BY frieze in Frieze | 17 DEC 21

Frieze's Top 10 Articles of 2021

As 2021 draws to a close, we revisit the articles which caught the attention of our readers the most

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BY frieze in Frieze | 17 DEC 21

  1. An Alternative Art History of the 1990s

First featured in frieze 220, Isabel Waidner imagined a different version of the decade that gave us the yBas (and frieze magazine)

 damien-hirst-the-physical-impossibility-of-death-in-the-mind-of-someone-living-1991.
Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991, installation view, ‘Young British Artists I’, Saatchi Gallery, London. Courtesy: © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021

2. Celebrating SOPHIE (1986-2021)

Shon Faye paid tribute to the pioneering musician and producer whose generation-defining music will live on in the exultations of the dance floor

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Sophie at her home in Los Angeles, 2018. Courtesy: Crack Magazine; photograph: Renata Raksha

3. Kanye West’s Quest for Perfection

Harmony Holiday examined the US rapper's erratic process amid the cult-like fanfare surrounding his elusive album Donda

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Kanye West, 2021. Courtesy: the artist and Getty Images 

4. How Ibrahim Mahama's Installations Exhume Political Ghosts

Featured in frieze 222, Vanessa Peterson spoke with Ibrahim Mahama about Ghana’s post-independence era, architecture and the importance of his collaborators in the run up to his solo show at White Cube, London

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Ibrahim Mahama, Malam Dodoo National Theatre, 1992-2016, 2016, installation view. Courtesy: © Ibrahim Mahama and White Cube, London; photograph: Ibrahim Mahama

5. A Tribute to Kaari Upson (1970–2021)

Jonathan Griffin remembered the life and career of the Southern Californian artist whose multimedia work dealt with themes of trauma, selfhood, family and home

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Portrait of Kaari Upson at her exhibition 'Go Back the Way You Came', 2019, Kunsthalle Basel. Courtesy: Sprüth Magers; photograph: Dominik Asche

6. Marilyn Minter on Overcoming Censorship and Bringing Back Pubic Hair

Chloe Stead sat down with the artist during here solo show at MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain to talk up the female gaze and why as an 'old lady' you can do just about anything

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Marilyn Minter, All Wet, exhibition catalogue cover, 2021. Courtesy: JBE Books & MO.CO. Montpellier

7. Joshua Cohen on Truth and Half-Truths in Fiction

For frieze 222, Lincoln Michel spoke with the author about his latest work, ‘The Netanyahus', and how his definition of ‘truth’ changes with every novel

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Joshua Cohen at his home in Brooklyn, 2015. Courtesy and photograph: Danny Ghitis/The New York Times

8. The Artists Building a Future out of Mushrooms

In a column for frieze 218, Francesca Gavin asked if fungus can help us better understand what it means to be human

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Seana Gavin, Mushroomscape, 2020. Courtesy: the artist and Somerset House, London

9. The Art of Dressing: How Sartorial Choices Shape the Artist

Chloë Ashby reviewed What Artists Wear, Charlie Porter's reflection on the importance of clothing to the artistic practices and identities of figures from Georgia O’Keeffe to Gilbert & George

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Nancy Holt at Sun Tunnels after the work's completion, Lucin, Utah, 1976. Photograph: Ardele Lister © Holt/Smithson Foundation / DACS, London and VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York 2021. Courtesy: Penguin Random House

10. Understanding ‘L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped’

Wilson Tarbox addressed how Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s mummified reimagining of Napoleon’s monument speaks as much to the present as it does to the past

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Fabric panels being unfurled in front of the outer walls of the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, 2021. Courtesy: © Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation

Main image: Seana Gavin, Untitled, Mushroom Chimney, 2020. Courtesy: © the artist and Somerset House, London

Contemporary Art and Culture

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