On View

Queens, New York has hosted the World’s Fair twice: once in 1939, and then again in 1964. Now the borough is home to something else: “The World’s UnFair,” a feverish carnival of attractions that evoke the look of those old 20th-century expos—but not their nationalistic aims. New Red Order, the group of Native artists behind the public art project, has an altogether different agenda in mind: the return of all Indigenous land.  
The Creative Time-presented exhibition opened this month in a raw, half-block lot that is owned by a developer, but not yet developed. In theory, that sense of provisionality teases the possibility that the site could be restituted. For now, it feels like it’s been hijacked. Wheatpaste posters styled like men’s magazine ads tote “rematriation services” on the lot’s walls. So do sandwich boards inside. Tribal flags are staked in Home Depot buckets and strung like banners at a car lot. A film, pitched like a corporate commercial, reminds us to “Never Settle.” It plays inside a sculpture that is half cheval de frise, half white picket fence, while an animatronic beaver and tree chat about settler colonialism nearby. 
This is a body of work that is not afraid to hit you over the head with what it has to say, even if that means mocking pockets of its audience along the way. But the cumulative effect is powerful. It’s the most essential show in New York right now. 
New Red Order, Dexter and Sinister (2023). Courtesy of New Red Order and Creative Time.
New Red Order defines itself as a “public secret society composed of networks of informants and accomplices dedicated to rechanneling desires for indigeneity towards the expansion of Indigenous futures.” If that description sounds elaborate, it’s because it was designed that way. “We don’t want to be contained to just being an art collective,” New Red Order said in a recent interview. (The three founding founders interviewed for this article—Adam and Zack Khalil, both of the Ojibway, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and Jackson Polys, of Tlingit heritage—prefer to be identified under the collective banner of the group.)  
The language of the mission statement is also coded with New Red Order’s argot. By “informants,” it means people who share knowledge of their own communities and cultures. “Accomplices” are those who support informants. The shadowy tone of it all echoes, with knowing irony, the group’s namesake, a 19th-century white fraternity called the “Improved Order of Red Men.” (The organization, which once counted Presidents Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt as members, often used Native designs and rituals.) 
But not all of New Red Order’s messaging is that complicated. The group’s central refrain—and the title of its main, ongoing body of work—leaves little room for misinterpretation: “Give it back.” It is both a provocation and a demand: Give back all land to the peoples who were forcibly displaced from it by colonialists. Give it back now.  
Installation view of “New Red Order: The World’s UnFair,” September 15 October 15, 2023. Courtesy of New Red Order and Creative Time.
Throughout “The World’s UnFair,” you’ll find variations of that message presented through the visual language of agitprop, infographics, recruitment videos, real estate placards, and other pieces of media that, in their ordinary states, are used to sell the idea of a better life. Many of these works also feature the same recurring character, played by veteran actor—and frequent New Red Order collaborator—Jim Fletcher. He is the apparent ringmaster of this weird pageant, but also something of a mascot. The group first met the white actor after he donned Native American garb in a 2014 stage Wooster Group play called “CRY, TROJANS!” The incident stoked backlash among Native communities. 
Regretful of the decision, Fletcher—who now identifies as an “accomplice” and a “Native American impersonator”—has since given himself over to a number of New Red Order projects. For a 2017 Artists Space performance conceived by the group, he stripped naked, put on a department store “Indian” costume, and apologized for his role in “CRY, TROJANS!” Even when the joke is on him, Fletcher, to his credit, is game. 
“It’s Jim Fletcher playing Jim Fletcher,” New Red Order said of the layers to the actor’s performance in “The World’s UnFair,” referring to him as a proxy. “If we say ‘Give it Back,’ I worry that it gets dismissed by many people. But if a successful middle-aged non-Native performance artist says it, maybe it has a chance of making it out of the echo chamber.” 
Installation view of “New Red Order: The World’s UnFair,” September 15 October 15, 2023. Courtesy of New Red Order and Creative Time.
With its puppets and punny riffs of self-help speak and jingoistic lingo, “The World’s UnFair” is very funny (one banner reads “Mission Accomplice,” referencing the infamous George W. Bush proclamation). The tone is a welcome twist on the solemnity that typically categorizes projects about indigeneity or repatriation, though it has its risks as well.  
