Issue 229
September 2022

‘I somehow have this sense of history – of the now being history.’ – Wolfgang Tillmans

In the September issue of frieze, Jeremy Atherton Lin profiles artist Wolfgang Tillmans ahead of his major survey at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Plus, ahead of her Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, London, we celebrate Cecilia Vicuña with contributions from Andrés Anwandter, Cathy Park Hong, Brenda Lozano, Mónica de la Torre and Alejandro Zambra.

Profile: Wolfgang Tillmans

‘If the purpose of looking is only to make, then there’s nothing to look at.’ On the occasion of Wolfgang Tillmans’s forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Jeremy Atherton Lin considers the artist’s search for truth and his many ways of looking.  

Festschrift: Cecilia Vicuña

‘Cecilia Vicuña’s art dissolves the spurious borders between language and media.’ For the September issue of frieze, Andres Anwandter, Cathy Park Hong, Brenda Lozano, Monica de la Torre and Alejandro Zamba pay homage to an artist whose irreducible practice has drawn fantastically on personal and indigenous language and visual culture to challenge the limits of the imagination while evoking new possibilities for our shared reality.

Also featuring  

Liz Kim delves into South Korea’s new artistic avant-garde; Alvin Li speaks to Mire Lee, whose solo show is open MMK Frankfurt; in ‘1,500 words’, coinciding with the release of her book How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and Other Parents), Hettie Judah explores the subject of motherhood in the work of Caroline Walker.

Columns: Parting Glances

Lucy Ives corresponds with Do Ho Suh, an artist known for reconstructing lost architecture; Wayne Koestenbaum pens a list of things he’s waved goodbye to, including ‘backstroke’ and ‘admiring large muscles’; Stanton Taylor on Reinhard Mucha’s farewell to West Germany; Cornelius Prior on processing grief through Psilocybin therapy. Plus, to coincide with the release of Mathieu Lindon’s new novel, Hervelino (2022), Alastair Curtis examines the writer’s relationships with Michel Foucault and Hervé Guibert.

Plus, Cathy Wade remembers a childhood encounter with Carolee Schneemann’s Up to and Including Her Limits(1973). Finally, Going Up, Going Down charts what’s hot and what’s not in the global art world and the latest iteration of our Lonely Arts column.

From this issue

The writer interrogates the meaning of care, as well as communicating beyond the mother echo-chamber, through the works of Caroline Walker

BY Hettie Judah |

The writer reflects on their experience with psilocybin therapy and coping with familial loss

BY c.f. prior |

Lucy Ives profiles the artist whose fabric sculptures conserve the texture of everyday life

BY Lucy Ives |

Alastair Curtis reviews two memoirs by the French writer and looks at the lessons he learned from past relationships

BY Alastair Curtis |

The writer pens a list of everything he’s said goodbye to

BY Wayne Koestenbaum |

Jeremy Atherton Lin profiles the German photographer and reflects on the artist’s lifelong search for the truth

BY Jeremy Atherton Lin |

On the occasion of a retrospective in Dusseldorf, Stanton Taylor revisits Mucha's remembrance of West Germany

BY Stanton Taylor |

Alejandro Zambra on how reading Vicuña helped him lose his fear of writing

BY Alejandro Zambra |

On the occasion of Carolee Schneemann’s survey at the Barbican Art Gallery, Cathy Wade looks back at the artist’s 1973 kinetic painting Up to and Including Her Limits

BY Cathy Wade |

Alvin Li speaks with Mire Lee about emotion and affect in her sculptural works, and the influence of space, architecture and the macabre on her practice

BY Mire Lee AND Alvin Li |

Cathy Park Hong, Brenda Lozano and Mónica de la Torre on three iconic works

Andrés Anwandter on the artist's intuitive approach to working the room

BY Andrés Anwandter |

Liz Kim on how the social and artistic movement of the 1980s inspired a new generation of Korean artists

