Tarini Malik’s Top Picks from Frieze London Viewing Room 2023
The RA’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art highlights the poignancy of Ali Kazim, reflects on social and political nuance in Sabelo Mlangeni and ponders belonging in Julianknxx
The RA’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art highlights the poignancy of Ali Kazim, reflects on social and political nuance in Sabelo Mlangeni and ponders belonging in Julianknxx
SABELO MLANGENI
Inkunzi emdwayidwa, 2016
Hand-printed silver gelatin print, 40 x 30 cm
A graduate of the celebrated Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, Mlangeni is one of the most exciting artist-photographers working today. Pushing the material boundaries of his chosen medium, he works predominantly in black-and-white to both reveal and cultivate a sense of intimacy and community. Mlangeni’s artworks are compelling reflections on marginality and the manifold social and political nuances within contemporary South African life.
ALI KAZIM
Untitled (Bird Hunter series VI), 2022
Watercolour pigments on paper, 86 x 70 cm
Presented by Jhaveri Contemporary
Pakistani artist Ali Kazim’s striking portrait is part of his ongoing series ‘Bird Hunters’ and imagines the illegal trade of bird species that migrate from Siberia to the subcontinent. Reflecting on man’s complex and often destructive relationship with the natural world, Kazim’s technically masterful work draws on several South Asian painting traditions, notably the Bengal School’s watercolourists. The artist’s use of the colour blue imbues this piece with a sense of melancholy and longing.
KEVIN BEASLEY
On Nourishment (Sideboard), 2023
White oak, polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, altered housedresses, altered T-shirts, confetti housedresses, confetti T-shirts, guineafowl feathers, fibreglass, 92.1 x 152.4 x 38.4 cm
Presented by Casey Kaplan
In his work, multimedia artist Kevin Beasley deftly combines everyday found materials including secondhand clothing, personal ephemera and studio debris to subvert and interrogate fixed cultural meanings and narratives. This remarkable freestanding sculpture encases a fascinating array of found objects dyed, manipulated and preserved in resin. Resembling a wooden credenza, the lush and abstract colourfields prompt us to question how we both store and cherish memories and objects of value.
JULIANKNXX
Black Room, 2023
Single-channel video, 8 mins 39 secs
Presented by Edel Assanti
In this extraordinary film, British-Sierra Leonean interdisciplinary artist Julianknxx combines written and spoken word, music, archival footage and choreography to interrogate the relationship between Western society and culture with Black life. The work centres brutalist architecture as social and cultural structures to pose wider critical questions on notions of home, belonging and displacement. Featuring the music of THABO and Afrika Mama, Black Room explores the multiplicity of diasporic identity.
FÁTIMA RODRIGO
From the series Contradanza, 2023
Metallic thread, fabric, sequins, 250 x 140 cm
Presented by 80M2 Livia Benavides
Metallic thread, fabric, sequins. 250 x 140 cm
Courtesy the artist and 80M2 Livia Benavides
Peruvian artist Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales’s striking textile work explores the complex and lasting impact of modernism on Latin American visual and popular cultures. The title ‘Contradanza’ refers to a traditional dance that, at its origin, mocked the courtly dances of the Spanish colonizers in Peru. Using a hybrid of traditional and contemporary textile and metalwork techniques, this work plays homage to traditional Andean celebrations as a means of understanding and recontextualizing contemporary postcolonial identity.
About Tarini Malik
Tarini Malik is the Shane Akeroyd Associate Curator of the British Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. She is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Previously, she was a curator at the Whitechapel Gallery and responsible for the planning and delivery of the artistic programme, as well as at the Hayward Gallery where she organized a number of landmark group exhibitions as well as the first solo presentations in the UK of various artists. Malik was also Head of Exhibitions for artist Isaac Julien, research curator on several major touring international exhibitions with Mark Nash and contributed to the international exhibition at 2015's La Biennale di Venezia. She has held curatorial posts at Fiorucci Art Trust, Frieze Projects and Serpentine Galleries, published her writing in various magazines and journals and lectured widely on cultural studies and curating.
About Frieze Viewing Room
Frieze Viewing Room is a free digital platform connecting global audiences with Frieze’s galleries and artists.
Open to all from 4–18 October, Frieze Viewing Room is the catalogue for Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2023 and offers visitors a preview of the wealth of gallery presentations coming to the fair, as well as the chance for audiences around the world to experience and acquire the artwork on show.
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Main image: Ali Kazim, Untitled (Bird Hunter series VI), 2022
Watercolour pigments on paper
33.86" x 27.56" (86 cm x 70 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary
Thumbnail image: Kevin Beasley, On Nourishment (Sideboard), 2023
White oak, polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, altered housedresses, altered t-shirts, confetti housedresses, confetti t-shirts, guineafowl feathers, fiberglass 36.25 x 60 x 15.25” / 92.1 x 152.4 x 38.4cm
Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan
