poe.
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara’s exhibition “My Imperfect Self” at BLUM Los Angeles, 2025. © Yoshitomo Nara / Courtesy of the Yoshitomo Nara Foundation and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York. Photo: Josh Schaedel.
Though the exhibition went on view in mid-January, the formal opening reception was postponed to the end of the month due to the devastating L.A. wildfires. Nara contributed art to the relief efforts earlier.
“My Imperfect Self” features a new series of bronze sculptures, including 11 newly exhibition pieces, in addition to some paintings. These sculptures are “mid-size heads exuding a quirky strangeness and dark charm that defines the artist’s work,” noted art historian Yeewan Koon, the exhibition’s curator. The large pieces cast in bronze were originally made in clay as palm-sized pieces.
“This collection of heads is full of contradictions that lean toward the peculiar and anomalous,” Koon noted in her curatorial statement. “The awkwardness of these heads embraces the possibilities of mischance and imperfections. They form their own gang of misfits. For Nara, this reflects a renewed engagement with the praxis of making—the dynamic interplay between hand and body, craft, and object—which directs his curiosity toward possibilities of incompleteness.”
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara’s exhibition “My Imperfect Self” at BLUM Los Angeles, 2025. © Yoshitomo Nara / Courtesy of the Yoshitomo Nara Foundation and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York. Photo: Josh Schaedel.
Reflecting on Nara’s sculpture practice, Koon, who has been working with the artist since 2014 and authored Nara’s monograph in 2020, noted that the artist’s approach to clay has gone from “wrestling” to “nurturing.” She recalled her conversation with Nara about working with clay, which began after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami happened on March 11, 2011, the worst earthquake recorded in Japan’s history. The tragedy claimed nearly 20,000 lives with more than 2,550 people missing. It also hit the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing a nuclear meltdown.
Nara was deeply traumatized by the disaster that hit his home region. For a while, he struggled with painting. He then began to experiment with clay and threw his whole body at a giant piece of clay and began to “wrestle” with it.
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara’s exhibition “My Imperfect Self” at BLUM Los Angeles, 2025. © Yoshitomo Nara / Courtesy of the Yoshitomo Nara Foundation and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York. Photo: Josh Schaedel.
“What he really wanted to do was to leave his physical presence onto the clay itself, a way to make permanence feel more solid,” said Koon, noting this was a response to traumatic events. The artist also surrounded himself with a community and did his clay work at his former school rather than his studio.
The transformation of his approach to clay occurred in 2016. Rather than ‘fighting with the clay,’ Nara adopted a ‘gentle motion,’ according to Koon. The result was “more raw, but still intimate and more nurturing,” she noted. First making palm-sized heads, the artist then picked the oddest-looking ones to scale up. The dramatic change in size made them look awkward and imperfect. “He liked that,” Koon said, noting that to achieve perfection, one has to seize control. Imperfection, on the other hand, creates a breathing space that allows the relinquishing of control. “Ultimately, it is about a sense of freedom,” Koon added.
These sculptures, created out of raw materials from his home region, are embedded with a sense of place and roots. “If we look at Nara’s journey, from a sense of displacement to such connectedness, what comes through is that being imperfect is also about acceptance,” Koon noted.
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara’s exhibition “My Imperfect Self” at BLUM Los Angeles, 2025. © Yoshitomo Nara / Courtesy of the Yoshitomo Nara Foundation and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York. Photo: Josh Schaedel.
“My Imperfect Self” runs through March 8, 2025, at Blum Los Angeles.
This article was updated on February 24, 2025, 5.34 a.m. More

