Issue 234
April 2023

‘My investigation into the absences and erasures in archives led me to view them as a springboard for reinvention.’ – Isaac Julien

In the April issue of frieze, Deborah Willis interviews filmmaker and artist Isaac Julien ahead of his major solo shows at Tate Britain, London, and Kimberly Bradley profiles artist Raphaela Vogel, whose exhibition at De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Netherlands, is on view until August.

Interview: Isaac Julien

‘How do we rethink these stories about Black struggle, Black resistance, Black love, Black justice?’ Ahead of Isaac Julien’s survey show spanning a 40-year career at Tate Britain this spring, the artist speaks with Deborah Willis about his search for beauty in his work, and education as an emancipatory tool.

Profile: Raphaela Vogel

‘The works are hypnotic, seductive and existential.’ On the occasion of Raphaela Vogel’s solo exhibition at the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg, Kimberly Bradley unpacks the artist’s meteoric rise in Germany and her unwavering appetite for the unusual.

Also featuring  

In ‘1,500 Words’, Lucy Ives examines the work of the late artist Hanne Darboven. Dan Fox writes about Peter Hujar and Steve Lawrence’s influential Newspaper (1968–71). Plus, four artists to watch in the 14th Gwangju Biennale: Lisa Yin Zhang on Minjung Kim, Hayoung Chung on Oh Suk Kuhn, Andrew Maerkle on Yuko Mohri and Christine Han on Robert Zhao Renhui.

Columns: Getting Lost

José Esparza Chong Cuy meets ‘the world’s leading maze designer’, Adrian Fisher; Negar Azimi interviews artist Alex Ayed on displacement and the integration of sailing in his work; Evan Moffitt profiles artist Guadalupe Maravilla; Celeste Olalquiaga writes about Tuvalu’s efforts to bring their history and culture to the Metaverse; Haytham el-Wardany pens a short story on the experience of disappearance and loss.

Finally, Travis Diehl responds to a single work by Martin Wong. Plus, Going Up, Going Down charts what’s hot and what’s not in the global art world, and we bring you the latest iteration of our Lonely Arts column.

From this issue

The artist’s ambiguous sartorial ensembles are a reflection of her artistic practice

BY Lucy Ives |

Ahead of his major exhibition at Tate Britain, the artist considers how his films will exist in the future

BY Deborah Willis AND Isaac Julien |

As the artist trains to sail across the globe, his email correspondences with Negar Azimi consider the ocean as inspiration, animism and the ‘boat boys’ of the Caribbean

BY Negar Azimi AND Alex Ayed |

A man in Cairo begins to lose his reflection in the writer’s latest short story on selfhood, translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls

BY Haytham el-Wardany AND Katharine Halls |

Adrian Fisher shares the lessons he has learnt from the last four decades of his career

At his upcoming show at ICA Watershed, Boston, the artist transports his audience using the power of sound baths

BY Evan Moffitt |

On the occasion of the artist’s first major retrospective outside of the US, Travis Diehl considers the 1985 painting ‘Untitled (Green Storefront)’

BY Travis Diehl |

The coral atoll nation makes bold moves to back up thousands of years of oral testimonies and history

BY Celeste Olalquiaga |

With Remember A River, the artist reveals the complexity of wetlands amid urban settings at Gwangju Bienniale

BY Christine Han |

In the Tokyo-based artist's works, everyday objects are animated by electric motors and chance elements

BY Andrew Maerkle |

The artist shares her Zen-like approach to using Korean hanji paper

BY Lisa Yin Zhang |

The artist's photographic series documents remnants of Gwangju’s colonial legacies in buildings

BY Hayoung Chung |

The artist’s wild works and unwavering appetite for the unusual has made her a prominent fixture on the German art scene

BY Kimberly Bradley |

How the artists used their underground photographic magazine to map New York’s mid-century myths

BY Dan Fox |

At Nubuke Foundation, Accra, the artist’s mysterious paintings are laced with historical references and religious iconography

BY Vanessa Peterson |

At SCAI Piramide, Tokyo, six artists have selected previously unseen photographs by Akasegawa that reflect the dizzying range of his work and his trenchant critique of capitalism

BY Andrew Maerkle |

At Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna, the artist’s sleek metal sculptures are injected with a humanizing dose of biography

BY Kathrin Heinrich |

At Clima, Milan, the artist’s new installation translates the stellar movement of the Milky Way into music

BY Giovanna Manzotti |

An exhibition of recent work at Marc Straus, New York, draws on diasporic African religious customs and personal mystery

BY Daniel Felsenthal |

At Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin, the artist’s distinctive penmanship gets a new media makeover

BY Nadia Egan |

At Marian Goodman, Paris, the artist’s latest works cite leading figures from twentieth-century art

BY Wilson Tarbox |

At Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, the artist reconfigures objects to bring our attention to what remains of their original forms

BY Re’al Christian |

At Camden Art Centre, the artist’s first solo UK institutional show is imbued with latent dread

BY Tom Jeffreys |

At VI, VII, Oslo, the artist merges a young influencer with the clinicians of a luxury Swiss treatment facility

BY Timotheus Vermeulen |

A show at Diez Gallery, Amsterdam, unites work by four artists around ideas of materiality and texture

BY Jim van Geel |

The most thorough exhibition of the artist’s work in two decades showcases her iconoclastic, diaristic style

BY Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer |

At Neue Berliner Kunstverein, the late artist’s installations read as premonitions of visual culture today

BY Claire Koron Elat |

The artist draws on the concept of the ‘matrix’ to reimagine the role of the individual in a time of media saturation

BY Paul Stephens |

The artist’s oversized flowers at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, address ideas of inheritance and nurture 

BY Tom Morton |

At Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, the artist displays figurines, paintings and animations that draw on the physical, psychological and cultural landscapes of borderlands

BY Armando Pulido |

Cleverly combining digital models, existing artworks, new commissions and archival material, the group exhibition at ZKM, Karlsruhe, recreates two historic shows

BY Ben Livne Weitzman |

At de boer gallery, Los Angeles, the artist plumbs personal documentation and film to create photorealistic paintings that destabilize truthhood

BY Gracie Hadland |

An exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts interrogates the relationship between memory, experience and preservation 

BY Helen Charman |

At Kunstmuseum Luzern, the Israeli artist draws on the Jewish tradition of storytelling to disconcerting effect

BY Krzysztof Kościuczuk |

A retrospective sheds light on the ’85 New Wave movement and the shaping of art between the conservatism of past and present

BY Paul Han |

At Brighton CCA, the artist’s latest participatory installation invites audiences to comb for gold in tonnes of stones transported from the nearby coast

BY Salena Barry |

The artist’s survey at High Museum of Art, Atlanta, draws from original and reprinted photography to challenge the viewer's expectations of Black photographic subjects

BY Lauren DeLand |

At Chisenhale Gallery, London, the artist uses documentary and drama to look into colonialism, loss and spiritual awakening

BY Finn Blythe |