“At times, humor has been a roadblock for some people to engage, because they don’t want to be made fun of,” said the group. “We find it’s a necessary way to engage, to crack open really uncomfortable conversations in ways that don’t lead to the expected places, to keep people on their toes… so they can’t easily categorize it in ways that they already understand.” 
But in putting together “The World’s UnFair,” New Red Order’s members also found themselves drawn to an earnestness that hasn’t always been present in their past work. Playing on several screens throughout the show are examples from their ongoing Give It Back series of documentary-style films highlighting people who have voluntarily repatriated land to Indigenous communities, tribes, or non-profits. Surrounded by works barbed with wit, these clips have a refreshing sincerity. 
“We found a need to [lean] a little bit more toward sincerity and transparency,” New Red Order explained. “That way, the real, powerful actions that real people are taking to address settler colonialization and the ongoing occupation of Indigenous land isn’t disregarded as a fantasy or as a joke, but seen as something real.” 
“New Red Order: The World’s UnFair” is on view now through October 15, 2023 at 24-17 Jackson Ave. in Long Island City, Queens.
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Hold onto your cowboy hats. This is no ordinary Western art show.
The simply titled “Cowboy” opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver on September 29 and it’s sure to garner major attention in the Western U.S. and beyond.
The show, organized by curators Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash, takes aim at the mythic figure, which they describe as “one of the most fraught and persistent figures in contemporary American culture.” The show raises questions such as how the myth of the cowboy exists today and how this archetype of masculinity shaped how we think about gender now. It further delves into cowboys’ relationship to the land through a series of broad perspectives and aims to debunk the homogenous concept of the cowboy as a white male.
Karl Haendel, Rodeo 11 (2023). Image courtesy the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles, Mitchell- Innes & Nash, New York, and Wentrup Gallery, Berlin
“There is no mythic figure who is more grand and complicated than the cowboy,” said Burnett Abrams in a phone interview. Originally, she said, she was looking into the history of the Black cowboy, but over the course of years of conversations, the concept was broadened.
“We approached it from all angles,” said Lash, including very much from the side of satire and critique, but also from the perspective of “homage,” with artists incorporating the stories of their own family members. “The stories range from the deconstructive impulse to the very personal. Cowboys are just so much more diverse than what gets depicted in the mainstream media.”
While the show starts with some classic blue-chip names and works like a John Baldessari (The Space Between Hat Rock and Shadow), Richard Prince’s famous Marlboro Man photo, and Andy Warhol’s film of a horse, it quickly delves into the contemporary and ultra-contemporary realm with 27 artists spanning 70 works.
Stephanie Syjuco, Set Up (The Broncho Buster 2) (2022). Image courtesy the artist, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco; RYAN LEE Gallery, NewYork; and Silverlens, Manila.
Take for instance Stephanie Syjuco’s photographs of Frederic Remington’s famous bronze sculptures of bucking broncos in the Amon Carter collection that depict them being measured with tape and alluding to the popularity of—and poking fun at—the sculptures and replicas on CEO desks across the country as symbols of bravura. “She jokes about how it’s such a popular bronze on the desks of corporate executives because it connects so deeply with this idea of the rugged individual, the entrepreneur, the man who sets his own terms,” said Lash.
The two curators said the tagline for the show could be: “This is not your grandfather’s Remington.”
Another topic that the show tackles is the “very problematic binary of the cowboy versus Indian, which is just an invention,” said Burnett Abrams.
Grace Kennison, I Remember Being Alone (2023). Image courtesy the artist.
One of the artists included in the show is Oklahoma native Nathan Young, whose art delves into his family history with parents who are of the Pawnee and Delaware Tribe. The multi-disciplinary artist delves into Pawnee rodeo culture in this series of work in the show.
And four contemporary artists, including Rafa Esparza, Young, and Colorado-based artists R. Alan Brooks and Gregg Deal were commissioned to make work for the show.
“There are those who are Native American or are of Native American descent who actively participate in cowboy culture,” said Lash. “There is not that distinction or binary.”
Burnett Abrams said: “Our ambition is to expand the story and I think that for those who are ready to be a part of that, it’s going to be amazing.”
“Cowboy” is on view at MCA Denver, 1485 Delgany Street, Denver, through February 18, 2024.

