ArtReview January & February 2022 by ArtReview

Staring into the void since 1949

Noémie Goudal Gut Feelings The Mutaverse Pandora’s Box

Isamu Noguchi A New Nature White Cube Bermondsey, London 4 February – 27 March 2022 Also showing: Barbican Art Gallery, London Until 23 January 2022 Touring to Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2022); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2022–23); and Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut (2023) Isamu Noguchi working on the template for an interlocking sculpture in the courtyard of his MacDougal Alley tudio, September 1946. Photo: Eliot Elisofon. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 03183 © INFGM / ARS

ANNE-MIE VAN KERCKHOVEN January 22 - February 26, 2022

ZENO X GALLERY ANTWERP BORGERHOUT

Godtsstraat 15, 2140 Borgerhout 03 216 16 26 info@zeno-x.com www.zeno-x.com

Anselm Kiefer, Paul Celan : du rollst die Altäre Zeiteinwärts (detail), 2021. Emulsion, acrylic, oil, shellac, chalk on canvas. 280 x 380 cm Photo : Georges Poncet © Anselm Kiefer

Hommage à un poète

Anselm Kiefer Paris Pantin January—May 2022

CARO AND NORTH AMERICAN PAINTERS Gagosian London

Jack Bush · Anthony Caro · Helen Frankenthaler Kenneth Noland · Jules Olitski · Larry Poons

ArtReview vol 74 no 1 January & February 2022

Land’s End Can you feel it? By which, ArtReview wants to be clear, it means the magazine you’re cradling in your (recently sanitised) hands. Paper, ink, glue, various coatings – in other words, embodiment, material reality – or as far as it goes if you happen to be a print publication like ArtReview. ok, you may have arms and legs, and ArtReview has logistical networks and the postal service to get around (which hasn’t been easy these last couple of years), but we all have bodies of one sort or another. Bodies and networks, materiality and virtual reality, have been pitched into starker contrast by the covid-19 pandemic, and this issue of ArtReview picks up on how artists are making sense of those extremes… After all, winter is the time to look after your extremities. Dafna Maimon makes gut-wrenching work. Literally, as Chris Fite-Wassilak finds. Through her video and installation work, she questions how much our body determines our actions, and in turn how much society (media, technology…) determines that corporeal state. Fite-Wassilak offers one example: ‘Medicine’s demands, particularly around issues of hygiene, are becoming ever more determinant of modern living, and yet we still ignore the body as a thinking, feeling aspect of being’. The shift to the online world means that the environment we inhabit has in many ways become more distant for us. Big tech is now pushing hard to make our online lives even more ‘immersive’ (think Metaverse),

Makers

but as Fiona Glen argues, artists have been pushing in the opposite direction, using digital world-building as a way to pay attention to how humans are entwined with all manner of nonhuman systems and entities, from the natural environment and its organisms to the disembodied influence of computer algorithms and ai. But is this the real life, or is this just fantasy? Mark Rappolt dives into the work of Noémie Goudal, which spans photography, moving image and installations to create illusions of the natural world that posit questions around the nature of representation when it comes to constructing such landscapes, and what happens when what is concealed beneath the artifice is eventually revealed. In doing so, Goudal’s work asks its viewers to consider our relationship with planet Earth by comparing the consequences of humankind’s destruction of nature with the insignificance of our species in relation to deep planetary time. No escape from reality. It’s not all doom and gloom. Rosanna McLaughlin introduces us to Pandora Storm, an activist-critic for whom life just carries on. How much of an environmental impact can a little trip to the Swiss Alps for an art summit make, anyway? Plus, if one is to make a difference in the artworld via the art of protest, one must take it to wherever the curators congregate – which just so happens to be a luxury Alpine lodge. Carry on. ArtReview

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Saloua Raouda Choucair, Trajectory of a Line, 1957–59, brass, 17.8 × 7.9 × 7.3 cm © Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation

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Carla Accardi Leonor Antunes Yto Barrada Saloua Raouda Choucair Barbara Hepworth Kim Lim Louise Nevelson