One of the most-buzzed-about gallery shows in Los Angeles this Frieze Week is also one of the most elusive.
David Hammons’s ambitious installation, Concerto in Black and Blue, was first shown in New York more than 20 years ago, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Now, it has been reintroduced at Hauser and Wirth’s sprawling headquarters in the Downtown Arts District.
Hammons is known for his steadfast commitment to his vision, often eschewing art world norms. It’s interesting to consider how much has changed for him—and the art world—over the past two decades ago, and how that has potentially changed the reception of the work.
The entrance to David Hammons’s Concerto in Black and Blue at Hauser and Wirth Los Angeles. Photo Eileen Kinsella
The intriguing, ambiguous artwork invites visitors to step into a dark, cavernous space armed only with a tiny blue flashlight. (These are offered on a tray situated near the entrance.) The pitch-black gallery is enormous—the whole north side of the gallery’s complex—but you move through it quickly since there is nothing really to see. The work is not for sale, and there is no press release (Hammons doesn’t do them), only a one-sentence explanation on the gallery’s website.
David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue. Photo: Hauser & Wirth
As when the work was presented at Ace Gallery in Manhattan in 2022, the flashlights ensure that viewers can navigate the space without bumping into anything (or anyone). Part of the experience is seeing other blue lights swiveling about the walls and floors as other members of the audience meander. The “concerto” in the title could refer to the shifting shapes and shadows created by the lights cutting through the darkness. You are in good, and quiet, company.
That sense of silence is pronounced. Although nothing in the gallery signage prohibits talking, there was very little conversation or sound inside the galleries, which contributes to a peaceful, almost meditative feeling.
You might take the piece as a comment on looking at art but not actually being able to truly see it—to make sense of it.
Before entering the gallery, you are asked to put your phones into pockets. Photo by Eileen Kinsella
Visitors approaching the entrance of the current Hammons show are asked to slip their phones into neoprene containers that are then locked and handed back to you. A magnetic mechanism at the exit of the show is used to unlock the slip and return the sleeve. There are containers to return both the sleeve and the mini-flashlights as you exit the galleries.
Photo by Eileen Kinsella
It’s a mandatory but democratic way of guaranteeing that viewers honor Hammons’ intentions of the interior of the artwork not being documented or photographed. That would not have been as pressing a concern all those years ago, five years before the first iPhone debuted.
Photo by Eileen Kinsella
A film by Linda Goode Bryant from the 2002 debut of Concerto in Black and Blue is running in the Hauser and Wirth screening room, and it is a wonderful, brief snapshot of the project.
Photo by Eileen Kinsella
The mega-gallery’s entire Downtown space, in a former flour mill, serves as a calming oasis from the minute you step inside. There are also major installations and works on view by artists like Martin Creed and Mary Heilmann, an impressively packed bookstore, the Ursula cafe (which shares its name with the gallery’s periodical), the wildly popular Manuela restaurant, and a plant-filled courtyard.
The courtyard of Hauser and Wirth’s Downtown Los Angeles gallery space with a view of Manuela restaurant. Photo by Eileen Kinsella
I also happened upon the gallery’s very own chicken coop en route to the Hammons show. A nearby sign advises: “Please do not feed the chickens or place anything in the chicken coop.” More

The theme of the 16th Sharjah Biennial, the longest-running contemporary art biennial in the Gulf region, was an open-ended proposition: to carry. To its all-female curatorial team, it has manifold interpretations: to carry a home, to carry a history, to carry rupture, to carry resistance.
During the opening speeches earlier this month, a spontaneous Māori chant offered the perfect introduction to this vast exhibition, which was curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz, and features 200 artists participating with a total of 650 works, including over 200 new commissions.
The show, ambitious in scale, is displayed at 17 venues alongside a program of performances, music, and films. Spread in the emirate of Sharjah, including sites in Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid, and Kalba, the selection of sites moves beyond white-cube spaces and museums, occupying historic buildings, schools, former markets, and even the desert.
Under the direction of Hoor Al Qasimi, daughter of Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, and ruler of Sharjah since 2003, the biennial’s ambition lies not only in its scale but also in its active reclamation of discussions around the Global South—discussions that have historically been led by Western institutions.
This edition of the Sharjah Biennial included a diverse artist list, with many emerging talents from regions across Asia, Africa, and Oceania, as well as a strong representation of First Nations and Indigenous art. While familiar artists like Arthur Jafa are also present, there are also many community-driven projects, such as the Thai group Womanifesto.
Here are five artists whose works you need to know.
Michael Parekōwhai
Michael Parekōwhai, He Kōrero Pūrākau mo te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand river, 2011. Photo: Cathy Fan
It’s hard not to be struck by Michael Parekōwhai’s work, which occupies an entire gallery space in Al Mureijah Square of Sharjah City. A major figure in New Zealand’s art scene for over 30 years, he remains relatively low-key and avoids the media spotlight. Often described as a “Duchampian” artist, he plays with art history, cultural identity, and personal narratives. 
Sun shines through the skylight, casting a stream on a Steinway piano painted in a bold red. Stepping closer, you notice finely carved details—it’s both a sculpture and a playable instrument. A male dancer joins in as people gather, followed by a tenor singer filling the room with his voice. Outside, there’s a desert city; inside, European music and traditional performance unfold. The piano’s surface features whakairo, a form of Māori carving, which connect to the artist’s family history and to the history of the piano itself. Ivory, ebony, shell, and pearl shimmer in the carvings of other elements on view. A Pipiwharauroa (shining cuckoo) clock, jewelry worn by the performers, and signal to these materials.
This work was first shown at the 2011 Venice Biennale, a project that took Parekōwhai ten years to complete. It draws from multiple inspirations, but its title, He Korero Purakau mo te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand River, comes from a 1920s New Zealand novel, which in turn inspired Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano.
John Clang
John Clang, Reading by an Artist, 2023 – ongoing. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Lavender Chang
Reading by an Artist might be the most enchanting experience I’ve had at a major art event. The presentation by Singaporean artist John Clang was understated—I was led by a fellow journalist to a secluded courtyard where the 52-year-old artist sat hidden behind a large hanging cloth, facing a single participant.
Clang, who lives between New York and Singapore, is known primarily as a photographer and started this project in 2023. This marks his first biennial appearance, where instead of taking portraits through lenses, he “reads” people using zi wei dou shu, an ancient Chinese fortune-telling method based on feng shui principles. The artist views human destiny as an epic codex not just to be perused, but to be interpreted and translated into tangible action to empower one’s life. 
Each session lasts an hour, during which he calculates a ming pan (destiny chart), treating it as a unique metaphysical portrait. The large hanging cloth did not display an individual ming pan, but rather that of the Sharjah Biennial itself. A waiting list quickly grew, with many arranging private readings afterward. Becoming a skilled zi wei dou shu reader takes years of study (and sometimes a decade) due to its intricate system of knowledge and practice. In another room, Clang shared reflections from past sitters. 