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When the animal kingdom met the artistic imagination, the result was a whole zoo full of fantastical creatures from dragons to unicorns, phoenixes to sphinxes. These strange mythological beasts haven usually taken on symbolic significance, and reappeared time and again in art made by different cultures across time, as shown by an ambitious new survey of more than 250 objects opening this fall at the Louvre-Lens.
This wide-ranging, whistle-stop tour starts off in the Bronze Age. The oldest surviving fragments of cave art are proof enough that humans have long been driven to depict the wonders of the natural world, but it wasn’t long before we started taking a bit of creative license. One of the show’s earliest exhibits, a Mesopotamian seal cylinder that dates back to 3300–3000 B.C.E., features a lion-headed eagle.
As pagan beliefs died out in favor of modern religion, biblical tales still kept audiences in awe by having their brave saints slay the same dragons that had once been popularized by ancient Greek mythology. Majestic, make-believe beasts were not always our adversaries, however, but often had magical powers of healing or protection.
The exhibition won’t leave visitors in the dark ages, but instead goes on to explore how mythological creatures have continued to enthrall new audiences. It turns out that the wild visions of Romantic artists like Henry Fuseli and the Pre-Raphelite painter Edward Burne-Jones have plenty in common with the science fiction and comic books that are so popular today.
“Fantastic Animals” is on view at Louvre-Lens, 99 Rue Paul Bert, 62300 Lens, France, from September 27, 2023 through January 15, 2024.
Preview artworks from the exhibition below.
Jean Gargot, Big Ghoul (1677). Photo: Christian Vignaud, © Musée de Poitiers.
Nicolas Buffe, Peau de Licorne (2011) Photo: © Cité internationale de la tapisserie, Aubusson, © Nicolas Buffe.
Jean-Auguste-Dominqiue Ingres, Roger freeing Angelica (1819). Photo: Franck Raux, © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre).
Figurine of the demon Pazuzu (911-604 B.C.E.). Photo: Thierry Olivier, © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais.
Will Cotton, Roping (2019–20). Photo courtesy of the artist and Templon, Paris-Bruxelles-New York, © Will Cotton © ADAGP, Paris 2023.
Henry Fuseli, Thor fighting the serpent of Midgard (1790). Photo: © akg-images, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Molding of a relief depicting a mythological scene, (c. 1200-1100 B.C.E.). Photo: Raphaël Chipault, © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais.
Paolo Uccello, Saint George Fighting the Dragon (c. 1440). Photo: Agence Bulloz, © RMN-Grand Palais.
Thomas Grünfeld, Misfit (flamingo-pig) (2005). Photo: © Galerie Jousse Lothar Schnepf © ADAGP, Paris, 2023.
Gustave Moreau, The traveler or Oedipus the traveler (1888). Photo: René-Gabriel Ojeda, © RMN Grand Palais.
Walter Andrea, Dragon-serpent on Ishtar Gate (1902). Photo: Andres Kilger, © BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais.
Cylinder seal depicting lions and an eagle (3300-3000 BEC). Photo: Franck Raux, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre).
Edward Burne-Jones, The Doom Fulfilled (1884-1885). Photo: Paul Carter – Bridgeman Images, © Southampton City Art Gallery.
An acquamanile (vessel). Photo: Jean-Gilles Berizzi, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre).
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A new series of presidential portraits by Kehinde Wiley just went on view in Paris—but you won’t find Barack Obama’s face among them. On view, instead, are ornate paintings of Macky Sall, Nana Akufo-Addo, and other African heads of state. 
These make up Wiley’s “A Maze of Power” series, which the artist has quietly been working on since 2012—years before he was tapped by President Obama. The new artworks are, in Wiley’s words, an effort to look at the African presidencies through the lens of Western European art history. 
“What happens when we use the language of aesthetic domination in the context of Africa in the 21st century?” the artist said in a short film he made to accompany the project. “Is it possible to use the language of empire, as it related to painting, in an African context, and arrive on the other side with something completely new? This body of work supposes that there is.” 

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The portraits debuted today in a Galerie Templon-sponsored exhibition at Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Among those depicted in the show are Olusegun Obasanjo, the former President of Nigeria; Hery Rajaonarimampianina, the former leader of Madagascar; and Félix Tshisekedi, the current President of Democratic Republic of Congo.  