Creating Abstraction London pacegallery.com

IDA APPLEBROOG RIGHT UP TO NOW 1969 – 2021 29 JAN – 2 MAY 2022 DURSLADE FARM, DROPPING LANE, BRUTON, SOMERSET BA10 0NL WWW.HAUSERWIRTH.COM IDA APPLEBROOG, GOD, 2021. MIXED MEDIA ON WOODEN PANELS, 15 PANELS, 129.5 × 121.9 × 3.8 CM / 51 × 48 × 1 ½ IN © IDA APPLEBROOG. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH. PHOTO: THOMAS BARRATT

Art Observed

The Interview E’wao Kagoshima by Ross Simonini 20 m+ Opens by Aaina Bhargava 28

Tiger Balm by Adeline Chia 34 circa: Josef O’Connor interviewed by Mark Rappolt 36

Soft Power Station by Oliver Basciano 30

page 36 David Hockney, Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long, 2021. Photo: Maria Baranova. Courtesy circa and Times Square Arts

Art Featured

Noémie Goudal by Mark Rappolt 42

The Critic at the End of the World by Rosanna McLaughlin 58

Dafna Maimon by Chris Fite-Wassilak 50

Enter the ‘Mutaverse’ by Fiona Glen 62

page 50 Dafna Maimon, Indigestibles: Last Resort, 2021, immersive installation, textiles, velvet, wood, various materials, sound, light, dimensions variable. Photo: Maija Toivanen. Courtesy the artist and ham / Helsinki Biennial

Art Reviewed

exhibitions & books 72 Christian Marclay, by Thu-Huong Ha A Year in Art: Australia 1992 and Jonathan Jones, by Jane Ure-Smith Chiara Fumai, by Pádraic E. Moore Post-Capital, by J.J. Charlesworth Louise Lawler, by Martin Herbert Cynthia Talmadge, by Owen Duffy errata, by Max Crosbie-Jones Martin Margiela, by Clara Young Isabel Nolan, by Frank Wasser After the Storm: Five artists from the Philippines, by Adeline Chia Sin Wai Kin, by Aaina Bhargava Gillian Wearing, by Ela Bittencourt Toon Verhoef, by Emily McDermott Peeping Tom, by Emily May Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2021, by Rebecca O’Dwyer Prospect.5, by Evan Moffitt Noah Davis, by Rachel Willcocks Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar, by Emily May

How to Be a Revolutionary: A Novel, by C.A. Davids, reviewed by Mark Rappolt Portrait in Four Movements, by Chloe Aridjis, reviewed by Louise Darblay Self-Portrait, by Carla Lonzi, reviewed by Chris Fite-Wassilak Hello Future, by Farah Al Qasimi, reviewed by Fi Churchman The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, by Amitav Ghosh, reviewed by Deepa Bhasthi Marcel Duchamp, by Robert Lebel, reviewed by J.J. Charlesworth The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber & David Wengrow, reviewed by Sarah Jilani

page 78 Katja Novitskova, Pattern of Activation (emu), 2014. Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul. Courtesy the artist and Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann Collection

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Art Observed

On the brink of an unknown future 19

E’wao Kagoshima at Greater New York. Photo: Noel Woodford. Courtesy moma ps1, New York

ArtReview

The Interview by Ross Simonini

E’wao Kagoshima

“Some people think about being a doctor, but I still think about being a fine artist”

E’wao Kagoshima, who goes by ‘Rocky’, was born in Japan in 1945 and has lived in New York since the mid-1970s. He exhibited his paintings frequently during the 80s, sometimes at significant institutions such as London’s ica or New York’s New Museum, and sometimes as a part of the community of artists in the East Village. After his early period of visibility, however, he stepped away from the artworld and showed very little for the following two decades. He was, nevertheless, painting during this period, and in the years since, he has exhibited work from across the entire span of his career. His paintings have been referred to as surrealist, and some of the work clearly relates to that tradition

– dreamy scenarios, refined draughtsmanship, impossible narratives – but like Paul Klee, who also received that descriptor, Kagoshima has a willingness to explore beyond his foundational style, in his case into both abstraction and postmodern playfulness. The details of his autobiography are hard to pin down, and in our conversation, when I asked him about particularities, he seemed unable to confirm any of them, either because he doesn’t remember or he prefers not to. By his own account, Kagoshima never experienced the kind of success that could sustain him financially, a situation that continues to plague him even now at the age of seventy-six.

