Issue 253
September 2025

‘I felt nauseous, as if there were too many images in me.’ Lee Bul

The September issue of frieze magazine is dedicated to the artists and writers working and living in East AsiaAndy St. Louis profiles artist Lee Bul on the eve of her major survey at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. Plus, Ela Bittencourt, Fernanda Brenner, Raphael Fonseca and Yina Jiménez Suriel contribute to a dossier on four emerging artists to watch at this year’s São Paulo Biennial.

Profile: Lee Bul

‘I’m not a nihilist, but I’m interested in how many times we fail, how many times we go through this whole process. The artist reflects on a career shaped by fractured utopias, existential absurdity and the architectural language of desire and disillusionment.

Dossier: 4 Artist to Watch: São Paulo Biennial 

‘Being human is a constant training that is exercised. There is not a given but a learned humanity.’ Shaped by migration and memory, Forugh Farrokhzad, Berenice Olmedo, Gervane de Paula and Pol Taburet stand out for the ways they reimagine relation, resistance and the poetics of belonging.

Also featuring  

David Grubbs interviews Stephen Prina on his referential practice in anticipation of his in-depth survey at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Paul Chan pens a thematic essay on the psychoanalytic implications of conjuring his AI alter ego, Paul’. In ‘1,500 Words’, Eric Otieno Sumba writes about Destination: Tashkent – Experiences of Cinematic internationalism’ (2024), a film festival and public programme in Tashkent and Berlin that interrogates the curation of Central Asian histories

Columns: Music

Johanna Hedva examines the cosmological rhythms that undergird her astrology readings; McKenzie Wark defends the DJ as artist; Jennie C. Jones speaks to Lauren Rosati about crafting music with space and colour; Simon Wu profiles punk rock group Emily’s Sassy Lime; Juliet Jacques speaks to Helen Cammock about the depiction of global colonial violence in her music-inflected films.

Finally, Megan Nolan responds to Louise Bourgeois’s 2007 etching I Love You. Plus, Jennie C. Jones contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and associate editor Sean Burns pens a postcard from Tokyo.

 

 

From this issue

25년간의 개인 데이터를 토대로, 폴 챈(Paul Chan)은 디지털 분신을 만들었다. 그리고 이제 그것은 붕괴 직전에 서 있다. 

BY Paul Chan |

휴대폰을 내려놓고 온전한 듣기를 요청하는 매켄지 워크와 함께 줄리아나 헉스터블의 DJ 셋에 맞춰 서킷 게이들과 인형들 사이를 누비며 춤을 춰보자.

BY McKenzie Wark |

리움미술관에서 대규모 서베이 전시를 앞두고, 이불은 부조리함, 욕망, 화멸감으로 이어진 자신의 예술적 커리어를 되돌아본다.

BY Andy St. Louis |

메건 놀란이 루이스 부르주아의 작품 〈I Love You〉를  재조명하며, 그 말이 어떻게 동시에 의미로 가득 차 있으면서도 텅 비어 있을 수 있는지를 되새긴다.

BY Megan Nolan |

The artist reflects on her Roof Garden commission at The Met and the delicate drawings destined to become musical scores

BY Jennie C. Jones AND Lauren Rosati |

At the Orange County Museum of Art, a trove of zines and fan letters traces the storied, often notorious, history of the punk band

BY Simon Wu |

Ahead of her London exhibition at Kate MacGarry, the artist reflects on attuning to each venue, shaping performances through attentive listening

BY Juliet Jacques AND Helen Cammock |

Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt revived a groundbreaking Uzbek film festival, reflecting on how its Cold War–era screenings bridged global cinema and fostered south-south solidarities

BY Eric Otieno Sumba AND Can Sungu |

Shaped by migration and memory, Forugh Farrokhzad, Berenice Olmedo, Gervane de Paula and Pol Taburet reimagine relational, resistant poetics of belonging

Astrology reader and artist Johanna Hedva listens to the stars’ celestial rhythms, asking whether their silent music can illuminate the path to our future