Cécile B. Evans 
Cécile B. Evans, RECEPTION!, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
Cécile B. Evans explores the idea that language, memory, and emotion are not abstract, but are intricately connected to the physical world and particularly to ecological crises and technological storage. She presents a strikingly dystopian narrative in her latest work.
Upon entering the darkened exhibition space, visitors encounter a six-piece sculptural installation, immediately recognizable as a miniature model of the United Nations General Assembly Hall. However, beneath this sleek, orderly structure lies a compressed world of ruins—a storage space for the remnants of New York City. On closer inspection, fragments of the Statue of Liberty, bank signs, traces of Wall Street’s bull, and pieces of infrastructure like railways, all hint at the collapse of authoritative institutions. This space is renamed GAMMA (Global Archive of Memory Management and Archaeology). Another piece in the installation is a quilt made from shredded documents, including global trend forecasts from the CIA dating back to 1997.
Two video works, RECEPTION! and MEMORY!, further expand the narrative. The former debuted as a live installation at Paris Fashion Week for Miu Miu, while the latter was commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation. The story revolves around an ecological crisis that causes the mass disappearance of personal data. The protagonist, played by French actress Guslagie Malanda, is Reception—the last surviving translator at a data center responsible for transcribing and recovering memories. During a flood that engulfs the center, she transcribes others’ memories into English. However, when Reception translates a woman’s intimate memory, part of her own memory slips away. MEMORY follows the unraveling of this lost memory.

Kaloki Nyamai
Kaloki Nyamai’s assemblage paintings at Sharjah Biennial. Photo: Cathy Fan
Kenya-based artist Kaloki Nyamai’s assemblage paintings offer a powerful exploration of Akamba’s cultural heritage. These large canvases—each over 2.5 meters wide—hang and spill onto the floor, creating a striking visual and tactile experience throughout the exhibition. With a complex mix of visual and physical depth, the works make a powerful visual impact.
Nyamai was also one of the four artists representing Kenya at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. In Sharjah, the artist takes painting to new heights, layering newspapers, incorporating found documents, and stitching in thick, heavy seams. Abstract figures slowly emerge from the layers of acrylic paint, sisal ropes, photo transfers, and charred rubber threads, almost like memories coming in and out of focus. Many of the figures and moments are inspired by news imagery. A Nairobi native, Nyamai views his work as a continuation of the storytelling traditions passed down through generations. Nyamai challenges the oversimplified narratives around Kenya’s history and identity, offering a richer alternative. He compares the act of stitching to symbolically bringing together a community that has been torn apart by violence. The paintings on display are also named after Nyamai’s ancestral language, Kikamba.

Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy, The Circle and the Square, 2015-2017. Image courtesy of the artist
If I had to pick just one piece at this year’s Sharjah Biennial that represents the world we live in today, it would be this one. American artist Suzanne Lacy, also a social activist, is known for coining the term “new genre public art.” Most of her work focuses on social and urban issues, using community conversations to express important ideas.
At the Biennale, Lacy presented a deeply moving piece. Her two-screen film The Circle and the Square is based on a project that came together during a three-day event in September 2016. Shape Note singers from England performed alongside a local Sufi group in an old mill. Hundreds of voices filled the space, blending Shape Note singing with Dhikr, an Islamic chanting practice. The event was shaped by months of community discussions and concluded with a dinner for 500 local residents.
The three-year project addressed racism, labor, and global trade. It focused on the decline of the textile industry in Pendle, Northwest England, and its impact on both South Asian and white mill workers. The project is also presented with interviews, a timeline, photographs, and other documents.
The Sharjah Biennial is on view until June 15, 2025 More