January & February 2022

At the time we spoke, he was included in moma ps1’s Greater New York, which is for him one of the most significant moments in his career. We conversed through Zoom, with the assistance of the show’s curator Ruba Katrib, who has worked closely with Kagoshima over the last few years. During our talk she served as a kind of moderator, guiding us through what I soon learned was Kagoshima’s first online video conversation, and one of the only interviews he has ever done. Kagoshima’s thick accent, along with the internet static and muffling facemask, made much of the conversation difficult to parse as I listened to it afterward. What follows is the material I was able to excavate with confidence.

Stick to the Dream ross simonini Your work ignites some of my childhood wonder. How would you describe your childhood? e’wao kagoshima I didn’t like school. I wanted to go through the bushes and trees and be near animals. Swimming in the river. I was not interested in the city. But later, after high school, I liked the city life. rs Do you still think about childhood? ek Not much. Getting older, I lose interest in my past. I am still getting to what my dream is. I stick to my dream. I don’t compare myself to other people but I always want to be more intelligent than what I am. This is why I started reading. I went to bookstores to get art books and I went to galleries. Because I didn’t speak English I wanted to understand art more. I wanted to know the New York art scene. I am ambitious. I can do more, you know, and I still have a dream and I’m not satisfied. People think when you are young you are ambitious, but I am old and ambitious. Some people think

about being a doctor, but I still think about being a fine artist. rs Have you always been that way? ek I have to make money, my own money, in life, and I cannot do this with art. But I want to stick with art. I remember when something inside of me changed and I became a hungry guy. I’m primitive now. I need food. This is my situation, every day. Physically, when I was young, it was easy, but getting older might not be so easy to be an artist. I want to live longer so I can do this. If I see something hopeful, I want to live longer. So now I stick with ps1. I stay here. rs Working there? ek Yes, I am now in [moma ps1’s quintennial survey of significant ny-based artists] Greater New York. There are 47 artists in the show. This is just like the 47 samurai story, the most famous story from Japan. There are 47 samurai who live in a castle in Tokyo and they want to take revenge on the lord of the castle. ruba katrib Rocky, is this a metaphor for the artworld?

Greater New York, 2021 (installation view). Photo: Steven Paneccasio. Courtesy moma ps1, New York

ew No. Forty-seven artists. Just like the famous story.

ArtReview

Give Me Money! rs Is it true that you sold artwork on the street? ew I am a practical guy. I need strategy. Like a company, the most successful artists in the United States have strategy. It’s just business, even though most artists believe they are next to God. But if someone pays me $1,000, I will make them work. I am not a rich artist. I come from Japan. I don’t want to be wealthy. I want to survive. In 1983 I had a show at the New Museum. I had a few collectors. One of them had a museum and he was the only one who stuck with me. But most rich people are very… rk Fickle? [laughs] ek …And I know Ruba because of a group show at SculptureCenter. You need to be connected. Otherwise you get no attention. I am at moma now, so I get attention. Maybe this is the last chance… Or no! It’s my beginning! But it is also

Untitled, c. 1970, pastel, ink on paper, 76 × 57 cm. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zürich

Loop Hole, 2013, graphite, collage and acrylic on paper, 51 × 41 cm. Courtesy Bodega, New York

my last chance. Last weekend I looked in The New York Times and there was my name, E’wao Kagoshima, right in the centre [slaps his hands against his leg]. But no one has heard of me still. But this show will be open for six months, which is very unusual, and it only happens every five years. So the next few years might be something. It’s like the 47 samurai story. Who will kill the lord? rk Who will kill the lord? [laughs] ek Yes. I hope this show will bring many people, but the artworld is always changing and my painting is always changing. I’m only one of 47. I am not a big artist. But my chance is here. rs You often show work from very different time periods during your career. Do you see all your work as connected? Or has it changed over the years? ek Look at Picasso. The most powerful creator in history. He was always changing. Having no style is important. But inside no-style is an invisible idea that is difficult to recognise. So, me, why I am changing? If I could do one style that would support my living, I would focus on that style. But I cannot find that. I can’t live