Wiley, who initially set out to paint all 54 African presidents, visited each of his subjects on their own turf, in sites of their choosing. He brought with him a book of aristocratic, noble, and military portraits from the 17th to 19th centuries, introducing what he called a “vocabulary of power that each one of the presidents could choose to work with, or choose to ignore.” 
Installation view of “Kehinde Wiley: A Maze of Power” at The Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, 2023. Photo: Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images.
The “Maze of Power” referred to in the show’s title is one that exists between Wiley and his subjects, the artist explained. “‘The Maze of Power’ is the maze that’s being run by me the artist, but also by the sitter—the sitter deciding how they want to be seen, me responding to their set of decisions,” Wiley said in his film. “Each one of us are responding to a received history of image-making, power, and the ways in which art function within that dynamic.” 
Portrait of Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of the Congo’s Republic (2023) on view at “Kehinde Wiley: A Maze of Power” at The Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, 2023. Photo: Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images.
In producing his series, Wiley made a point not to talk politics, just pictures. The series, he explained, is not a “celebration of individual leaders,” but a “look at the presidency itself.”  
“The very act of creating a set of portraits in Europe, and now using that language in Africa, creates an… interesting provocation,” the artist went on. “This is an invitation for the viewer to expand the possibilities of what it means to look at art in Africa, about Africa, and about power.” 
“Kehinde Wiley: A Maze of Power” is on view at Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, 37 Quai Jacques Chirac, Paris, France, through January 14, 2024.

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The title of Carmen Winant’s new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, “The last safe abortion,” does not really describe the thousands of archival photographs that line its walls.  
Set in women’s health clinics, Winant’s pictures don’t depict the procedure, but the behind-the-scenes work that makes it possible. Shown are staffers answering phones, filing paperwork, scheduling appointments. Far from the sensationalized propaganda peddled by right-wingers, these images are, by design, downright banal. 
In compiling the photos, which she culled from clinics, universities, and local historical societies throughout the Midwest, Winant said she was thinking about the “visuality of abortion care” and “what it would mean to countermand right-wing efforts to traumatize.”  
“For me,” she explained, “that meant meeting it with images of care, however ‘unphotographic’ they may be.” 
A photograph on view in Carmen Winant’s “The last safe abortion” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Courtesy of Iowa Women’s Archive, University of Iowa.
More than a photographer, Winant is an accumulator. For works like My Birth (2018) and Pictures of Women Working (2016–22), she amasses huge troves of found images and other printed material, then displays them without adornment or manipulation. Only occasionally does she include her own photos, and even then she doesn’t draw attention to them. Preservation is a fundamental facet of her practice; so is the simple gesture of showing events and people that we know but rarely consider. 
Both imperatives are at the heart of “The last safe abortion.” So is an undeniable sense of urgency: the show arrives at a time when access to abortion and other reproductive services is rapidly being curbed throughout the country following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade last year. Health facilities were shuttering even as the artist visited them. 
The name of the exhibition reflects that precarity. It came from Winant’s conversations with clinic physicians and directors who offered—“almost verbatim,” she noted—the same shared pledge: “We will provide the last safe abortion.”       
“It really struck me as so powerful. It felt at once so resilient, so resolute and determined, but also, at the same time, so elegiac.” For these facilities, she pointed out, “it was not a question of if, but when.”  
Installation view of Carmen Winant’s “The last safe abortion” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2023. Courtesy of MIA.
Move close to museum’s walls and you’ll begin to pick out recurring faces and places and rituals. Beyond the logistical work, we also see clinicians mingling, drinking, sharing smiles and slices of cake at staff birthday parties. Quickly it becomes clear that what’s at stake in a reversed-Roe world is not just access to abortion, but also the livelihoods of the people that enable it. 
In another artist’s hands, you might wonder if the use of so many pictures undermines these subjects’ individual stories. Does the quantity of the work depersonalize it? Would a few good pictures make for a more potent portrait of the issue at hand than thousands of them?  
Winant, to her credit, doesn’t sacrifice intimacy through scale; she uses scale to embody intimacy. You can walk into her installation, let it surround and hug you. Ultimately, what’s on view is not a portrait of individuals, but of communities, coalitions, and groups united in a fight.  
A photograph on view in Carmen Winant’s “The last safe abortion” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Courtesy of Special Collections, Cleveland State University.
Volume is not just an artistic strategy for Winant. It’s also a political one.  