BY Liz Kim |

At Crèvecoeur, Paris, the artist's new video work continues her interest in the results of rejection and subjugation on marginalized French youth

BY Chloe Stead |

Presented within multifunctional and frequently changing spaces, this year’s edition of the quinquennial exhibition combines art with social kitchens, garden gatherings and even a pro-BDSM party

BY Nadine Khalil |

At O—Overgaden, Copenhagen, the artist’s videos hint at an ecstatic climax on a sweat-drenched dance floor

BY Alice Godwin |

At Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, the artist's collages delve into the economic and geopolitical realities of Nord Stream 2

BY Kito Nedo |

At ARKO Art Center, Seoul, ‘All About Love’, a bell hooks-inspired joint show, interweaves personal narratives to deconstruct societal conventions

BY Hayoung Chung |

At Derosia, the artist presents a body of work that stirs both our commercial and corporeal desires

BY John Belknap |

At M Leuven, the artist draws on the allegorical as a means of exposing the absurdity of the current state of affairs

BY Fernanda Brenner |

At Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, a trilogy of works delves into the domestic exploitation of Southern Italian women

BY Lauren Dei |

The exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., reminds us that non-Black people cannot excise themselves from the history of the African Diaspora

BY Chase Quinn |

At Layr, Vienna, the artist’s new video works put a group of men under a scrupulous yet intimate examination

BY Miriam Stoney |

The seaside festival returns with 20 new commissions, addressing climate change, coastal erosion, folklore and displacement 

BY Chris Sharratt |

At the Hirshhorn Musuem, Washington, D.C., the artist presents new and recent works that employ storytelling as its primary medium

BY Logan Lockner |

The nomadic gallery MASA showcases a group exhibition of Mexican and Mexico-based artists, designers and architects that intervene the iconic site once again

BY Samantha Ozer |

At Thomas Dane Gallery, London, the artist explores how class domination is maintained through the conservation of objects

BY John Menick |

A posthumous exhibition at Galerie Knoell, Basel, makes the case for the artist's inclusion in transatlantic art history

BY Kito Nedo |

Across two new exhibitions in Los Angeles, the polymath showcases work from the 1980s to the present that reveals a talismanic power

BY Jonathan Griffin |

At Dundee Contemporary Arts, the first UK institutional presentation of the film k.364 ruminates on ancestral trauma, travel and music

BY Helen Charman |

A group show at KADIST, San Francisco, charts the changing role of tradition in East Asian contemporary art

BY Harry C.H. Choi |

Two exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford and Camden Arts Centre, London, examine the impermanence of power

BY Iarlaith Ni Fheorais |

At El Museo del Barrio, New York, a survey of its founder reveals the artist’s commitment to making by unmaking

BY Mariana Fernández |

At PSM, the artist's low-tech, smoke-and-mirrors intervention traces the connection between capitalism and militarism

BY Patrick Kurth |

The artist’s first solo exhibition at David Zwirner, London, absorbs us into single, intimate moments

BY Tom Morton |

At Kiasma, Helsinki, a group exhibition weaves the strands of contemporary life’s omnipresent anxieties into a complex and intriguing fabric

BY Kimberly Bradley |

A joint exhibition at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, opens a cross-generational discourse, connecting the two artist’s interests in light and momentary experience

BY Skye Arundhati Thomas |

At the Institute of Contemporary Art Virginia Commonwealth University, the artist cobbles together filmic and digital imagery to form spiritual beings

BY Simon Wu |

The 2022 edition of High Desert Test Sites, curated by Iwona Blazwick, sees the likes of Dineo Seshee Bopape and Jack Pierson scattered across the Californian desert

BY Jonathan Griffin |

In her triumphant survey exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, the artist continues her long-running exploration of women as generative, creative forces

BY Hettie Judah |

A group exhibition of works by Clémentine Bruno, Mara Fortunatović, Eva Gold and Bella Riza at London’s Nicoletti Contemporary wrestles with ideas of loss, absence and yearning

BY Anastasiia Fedorova |