on what I make. So I change. So this moma show is a programmatic idea of what I am going to do now. In ten years I may be in the ground somewhere. If I were young I would not feel hurried. But this is my last opportunity to do something. Today I feel good, though tomorrow I might be in a rush. Last night I worried that I cannot talk like a philosopher or an nyu professor for this interview, because my English cannot be expressed. My English is only as good as “Give me money!” Today, a man asks me, “Give me money!” on the street. So I said to him, “Do I look like a rich guy?” He says, “Give me money!” But I only have hundreds of dollars in the bank. rk Maybe it was because you are wearing your nice button-up shirt. ek Greater New York! I found my name in The New York Times, in the centre. Unfortunately, my picture was not there.

Million dollar.” My job is only to make good art. Not speaking. My work is more serious than what I am speaking. In front of me, I have a futuristic compact machine. I do not have one of these… rs Is – ek Nobody can see their own face except in the mirror. And that is not correct. Left becomes right and right becomes left in the mirror. Nobody can see their real face. The other guy might laugh at you whoever you are. This is why I ask myself: who am I? Am I stupid or intelligent or a god? My art is always asking this question. Always, when I wake up, I start thinking about this – what do I do? What do I make? Finally, I eat. I go to the bathroom, always thinking constantly about what’s inside of me. What is the real thing? Nobody knows that infinity. rk Rocky, do you want to answer one more question? ek No.

rs Do you – ek And this is why I don’t want to talk about art, because my art is for eyes only. My mouth is like an advertiser. “My work is great, you know?

Ross Simonini is a writer, artist, musician and dialogist. He is the host of ArtReview’s podcast Subject, Object, Verb

Full Moon Cat, 1978, 2018, graphite on paper, 28 × 36 cm. Courtesy Bodega, New York

January & February 2022

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Madrid

International Contemporary Art Fair

23-27 Feb

2022 Recinto Ferial

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“I can’t believe this is finally happening.” “I can’t believe this exists in Hong Kong.” These were some of the frequently uttered phrases during the preopening event for Hong Kong’s brand new m+ Museum of Visual Culture, and they help convey the sense of surreality that infused it. After all, the m+ project, promoted as Asia’s answer to London’s Tate Modern, New York’s moma and Paris’s Centre Pompidou, first launched more than a decade ago and reached this moment after numerous and very public construction and bureaucratic delays. The museum and its collection are the first of their scale and kind in Asia, filling a void in the city’s local cultural landscape and attempting to legitimise Hong Kong’s status as the region’s art centre. A neobrutalist structure on the West Kowloon harbourfront, the museum – outfitted with high ceilings, vast grey concrete interiors and black railings – induces both a feeling of wonderment and a sense of déjà vu. For while it represents something of an architectural novelty in Hong Kong, it is nevertheless reminiscent of Tate Modern (the 2000 redevelopment and 2017 extension of which were designed by m+ architects Herzog & de Meuron). The similarities end with the architecture, however. The new institution’s collection and projected curatorial aims and perspectives differ greatly from those of its Western counterparts. m+ strives to present contemporary art-history from varying Asian perspectives, with a focus on showcasing art from Hong Kong and the greater China region. Its collection contains 50,000 artworks by 777 artists, out of which 76 percent are Asian (or of Asian descent). The opening displays feature 1,500 artworks from among the holdings, arrayed across six exhibitions, one of the most sizable and anticipated of which is the m+ Sigg Collection, featuring works that trace the history of Chinese art through the postwar period. Though even that display has been not without hiccups: the collection includes a work from Ai Weiwei’s Study of Perspective series (1995–2017), depicting the artist holding up his middle finger to politically significant monuments in various cities, including Beijing. Earlier this year, conservative politicians highlighted the work as potentially violating the ambiguous National Security Law (implemented in the summer of 2020). Since then, the work has been removed from the museum’s website and is not part of the current exhibit.