“I have thought so much about what it takes to build social alliances,” she said, noting a long-held interest in the history of radical movements and the tried-and-true grassroots formula of disseminating information as widely as possible. “That’s what it takes. Much like working in an abortion clinic and answering the phone, there’s something that’s so unglamorous about it,” she added.
“If you’ve ever done any work in organizing, you know it’s endless spreadsheets and meetings. That’s how shit gets done.”
“The last safe abortion” is on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 3rd Ave S, Minneapolis, through December 31.

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It was two years ago that curator and writer Antwaun Sargent first floated the idea of a show on Barkley Hendricks when he and Frick research associate Aimee Ng were discussing a good contemporary artist candidate for a show at the museum’s temporary home on Madison Avenue in the famous Breuer building.
“It was not an artist that I knew very well,” admitted Ng. “I’m a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting,” she said during their opening remarks at the packed press preview for “Barkley Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick” that opened yesterday (September 20).
In the two years that ensued, leading up to the show, Ng, Sargent and other staffers learned plenty about the pioneering Black artist, including the influence of Old Masters on his own painting and the extensive time he spent in front of these works during his travels in Europe and of course at one of his favorite museums, the Frick. The result is the series of vivid portraits that he became famous for, ranging from family and friends to random people he encountered and photographed on the street. The show also marks the first-ever exhibition the Frick has dedicated to a Black artist.
The show of just over a dozen stunning portraits is hung on the Frick’s fourth floor galleries, surrounded by historic portraits by James McNeill Whistler and Joshua Reynolds. Visitors stepping off the elevator on the fourth floor are greeted by a 1969 Hendricks portrait, Lawdy Mama, of his relative Kathy Williams that was inspired by Byzantine and Italian Renaissance paintings. Like those painters before him, Hendricks taught himself the painstaking process of applying gold leaf after a trip to Europe in 1966. Meanwhile the title was inspired by the lyrics of Nina Simone. Lawdy Mama sets the tone for the show, with the striking painting flanked by 18th-century white marble busts.
Barkley L. Hendricks, APB’s (Afro-Parisian Brothers) (1978). Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund. Artwork: © Barkley L. Hendricks; courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
The artist “was a voracious museum-goer with a keen eye for historical techniques, styles, and solutions, and he transformed his borrowings and emulations into something utterly new,” wrote Ng in the catalogue accompanying the show. “Hendricks showed a way to productively engage with the complex legacies of historical European art while honoring people largely excluded from its visual record.”
Barkley Hendricks, Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith) (1976). The George Economou Collection. Artwork: © Barkley L. Hendricks; courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
The 1976 painting Misc. Tyrone, wrote Sargent, is a prime example of the unique portraits that resulted from Hendricks roaming the streets armed with his camera. The inspiration was the “street session” with Tyrone Smith, who was decked out in what Sargent calls “farmer chic,” a crisp white collared shirt under blue jean overalls, who struck a series of dramatic poses. The final portrait sports “a baby-pink background replaces the urban vista,” wrote Sargent in the catalogue. The artist “seems to have developed this strategy of using flat, pared-down backgrounds of vibrant solid color—like Manet and Courbet before him—to counter the over-politicization of his subjects.”
Though Hendricks’s star in the art world is still on the rise and his work is being exposed to a wider audience, the artist has already proved to be a major influence on a younger generation of artists. In addition to Thelma Golden, the current director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, who was one of the first curators to put Hendricks’s work in a major show when she included him in the seminal 1994 Whitney Museum show “Black Male” and penned the introductory essay to the catalogue, artists including Derrick Adams, Nick Cave, Awol Erizku, Rashid Johnson, Fahama Pecou, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley contributed to the catalogue.
Gallery view of “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick.” Photo by George Koelle.
Major works have been loaned by the Chrysler Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Harvard’s Fogg Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Whitney, and several private collections.
In remarks at the press preview, Frick director Ian Wardropper said the exhibition shows us what Hendricks “learned from the Frick, and how he challenged what he was looking at. This, too, is a show that challenges us as an institution.”
The Hendricks show builds on the museum’s continued embrace of contemporary “interventions” rather than adding contemporary art to the historic collection. For example, under an initiative labeled “Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters,” the museum invited contemporary artists who identify as queer to respond to works in its collection. Over the course of a year, sought-after artists including Doron Langberg, Salman Toor, Jenna Gribbon, and Toyin Ojih Odutola created paintings responding individually to works by Holbein, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. The resulting works were displayed near the originals.
