The Summer Issue
June/July/August 2025

‘Ambiguity is, in many ways, art’s most subversive if overlooked quality’ David Campany

The summer issue of frieze magazine is dedicated to the artists and writers working and living across the Mediterranean. David Campany contributes an essay on the historical and contemporary photographic representations of the region. Plus, Taous Dahmani, Oriane Durand, Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva and Wilson Tarbox each share a personal postcard from Marseille.

Thematic Essay: Mythic Shores

It’s the way a sea connects disparate places that gives it an unstable and disruptive power. It can sweep you away.David Campany writes an insightful essay on the Mediterranean’s conflicted iconography and how it reflects 21st-century values through a selection of striking photographs.

Dossier: C’est Marseille, bébé

‘Marseille itself feels like a city of fugitive trajectories – a port of arrival and escape, where layered histories, migrations and reinventions convene.’ Four curators and writers pen love letters to Marseille, celebrating the cultural and political spirit of France’s second city.

Also featuring  

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie profiles Lawrence Abu Hamdan, whose latest works examine the weaponization of noise and the politics of listening. SculptureCenter’s deputy director, Kyle Dancewicz, interviews Claudia Pagès Rabal about her interdisciplinary practice and how enduring connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb challenge political narratives and ideas of national identity. In ‘1,500 Words’, Kaya Genç traces the ways in which contemporary artists have created pockets of resistance in the heart of Istanbul.

Columns: Remapping

Shiv Kotecha looks at Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s vast counter-archive of Palestinian life; Saim Demircan examines how Renato Leotta’s Sicilia magazine excavates forgotten histories related to the island’s natural landscape; Mariana Fernández outlines Nour Jaouda’s textile practice which deconstructs notions of home and belonging; and Rafram Chaddad pens an essay on multicultural Mediterranean cuisine. Plus, senior editor Marko Gluhaich interviews Bouchra Khalili about The Mapping Journey Project (2008–11), which reimagines the map of the Mediterranean by way of migratory routes.

Finally, Jurriaan Benschop responds to Charline von Heyl’s collage work Athens (2024). Plus, Kaya Genç contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and assistant editor Ivana Cholakova pens a postcard from Monaco.

From this issue

From food to migration, curators and writers reveal the vibrant forces shaping the French city’s culture and identity today

Istanbul Manufacturers Bazaar, formerly a shopping mall, exemplifies how reimagined institutions can nurture collaboration and political solidarity

BY Kaya Genç |

From medieval cisterns to Mediterranean trade, the artist uncovers the past through evocative text, immersive sound and dynamic choreography

In this photo essay, David Campany analyzes historical and contemporary photographic representations of the Mediterranean Sea

BY David Campany |

With forensic precision and poetic impact, the artist uses audio to challenge visual dominance, expose injustice and redefine how power is heard

BY Kaelen Wilson-Goldie |

Through ‘The Mapping Journey Project’, the artist redefines Mediterranean geography, through stories of revolution and decolonization

BY Bouchra Khalili AND Marko Gluhaich |

For the artist and chef, food becomes a medium to explore identity, memory and the complex connections between cultures

BY Rafram Chaddad |

Weaving textiles, architecture and memory, the artist calls her evolving practice a ‘constant process of becoming’, crafting sacred, intimate worlds

BY Mariana Fernández |

For nearly 20 years, the artists have realized a powerful cinema of dispossession using found images, sound and text

BY Shiv Kotecha |

The artist reimagines the island as a lyrical meeting point of Mediterranean histories, geographies and cultural memory

BY Saim Demircan |

At the Economou Collection, the artist reimagines the city through bold images that weave ancient myths and contemporary Greek life

BY Jurriaan Benschop |

At Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, the artist tracks what safety obscures – from state violence to the silence of forgotten stories.

BY Alice Godwin |

The artist’s exhibition at Museu de Arte Contemporânea in São Paulo presents compelling investigations into surveillance, paranoia and museal security

BY Mateus Nunes |

At MoMA, New York, a gripping retrospective traces decades of the artists experimentation with the medium

BY Zoë Hopkins |

At Fondazione Prada, Milan, a group show studies the variations and chance connections that form our worldview

BY Ivana Cholakova |

At Azabudai Hills Gallery, Tokyo, the artist merges seemingly incompatible visual traditions, challenging the binary thinking that once marginalized him

BY Jaeyong Park |

At Bozar, Brussels, the artist’s unsettling sculptures are replete with religious imagery

BY Chloe Stead |

At Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, a show of work by Sheba Chhachhi and Lala Rukh blends art and activism

BY Aaina Bhargava |

In the artist’s show at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, sculptures made with recycled goods engage with cycles of consumption

BY Christopher Whitfield |

At IKON Gallery, Birmingham, the artist asks what home means when it is intertwined with trepidation and hostility

BY Matthew Maganga |

At Layr, Vienna, the artist’s silk canvases reimagine painting as a porous and philosophical practice

BY Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas |

Building on his presentation at the Venice Biennale, the artist’s show at The Bell, Providence reflects on diasporic wisdoms

BY Rebecca Rose Cuomo |

At BANK NYC, the show is most effective when it engages with haptics at a distance

BY Louis Bury |

In a retrospective at Serpentine North Gallery, London, political violence lurks behind the artist’s eclectic paintings

BY Vaishna Surjid |

At Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris, the artist makes a muse out of the simple metal post

BY Ren Ebel |

At Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, a show of abandoned projects sees the artist contemplating endings

BY Nicholas Gamso |

At Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, an expansive group show highlights precarity as a permanent condition

BY Nadia Egan |

Overtaking two of Matthews Marks Gallery’s New York locationsher installations explode stale hierarchies of taste

BY Wendy Vogel |

At Perrotin, London, the artist presents an image of hope in the face of trauma

BY Emily Steer |

In her exhibition at Management, New York, the artist presents a dissolving model city with an uncertain afterlife

BY Annabel Keenan |

At Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, an expansive group show offers a distinctly Northern European lens on the climate crisis

BY Orit Gat |

At a. SQUIRE, London, the artist’s erotic works are a hymn to the beauty of men

BY Daniel Culpan |

At South Parade, London, the artist’s sculptures evoke states of fragility whilst addressing personal and societal trauma

BY Hatty Nestor |