Long Stories

Hong Kong finally has a world-class contemporary art museum. Aaina Bhargava takes a look and wonders what’s next

m+, Hong Kong. Photo: Kevin Mak. Courtesy Herzog & de Meuron, Basel

ArtReview

Concerns about censorship dominated the press conference on the preview day. In response to multiple questions about the issue, Henry Tang, chairman of the board of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (and the chief secretary of Hong Kong from 2007 to 2011), of which m+ is a part, emphatically stated that artistic expression was not above the law, and that the museum would comply with the city’s laws, leaving an open question as to how and to what extent censorship will be enforced. Other works by Ai were on view: Whitewash (1995–2000), comprising an array of Chinese Neolithic vases partially dipped and/or painted in white paint. The work essentially challenges the whitewashing of history, and takes centre stage in the m+ Sigg Collection display. Initially, that exhibition (titled m+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation) appears to represent an auction preview circa 2008, the year that marked the global commercial boom of Chinese art. It features works by some of the celebrated names and works to emerge from that period: Wang Guangyi and Zheng Fangzhi; Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline – Big Family no. 17 (1998) and Fang Lijun’s 1995.2 (1995); and multiple works by artists from the avant-garde Stars Art Group. However, the deeper one delves into the display, the more works by artists crucial to defining Chinese art history from the 1970s through the 2000s are uncovered, revealing a richer historical narrative. Huang Yong Ping’s Six Small Turntables (1989) is a hidden gem, manifesting the artist’s signature infusion of Buddhist and Taoist philosophies with a Dada-influenced conceptual approach: six wooden turntable platters are stacked in descending order of size and placed in an open black leather case, attached to which is a piece of paper explaining how the work functions as a roulette for determining the conditions – material, composition, etc – of future artwork creation. Amid the overwhelming number of works on view, Civilisation Pillar (2001), by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, provides a particularly visceral impact. The pillar, comprising human fat, wax and metal, and reflecting society’s obsession with appearances, materialism and excess, induces an unsettling, nauseating sensation. In stark contrast, the exhibition titled The Dream of the Museum focuses on a conceptual, and aesthetic (and perhaps more costly) curatorial approach: the bamboo-covered walls of the

gallery transform the space into a tranquil one, distinguishing the works on view from those hung on white walls in the museum’s other spaces. The exhibition explores how contemporary artists appropriate found objects and build on the legacy of pioneers Marcel Duchamp, Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono (among others). Danh Vo’s marble Venus torso (Untitled, 2018) with an attached modified replica of Duchamp’s l.h.o.o.q. Rasée (1965, an image of the Mona Lisa with a moustache painted on her face) sits beside Hong Kong artist Trevor Yeung’s delicately encased sea snails in Three to Tango (2014). Behind Zheng Guogu’s luminous orange take on a thangka, Yoko Ono’s monochrome white chessboard Play it By Trust (1966/1986–87) lies across from Morimura Yasumasa’s A Requiem: Theater of Creativity / Self-portrait as Marcel Duchamp (Based on the Photo by Julian Wasser) (2010), in which the artist transforms himself into both Duchamp and writer Eve Babitz playing chess with each other. Other highlights include special exhibitions and single-gallery installations, such as Antony Gormley’s Asian Field (2003), comprising 210,000 clay figurines made by 350 residents of a village in Guangdong. Here the artist replaces himself with a community, with the intention of questioning who is allowed to occupy cultural spaces, a significant consideration in reshaping longheld perspectives. While his intention still results in his concept occupying the cultural space, it also activates, in the context of the museum in general, an awareness of the process of looking, as the artist’s field of figures return the viewer’s gaze thousandfold. Crowded by photographers, vips and influencers attempting to get the perfect Instagram shot, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’s Crucified tvs – Not a Prayer in Heaven (Traditional Chinese / Cantonese / English Version) (2021) affirms

and captures the ludicrous nature of the world’s chaotic condition, striking a resonant chord. Theatrically suspended high above the gallery space, tv screens assembled in a crucifixlike shape (recalling Nam June Paik’s tv Cross, 1966) flash phrases such as ‘A world on fire is like a life

from top Tsang Tsou-choi (aka King of Kowloon), Untitled (Partial Map of Kowloon), c. 1994–97, ink on printed paper, 88 × 32 cm. © the artist. Courtesy m+, Hong Kong; Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Crucified tvs – Not a Prayer in Heaven (Traditional Chinese / Cantonese/English Version), 2021, five-channel video installation, 17 min. © m+, Hong Kong. Photo: Lok Cheng and Dan Leung