The Frick’s move to its temporary home at the Breuer building, while the original Fifth Avenue mansion at 70th Street is under extensive renovation, allowed it to obtain a special dispensation where some works could be loaned to other institutions, as it did for the blockbuster Vermeer show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam this past summer.
Gallery view of “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick.” Photo by George Koelle.
This past spring, the Frick announced it will be closing the Breuer space on March 3, 2024. It will spend the next several months winding down operations and preparing to return its Old Master art collection and operations to the mansion. Though no exact date has been specified yet, museum leaders revealed for the first time to Artnet News that they will reopen the mansion to the public in late 2024. The Hendricks portrait show will be one of the last to take place at the Breuer outpost.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Ma Petite Kumquat (1983). Collection of Ben and Jen Silverman. Artwork: © Barkley L. Hendricks; courtesy of theEstate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
“That the Frick was one of [Hendricks’s] favorite museums is perhaps unsurprising, given the strength of its portraits,” Wardropper wrote in the catalogue. “Fifty years on, representation of individuals and issues of race remain a critical concern, particularly to Black artists, for whom Hendricks is today a shining example.”

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The art at Frieze London is not just confined to white tents for the eyes of pass-holders only—each year it breaks out into the surrounding The Regent’s Park for Frieze Sculpture.
This year’s edition boasts large-scale pieces of public art by 20 artists, including Yinka Shonibare, Louise Nevelson, Tomás Saraceno, and Hank Willis Thomas, under the acclaimed curatorial eye of Fatoş Üstek, who was previously director of the Liverpool Biennial.
Visitors may now be used to seeing striking public monuments among the trees at London’s yearly autumnal art world get together, but this year Üstek has set out to introduce an “expanded” idea of sculpture with elements of performance, painting, and sound. These will challenge assumptions about the boundaries of the medium, and foreground its underappreciated possibilities for movement, multi-sensory experience and ephemerality.
Ghada Amer, My Body My Choice (2022) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.
“I curated the displays as an exhibition, bringing artworks in close relation to one another, implementing narratives along the sight lines that resonate poetic, imaginative, humorous, and political undertones,” she told Artnet News. “We have a rich selection of artworks that come from western and non-western traditions of making art. Our coexistence with other—let it be other people, animate, and inanimate beings—are brought to attention.”
Üstek has also invited a cohort of younger artists to make their very first major public artwork, and commissioned others to make site-responsive works that play with The Regent’s Park’s historical context and the concept of the English Garden.
“I reflected on the post-pandemic condition of the public realm and the changing nature of our experiences of artworks,” she said.” Hence, I curated a journey for all, embroidered with details, embedded within the silence of the park. I encourage all visitors to open themselves to the works and don’t shy away from asking questions.”
A public programme of performances, tours and artists talks have been organized to accompany the public artworks, and visitors can also access Üstek’s free audio guide on frieze.com. A special map with activities was also produced for London Sculpture week, which ends this Sunday.
Check out some of the sculptures below. Frieze Sculpture remains open through October 29. Frieze London and Frieze Masters will take place from October 11–15.
Tony Matelli, Sleepwalker (2014) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Yinka Shonibare, Material (SG) IV (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Li Li Ren, To find a way home (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Hans Rosenström, Unfolding Silence (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Holly Stevenson, The Debate (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Temitayo Ogunbiyi, You will carry dreams, memories, and new beginnings (48 Days) (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Li Li Ren, To find a way home (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Amy Stephens, Waking Matter (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Ayse Erkmen, Model for Moss Column (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Zak Ové, The Mothership Connection (2021) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Yuichi Hirako, Yggdrasill / Books (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Catharine Czudej, Man Kneeling with Flowers (2022) and Josh Smith, Friend (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Hank Willis Thomas, All Power to All People (2017) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
Louise Nevelson, Model for Celebration II (1976) at Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze.
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On September 2, on a lively street in Bonapriso, an upscale neighborhood of Douala, Cameroon, an eager crowd gathered outside Bwo Art Gallery. The stylish throng had come to see the gallery’s inaugural show—by Cameroonian artist Sesse Elangwe—and Central Africa’s newest platform for contemporary art.
