Issue 238
October 2023

‘For me, to be aware of yourself is to be aware that you can be in the chaos and can still sustain yourself.’ Rirkrit Tiravanija

In the October issue of frieze, associate editor Marko Gluhaich profiles Rirkrit Tiravanija ahead of the artist’s first US survey at MoMA PS1, New York, and Isabel Waidner delves into the captivating world of Nicole Eisenman, coinciding with Eisenman’s retrospective at London’s Whitechapel Gallery.

Profile: Rirkrit Tiravanija

‘I’m never not at home because everywhere is home.’ On the occasion of Tiravanija’s major survey in New York, Gluhaich considers the transgressive work of the artist who brought cooking inside the gallery. 

1,500 Words: Nicole Eisenman

‘In the writing process, preliminary influences coalesce, become transformed and emerge as something surprising and original.’ The novelist Isabel Waidner on the influence of Eisenman’s 1993 painting Bambi Gregor on their latest book, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (2023).

Also featuring  

Rhea Dillon
, who recently released a written companion to her first opera, Catgut (2021), speaks to Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Eva Díaz considers the radicality of Marisol’s art. Plus, Rye Dag HolmboeHettie JudahPrincess JuliaDaisy Lafarge and Jack O’Brien celebrate Sarah Lucas in honour of her survey at Tate Britain, London.

Columns: Notions of Home 

Allie Biswas examines the photography of Farah Al Qasimi, and associate editor Vanessa Peterson interviews Igshaan Adams about how his family participates in his art-making.Ghislaine Leung, a nominee for the 2023 Turner Prize, shares her thoughts on motherhood, caregiving and labour. Katherine Hubbard discusses working with her ageing mother. Plus, Jorie Graham and Geoffrey G. O’Brien share their insights on families in the Anthropocene.

Finally, Lynne Tillman on Nan Goldin’s Memory Lost (2019–21), a slideshow recounting a life lived through a lens of drug addiction. 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

How changing circumstances alter a mother-daughter relationship and their shared home dynamics

BY Katherine Hubbard |

Jorie Graham and Geoffrey G. O’Brien on poetry as a tool for fostering responsibility in a changing world

BY Jorie Graham AND Geoffrey G. O’Brien |

Her sculptures challenged societal norms and excess, transgressing her wealthy upbringing

BY Eva Díaz |

A retrospective at Tate Britain showcases the YBA who defied good taste and mocked sexual norms

 

How the artist's development is shaped by his family and local community

BY Vanessa Peterson |

The photographer’s most recent film candidly documents her personal journey

 

BY Lynne Tillman |

How the artist’s family photo albums trace her ancestral history

BY Allie Biswas |

Novelist Isabel Waidner explores the artist’s keen interest in writing and books

BY Isabel Waidner |

The artist and Tiona Nekkia McClodden discuss grounding their work in African Diasporic histories

BY Tiona Nekkia McClodden AND Rhea Dillon |

Transforming limitations into artistic resources with community support

BY Ghislaine Leung |

A closer look at the transgressive artist who brought cooking into the gallery

BY Marko Gluhaich |

At Darat Al Funun, Amman, the artist uses abstraction to address troubled histories

BY Nadine Khalil |

At Museum MACAN, Jakarta, the artists’ large-scale installations made of discarded objects capture the emotional resonances of overlooked communities

BY Hilary Thurlow |

At the Badischer Kunstverein, the artist explores the transformative potential of seemingly unassuming actions

BY Ben Livne Weitzman |

In a retrospective at Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, the artist’s brutal visions of his homeland’s history are juxtaposed with sometimes too-safe curatorial decisions

BY Jennifer Burris |

In ‘L’être, l’autre et l’entre’ at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the artist weaves together human and cosmological in-betweens

BY Zoë Hopkins |

At P.P.O.W, New York, the artist presents drawings, sculptures and installations created from the material and spiritual detritus of his Massachusetts hometown

BY Adriana Blidaru |

At Galerie Molitor, Berlin, a posthumous exhibition dedicated to the artist shows a selection of her cut-out canvases from the 1970s

BY Talia Kwartler |

The artist fluctuates between meditation and masochistic intensity at London’s Whitechapel Gallery

BY Juliet Jacques |

At Fondazione Memmo, Rome, the artist’s new video reaffirms their identity outside of socialized norms and constructs

BY Nadia Egan |

At The Approach, London, the painter brings domestic scenes and transient recollections into the light

BY Finn Blythe |

The first major US survey of the artist’s work at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, is a joyful display of her syncretic ways of making

BY Mariana Fernández |

At KIN, Brussels, the artist’s androgynous figures are trapped in a state of leisurely calm 

BY Emile Rubino |

At SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, ‘Conspicuous Invisibility’ examines the perceptions of identity, history and the African diaspora

BY Edna Bonhomme |

At the Swiss Institute, New York, Jac Leirner's sculptures and installations of discarded objects suggest the unseen exchanges of everyday life

BY Maddie Hampton |

An exhibition of video work at MoCA Taipei highlights the affinities between the regions but also the logistical hurdles that prevent full reciprocal exchange

BY Christopher Whitfield |

From balletic sculptures to cyborg imagery, a group show at Gathering, London, delves into the vulnerability of our bodies

BY Sam Moore |

At the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the artist’s works are simultaneously maps, bodies and repositories

BY Simon Wu |

A retrospective at Albertina, Vienna, reintroduces audiences to one of Austria's most provocative feminist artists

BY Kathrin Heinrich |

At Spike Island, Bristol, the artist captures the flux of queer existence in collages of gender non-conforming figures throughout time

BY Elizabeth Fullerton |

An untitled exhibition at The Renaissance Society, Chicago, explores the friction between the artworld’s emphasis on in-person experience and its dependence on mediation 

BY Lisa Yin Zhang |

At Bombas Gens Centre d’Art, Valencia, the artist creates an elaborate send off for a series which followed the ‘courtship’ of two famous monuments

BY Max Andrews |

At Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the artist’s ecclesiastical paintings channel the ethereal visions of William Blake and the earthy primitivism of Paul Gauguin

BY Tom Morton |

A sparse exhibition at David Zwirner, London, sees the artist embrace pointillism, but her subjects remain the same: beautiful men 

BY Ella Slater |

Khanyisile Mbongwa’s programme addresses the history of international slave trading that haunts its famous docks

BY Joe Bobowicz |

At his studio in Long Island City, New York, the artist presents a multi-channel film that unspools surreally out of a 1978 NFL disaster

BY Brecht Wright Gander |

An exhibition of kaleidoscopic painting at Victoria Miro, London, is a celebration of free love and excess

BY Chloë Ashby |

At Altman Siegel and Minnesota Street Project Foundation, San Francisco, the artist shows a colour-shifted feature-length film and photographs that use controversial Geographic Information Systems technology

BY Brian Karl |

At anonymous, New York, the downtown artist shows paintings and prints made of roses and hair that pay homage to those lost in the AIDS era of the 1990s and beyond

 

 

BY Adam Smith-Perez |