January & February 2022

in hell’, inducing a fervent atmosphere. As some of the first artists to engage with the internet, the duo (South Korean Young-Hae Chang and American Marc Voge) are pioneers in their use of that medium, in much the same way as Paik was to tv. For Hong Kong artists in particular, the existence of m+ provides a kind of institutional recognition they haven’t known before. The exhibition Hong Kong: Here and Beyond features work by local artists (136 of the 777 artists whose works are part of the collection are from Hong Kong), and an early gauge of the extent to which m+ will (hopefully) uphold its promise to serve the local art community. Centred on four themes, ‘Here’, ‘Identities’, ‘Places’ and ‘Beyond’, the exhibition aims to shape a holistic, rather than chronological, understanding of the city. A work by the late Tsang Tsou-choi (aka King of Kowloon; self-taught, and the equivalent of a street artist during his time), Untitled pair of doors (2003), inscribed with his signature calligraphic aesthetic, opens the exhibition and serves as a metaphorical gateway to Hong Kong’s art history. A work by another selftaught artist, Yeung Tong Long, wields a hypnotic effect, his 2.4m-high perspective painting The Floor (2014), depicting his studio floor as almost unending, and warped – a projected fantasy specific to the typically small and confined spaces in Hong Kong. In dialogue with this painting is Kacey Wong’s installation Paddling Home (2009): self-exiled to Taiwan earlier this year, Wong built a ‘micro-home’, resembling a minihouse on a raft, with materials typically used to construct residential buildings, and launched it into Victoria Harbour as a critique of unaffordable and compact housing in the city. In a way it offers a real-life critique of the numerous architectural models and drawings that are included in the exhibition as a trace of the city’s urban development. Whatever the implications of Hong Kong’s political future may be, the city now has itself a world-class facility that undoubtedly strengthens its arts infrastructure and diversifies its cultural landscape. As importantly, at a time when established institutions are being criticised for exclusivity and a lack of perspectives, and are being forced to reckon with their own problematic colonial histories, m+ provides a potential platform from which to rectify that. While m+ will continue to face challenges, this opening series of displays suggests that it is in a position to develop new and relevant ways of documenting local and Asian art histories.

‘Soft power’ was popularised during the late 1980s by the American political scientist Joseph Nye as a term for describing how countries might get their way on the global stage not through threat or coercion but by persuading, using a variety of cultural and political means, other states ‘to want the outcomes that you want’. The old colonial powers were often in the lead on this, because the groundwork was laid (albeit by force) a long time ago: one 2019 ranking by communications group Portland put France as the leading purveyor of soft power, closely followed by the uk and Germany. Of course, we might interpret Nye’s ‘values’ as really being about economic ‘value’, and it’s no coincidence that those who obsess over such things are of a neoliberal bent (Nye was an aide to Bill Clinton): governmental organisations tasked with pursuing cultural soft power – the Institut Français and the British Council, for example – naturally focus their programmes on where their governments are looking to foster trade. The cynic might ask how much British art and cultural exchange is being used to shore up British arms deals in a host of countries of dubious reputation.

Soft Power Station

At the opening of a huge new art centre in Moscow, Oliver Basciano considers whether such cultural institutions can navigate a new Cold War between Russia and the West

ges-2, Moscow. Photo: Gleb Leonov. Courtesy v-a-c Foundation, Moscow

ArtReview

Nye’s concept sprang to mind when visiting Moscow’s ges-2, a newly opened, privately backed arts centre established by v-a-c Foundation. v-a-c is a nonprofit founded in 2009 by Leonid Mikhelson, a reclusive Russian billionaire who made his money in petrochemicals. Teresa Iarocci Mavica, an Italian who has lived in Russia since 1989 and, as the institution’s founding director, is the driving force behind the project, says v-a-c’s original purpose was to promote Russian culture abroad (Mavica stepped down shortly after the opening, v-a-c stating that the move was planned and that she would remain an adviser on international projects). Initially this was done by supporting exhibitions at institutions internationally and, since 2017, by staging shows and hosting residencies at the foundation’s Palazzo Zattere in Venice. Now v-a-c is bringing international artists to Russia (along with critics and curators to see their wares), hosted (alongside local names) at a vast converted power station a short, icy walk up the Moskva River from the Kremlin. The design, by Renzo Piano, is sublime, in the strictest sense of the word: as you enter through what the architect calls an indoor piazza, a huge