The enthusiasm was just as palpable inside, where artists and collectors perused Elangwe’s richly detailed portraits of Cameroonians in outdoor spaces. There is an underlying sense of determination in the works. The show’s title, “The Defiant Ones,” refers to overcoming challenges the country faces, among them an armed conflict in the Anglophone regions that has raged since 2016.
Installation view of artist Sesse Elangwe’s “The Defiant Ones” exhibition. Courtesy of Bwo Art Gallery.
“If people can begin to do things in ways different from the structures that have been put in place in Cameroon and all over the African continent,” Elangwe said at the opening, “maybe change will come.” His paintings of people with one eye bigger than the other are intended as a metaphorical representation of strength and awareness. “We must always keep an eye open to visualize what we want to achieve,” he said.
With 1,079 square feet and a ceiling height of 16 feet, Bwo Gallery is a point of pride for Douala, the largest city in Cameroon with over 5 million inhabitants, but where precious few exhibition spaces exist. There are only a handful of galleries and, besides the National Museum in the capital of Yaoundé, which sporadically hosts contemporary art exhibitions, there are no contemporary or modern art museums in the country that receive government support.
Sesse Elangwe, The Allegory of Knowledge (2023). Courtesy of Bwo Art Gallery.
Bwo was founded by young entrepreneurs and friends Brice Yonkeu and Noelle Mukete-Elhalaby with the aim of showcasing talent from Cameroon as well as the rest of the African continent and diaspora. The gallery’s name, explained Yonkeu, is derived from Medumba, a language widely spoken by the Bangangté people in the Grassfields region of Cameroon. The word ‘bwo’ means ‘beauty’ or ‘beautiful,’ and it can also refer to fine art.
“We were very inspired by the growth of art scenes in other African countries like Ghana,” Yonkeu said, “with the rapid rise of its art scene, multiplying the number of artists in the country. Opening Bwo felt like the next step for us. We also wanted to choose a space where we could make a difference through art and Cameroon felt special. We felt it would be a great way for people to connect to the country through art.”
Three years ago, they launched the precursor to the Douala space: Bwo Art, an artist management and art advisory based in Atlanta, Georgia. Through their consultancy work there, they have placed over 150 artworks in private collections across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, and supported numerous exhibitions for their artists, who largely hail from the African continent.
Installation view of artist Sesse Elangwe’s “The Defiant Ones” exhibition. Courtesy of Bwo Art Gallery.
But the pair had always wanted to foster Cameroonian art from within Cameroon. “We wanted to provide an opportunity to engage with our own national past and contemporary heritage that is lacking on the ground, depriving local populations a part of their identity,” offered Mukete-Elhalaby at the opening. Ultimately, she said, “we want Bwo to go beyond the idea of a white cube art space, to provide inspiration for young and established creatives, and offer them a way to grow their career at home and abroad.”
Both Yonkeu and Mukete-Elhalaby grew up in Cameroon but studied and worked abroad, Mukete-Elhalaby in the United States and Yonkeu in France. With their new space, they hope to add a contemporary component to Central Africa’s existing talent, artists such as Pascale Marthine Tayou, Hervé Youmbi, Maurice Pefura, Samuel Fosso, Bili Bidjocka, and Barthélémy Toguo, who’s planning to open an art museum in Yaoundé.
“The art scene in Cameroon is vibrant,” said the art writer and curator Simon Njami, telling Artnet News that he continues to visit twice a year and will take part in the SUZA Manifest biennale in 2024, organized by Douala-based Galerie MAM. “There are a lot of initiatives, collectives, and individuals trying to make a change among the youth,” he added. “I have been conducting numerous workshops these past years with artists, curators, and writers under 30 and I was impressed by their determination to exist.” Moreover, he stressed, it doesn’t stop at art. “Musicians like Blick Bassy and intellectuals like Achille Mbembe are increasingly invested in the artistic and intellectual development of the country.”
Yonkeu said that, despite seeing how contemporary African art has flourished, African artists are “still a bit in the shadows,” adding, “The global understanding and perception of contemporary artistic production from this region doesn’t adequately represent the diversity, in terms of practices and discourses. Presently, the narrative is still not in our control but I am confident that with the emergence of more galleries on the continent, the recognition of more African curators and writers, we could occupy the full spotlight, permanently.”
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