The Top Ten Shows Around the World in 2024

In a year when AI has become an increasingly present part of our day-to-day lives, it’s no surprise that artists have been making use of technology to think about human experience: at Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, Rindon Johnson’s avatar swims across a body of water which changes in response to live weather data, whilst Ian Cheng’s exhibition at Gladstone Gallery in Seoul saw the artist present two unnerving AI-driven videos. This year has also seen successful group shows at Beirut Art Center, Bayt Al Mamzar, Tai Kwun Contemporary and Gallery 1957 – all highlighting the role that distinctive and intelligent curatorial visions play in shaping how we think about contemporary art. In no particular order, here are some of our favourite shows from 2024.

Ei Arakawa-Nash / National Art Center Tokyo, Japan

The titular assertion of Ei Arakawa-Nash’s solo show – ‘Paintings Are Popstars’ – seems reasonable enough: paintings have long been the ‘stars’ of art history and Arakawa-Nash’s exhibitions can see paint get performative. At NACT, the artist pairs his work with that of his influences, collaborators and peers (among them, Maya Deren, Nicole Eisenman and Miyoko Ito) within newly constructed installations that also host performances. In one section of the sprawling presentation, he focuses on artists who teach; in another, he looks to those who parent. (He is expecting twins; the show has a countdown clock.) The exhibition, which Taro Nettleton highlighted for frieze during Art Week Tokyo, is the first devoted to a performance artist at NACT, and an exuberant ode to artistic and queer community. – Cassie Packard

Ian Cheng / Gladstone Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

Reviewing this exhibition for the summer issue of frieze, Jaeyong Park suggested that ‘As advancements in artificial intelligence dominate headlines, Ian Cheng’s art seems both timely and anachronistic.’ There is, it’s true, something unsettlingly out of place about a work like Life after BOB: The Chalice Study Experience (LABX) (2021–22), Cheng’s AI-driven video combining cutting-edge technology with the uncanny mid-2010s aesthetic of a forgettable, low-budget, animated television show. It’s this oddly familiar style which makes the work so compelling, as Cheng’s ever-so-slightly retro video lulls its viewers into a sense of familiarity, before ripping the ground from beneath us and sending us into increasingly distressing, mind-fucking scenes. – Lou Selfridge

Rindon Johnson / Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China

‘Best Synthetic Answer’, artist and poet Rindon Johnson’s first solo exhibition in Asia, hinges on a simulated crossing. To traverse the ocean that conjugates his place of birth (San Francisco) with the location of the Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Johnson created Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing … (2024), a video installation wherein his avatar navigates waters that change in response to live weather data. Across the central video and the show’s other elements – a stained-glass map, a photographic slideshow, a glowing aquarium – Johnson meditates on his simulated and embodied relationship to the Pacific, considering the ways in which race, nation and family are inscribed on its waters. Keep an eye out for our forthcoming review in frieze. – Cassie Packard

Nolan Oswald Dennis / Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa

Interrogating the fields of geology and cosmology through sculpture and drawing, Nolan Oswald Dennis’s first museum solo exhibition in South Africa opened this October at Zeitz MOCAA. ‘UNDERSTUDIES’ continuously reshapes indexical and educational devices: mutated earth globes made from gourds (model for OSPAAAL, 2024) interact with lenses cocooned in rock formations (Mafurite viewing rock, 2024). Through playful dissection, Dennis removes the objects’ didacticism and transforms them into sites of rehearsal and experimentation. Particularly striking is Xenolith (Letsema) (2024), a site-specific column composed of tightly packed soil. The installation – a collaboration between the artist and the many people who work at the museum – pushes against the boundaries of who gets to produce art and how. – Ivana Cholakova

Lindokuhle Sobekwa / Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa

A pair of photographs by Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Luvo in the garden I and Luvo in the garden II (both 2021), present a male figure engulfed by greenery. In one of the images, he has his back turned to the camera; in the other, he faces forward, looking at a flower held in his hand. These are subtle, beautiful photographs, capturing an intimate moment of connection with nature. Other works in the exhibition have an almost abstract quality. In Ngqeleni (2021), for instance, tree roots push above ground on a sandy beach, forming a tangled mesh. Sobekwa is a master at capturing moments in which the world appears both familiar and strange: the flowers, trees, houses and roads which make up his daily surroundings are still a source of wonder to be relished. – Lou Selfridge