empty space that will host events and is designed as a place of congregation, you feel very small. It’s light, pleasant and airy, however, and there’s an aspirational gleam to the finish. There are countless public programming spaces; workshops complete with state-of-the-art 3d printers, woodworking tools, studio apparatus; an underground carpark that’s been fitted up with suitable ventilation to double as a dance venue. There’s a café and restaurant, and very helpful Russian- and English-speaking guides on hand, loaded up with lines of art theory made accessible. One enthuses about the tours her department will lead for older residents, children and deaf visitors. There is a ‘sensory experience room’ and tours instructed through dance, devised by a choreographer and a psychologist, that encourage visitors to ‘feel’ the building. The exhibition spaces themselves are more discreet, intentionally so according to the foundation’s artistic director, Francesco Manacorda. “The spaces in which the public can meet are given priority within the architecture,” he says. “The galleries are belowground. The exhibitions are led by the public programme.” Indeed v-a-c bills ges-2 as a modern-day House of Culture, in reference to the old Soviet meeting places that promoted discussion and artistic activities as forms of social enrichment. Mavica explains, “Museums globally are looking for new ways of working, but we found it in an old Russian model.” The first People’s House was set up in Tomsk in 1882, but during the Soviet era they

proliferated as Houses of Culture. “It was a place for hobbies, a place to share knowledge, to take care of each other,” Mavica adds. They also allowed the Soviet Union to disseminate its ideological values across the vastly dispersed, ethnically and culturally diverse republics. Manacorda, formerly of Tate Liverpool, approached the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson to ringmaster the inaugural programme. As well as a group exhibition of artists who have influenced his own work, Kjartansson has staged one of his trademark durational performances. The artist is known for his use of pathos and repetition, and his interest in contrasting high and low culture. Over three months, across a plethora of sets reproduced throughout ges-2, Kjartansson is remaking 100 episodes of Santa Barbara (1984–93) – the first American soap opera to be broadcast in Russia – using Russian actors and the original Russian dubbing script. The whole season is titled Santa Barbara. How Not to Be Colonised? and Kjartansson is interested in how Russians – as the Soviet Union collapsed – claimed the tv show as their own, to the point that the expression ‘to do a Santa Barbara’ has entered Russian vernacular, describing high personal drama or the act of sharing your personal tribulations publicly. It was an extraordinary window, one Russian tells me when I ask her, into the life of the capitalist West, at a time of chronic food shortages at home, a view that Russians enthusiastically embraced. Amid the big hair, shoulder pads

top and above Ragnar Kjartansson, Santa Barbara, 2021, performance. © and courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York, and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík

January & February 2022

and melodrama, Santa Barbara was neoliberal American soft power in action. Kjartansson tells me that during his childhood Iceland was a country caught geographically and politically between the Cold War powers. His school was closed to host the Russian press during the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavík in 1986. His parents, as theatre directors, were courted by both sides, invited by the Americans and Soviets on cultural tours and exchange programmes (his father, a socialist, banned him from watching American soaps). Now, however, that Portland study ranks Russia a lowly 30 on its cultural diplomacy chart, and ‘softly’ has never been President Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi: the current massing of troops on Ukraine’s border is more his style. Which perhaps explains the repeated line of questioning endured by v-a-c staff regarding possible state censorship. “Where are you from?” Mavica pointedly replied to a German journalist who raised the subject. “You don’t think your country has its problems?” Even I rolled my eyes