BY Johanna Hedva |

Ahead of his MoMA survey, the artist and composer reflects on blurring the lines between concerts and exhibitions – and the rare occasion his music made Dennis Cooper cry

BY Stephen Prina AND David Grubbs |

The 2025 edition, ‘BEDROCK’, presents a cohesive selection of artworks woven into the city’s urban fabric

BY Daniel Culpan |

At Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, the artist holds a speculative funeral for the glacier of their childhood

BY Cassie Packard |

At Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna, the artist’s phantasmagoric figures hover between comedy and tragedy 

BY Ramona Heinlein |

At Canal Projects, New York, the artist explores connection itself with an erotic choreography of mechanical repair

BY Mariana Fernández |

At Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris, the artist depicts queer and trans figures giving birth to symbolic versions of themselves

BY Andrew Hodgson |

At Platform China, Beijing, the artist’s domestic tableaux lend the genre of ‘queer intimism’ a quietly unsettling emotional charge

BY Sean Burns |

At the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, the artist employs the visual language of BDSM to examine the human exploitation of horses

BY Lou Selfridge |

At ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, this 28-artist show subverts colonial aesthetics to reflect on exploitation and power in agriculture

BY Hung Duong |

At Cooke Latham Gallery, London, the artist’s works bring together the aesthetic principles of different ancient civilizations

BY Ajeet Khela |

At Fondazione Memmo, Rome, the artist’s works examine how identity is constructed, performed and, ultimately, constrained

BY Ana Vukadin |

Spanning Gladstone Gallery and Sprüth Magers in New York, the conceptual artist’s doubleheader revisits and remixes old work

BY Madeleine Seidel |

At Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, a group exhibition captures the tumult of familial relationships

BY Sarah Moroz |

A MALBA survey traces the politics and humanism at the root of the artist’s career

BY Ana Vogelfang |

At MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, the artists bisected interiors and celestial projections attune viewers to their everyday environments

BY Helen Miller |

At SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, the artist’s ethereal paintings hover between accident and intention

BY Sean O'Toole |

At Chapter NY, New York, the artist’s chemical paintings evoke industrial processes and spontaneous reactions

BY Peter Brock |

At Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach, Brussels, the artist confronts apartheid and colonial plundering

BY Eve Hill-Agnus |

The pioneering artist, who has worked with machine vision since the 1970s, gets the retrospective treatment at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum

BY Lauren Stroh |

At The Wig, Berlin, the artist’s insect photographs playfully subvert the rules of wildlife photography

BY Louisa Elderton |

At 11 Parthenon Street, Nicosia, a group show positions the home as a space for gentle interruptions and understated transformations

BY Ben Livne Weitzman |

At Champ Lacombe, London, a series of poems printed on chiffon lingers in the joy and violence of contemporary life

BY Sam Moore |

At Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, the artist’s unsettling works examine voicelessness as both sanctuary and sentence

BY Brooke Wilson |

Drawing inspiration from Butoh, the artist’s show at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, features collages of queer bodies

BY Bradford Nordeen |

As the US administration withdraws LGBTQ+ resources, a show at the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, celebrates queer lives

BY James Voorhies |

At Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, the artist presents the beauty of myth as a way to address sorrow and shame

BY Andrew Durbin |

At ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, the artist’s visceral canvases recast the relationship between femininity and violence

BY Sofia Hallström |

The Coachella Valley biennial toes a line between social-media shareability and thoughtful reflection on local histories of landscape

BY Jonathan Griffin |

At Auto Italia, London, the artist’s work interrogates Iran’s recent political history 

BY Kimi Zarate-Smith |

At Scânteia+, Bucharest, a group show subverts purist sculptural principles, centring the unruly female body 

BY Sonja Teszler |

At Croy Nielsen, Vienna, a group show uses desire, memory and tedium to inspect the hidden realities behind everyday life

BY Simone Molinari |

At Soft Network, New York, a show of the East Village artist’s photographs and archival materials paints a picture of her queer community

BY Simon Wu |

At Primary, Nottingham, the artist’s sculptures challenge the ways bodies are scrutinized at nation-state borders

BY Cathy Wade |