‘Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies’ / Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong

Drawing on the Chinese legend of the White Snake, in which serpents take the form of women, this ecofeminist show cast its lot with the shapeshifters. Featuring work by more than 30 artists and collectives – among them, Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research, Seba Calfuqueo and Candice Lin – ‘Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies’ argued for fluidity and transformation in a time of ecological crisis. ‘A river always finds a path, adapting itself around obstacles and uneven terrain,’ Ysabelle Cheung wrote in her review of the exhibition in frieze’s May issue. ‘Likewise, the artists in this show find inventive ways to respond to the extractive practices of colonial forces.’ – Cassie Packard

‘Foreshadows’ / Beirut Art Center, Lebanon

This group show, celebrating the 15th anniversary of Beirut Art Center (BAC), comprises five eclectic mini exhibitions, which capture the diverse range of programming for which BAC is known. Particularly poignant is Maissa Maatouk’s contribution, featuring her ‘Floating Lights’ video series (2020–ongoing), which charts infrastructural changes in Beirut in response to the nationwide electricity blackouts that plague Lebanon. In some parts of the city,  non-governmental organizations and individuals have set about installing private streetlights connected to solar panels and generators to restore light at night. Maatouk splices footage of these improvised infrastructure networks, where streets are illuminated in varying hues, rather than in the uniform glow provided by standard-issue lamps. – Lou Selfridge

Salasil / Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai, UAE

A strong new addition to the Dubai art scene, curatorial duo Salasil (Zainab Hasoon and Sara Bin Safwan) hosted their inaugural group show, ‘Crystal Clear’, at Bayt al Mamzar earlier this year. The exhibition included a range of artists from the MENA region – including Rami Farook, Dima Srouji and Ghad Al Majid – whose practices span sculpture, video, poetry and painting. The show deployed memory and fantasy to anticipate a different kind of future as seen in the works of Sara Bokr’s The Material and Fabrication School of Gaza (2024) and Juline Hadaya’s The Map Is Not the Territory (2024). Despite its critical approach, ‘Crystal Clear’ maintains a positive tone: united by a pursuit of alternative futures, these artists offer glimpses of a more tolerant reality. – Ivana Cholakova

‘Keeping Time’ / Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana

This monumental group show at Gallery 1957 skilfully unites the multifaceted practices of both Ghana-based artists and those from the African diaspora. ‘Keeping Time’ rejects a chronological reading of history and dispels the white, Eurocentric structures that undergird artistic canons. A sequel to ‘In and Out of Time’ (2023), the current iteration is co-curated by Ekow Eshun and Karon Hepburn and marries the work of returning artists, such as Amoako Boafo and Modupeola Fadugba, with new additions like Alvaro Barrington and Ravelle Pillay. The exhibition is a testament to Gallery 1957’s extensive programme which, according to art critic Osman Can Yerebakan ‘plays a significant role in the country’s positioning as a locus for portraiture.’ – Ivana Cholakova

José Leonilson / Museu de Arte, São Paulo

In frieze’s September issue, Fernanda Brenner described José Leonilson as her ‘first art-love’. The Brazilian artist’s embroidered fabrics, paintings, installations and delicate drawings, often made in a confessional key, were assembled at MASP this past fall. The show placed particular emphasis on his output in the years directly preceding his premature death in 1993, aged 36, from AIDS-related complications. ‘Leonilson’s work offers a much-needed embrace for the emotionally exhausted,’ Brenner wrote. ‘It highlights the possibility – or even the necessity – of finding solidarity in individual suffering.’ – Cassie Packard

_{Main image: Ian Cheng, Life After BOB: The Chalice Study Experience, 2021, film still. Courtesy: © Ian Cheng and Gladstone Gallery}