when a British critic questioned if ges-2 would host a show by artist-provocateurs Pussy Riot, but nonetheless posed a related query on the political situation. (As it happens, within days of these exchanges, Memorial International, Russia’s foremost human rights organisation, cofounded by Andrei Sakharov at the height of Gorbachev’s opening up of the Soviet Union, would be deemed a danger and liquidated.) “Like any country you have to deal with the context, that’s not censorship,” Manacorda answered. “We are a house of culture, not a house of politics. I’m not here to knock the government or do firsthand activism. I’m here to support artistic speech, and if needed prepare the terrain for that to be received.” There’s no information yet on future programming, but a third show of the current season takes the Russian carnival culture as its subjects: contemporary artists charting not only how Peter the Great once introduced the masque ball as a way of Europeanising Russia, but also the spring rites of the various indigenous cultures of this great land mass.

ges-2, Moscow. Photo: Gleb Leonov. Courtesy v-a-c Foundation, Moscow

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Putin himself toured ges-2 two days before the press and public were allowed in, apparently giving it his blessing. Mikhelson and the president are sometime allies, and it is striking that a man of Mikhelson’s clout is needed to push contemporary art up the Russian governmental agenda. The Russian state prefers to keep its cultural offerings within the relative safety of its glorious eighteenth- and nineteenth-century heritage. Yet soft power has never been solely the preserve of nation states: art is a handy vehicle for individuals and corporations to push their values too. Thirty years ago Nye noted that ‘today other actors are becoming increasingly important… in modern times more complex coalitions affect outcomes’. Whether Mikhelson’s project will help Russia’s reputation, in which the West’s rabid Russophobia rubs up against real questions about freedom of expression in the country, is yet to be seen. Yet it is a personal flex too, however shy the man himself is. Soft power is a slow game.

Usina de Arte

photos Andrea Rego Barros

A new and on-going private Botanical & Contemporary Sculpture Garden, 40 site-speciﬁc art works installed in 33 hectares of an old fascinating sugar factory.

Bringing a new cultural, social, educational and sustainable vision to Pernambuco, North-East of Brasil. Open to public everyday from 05:30 am to 06:00 pm

IG: usinadearte FB: Usina de Arte Web: usinadearte.org

A mainstay on many ‘weirdest themeparks of the world’ lists, Singapore’s Haw Par Villa is a sculpture park filled with hundreds of statues and dioramas depicting scenes from Chinese legends and teachings from Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Its most famous feature is the ‘Ten Courts of Hell’: scenes showing how sinners are punished in the underworld. After final judgement, sinners are impaled on stakes, sawn in half, mashed into a mortar by a huge pestle and so on. These hellscapes are only a sampling of the wtf-ery in this place, which is pretty much a nonstop experience, from passing the streaky-bacon-coloured rocky landscaping at the entrance, to pondering the animal–human hybridity at the ‘Pond of Legacy’ at the top of the hill, where there are mercrabs, merclams, mersnails and mermaids. The mermaids are meant to be sexy (I think), with their nippleless boobs exposed. The adults recline on their fronts or backs, their arms outstretched. Two babies are doing a kind of circus balancing act, one stacked above the other. All their faces are terrified and blank. Haw Par Villa was built in 1937 on the grounds of a private villa owned by Aw Boon Haw, one of the founders of the Tiger Balm pain relief ointment. The Rangoon-born tycoon commissioned statues in the garden and opened the park to the public during the 1950s to promote Chinese values, which in this case turned out to be a particularly histrionic strain of Confucianism.

Tiger Balm

Adeline Chia finds a soothing charm in the past and future of Singapore’s weirdest themeparkmuseum

Scenario from the ‘Ten Courts of Hell’ feature. Courtesy Haw Par Villa, Singapore

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The dioramas have titles like ‘The Grateful Tortoise’, ‘Helping Future Generations’ and ‘Thriftiness and Wealth’. To illustrate filial piety, there is a tableau of a daughter breastfeeding her mother-in-law, adapted from a Tang dynasty story. Another scene shows a Jin dynasty character who stripped down to melt the ice from a frozen lake using his body heat in order to catch fish for a stepmother ‘who unceasingly spoke ill of him’. Subsequently, under different managements, other types of statues were added, which explains the park’s chaotic quality. There are elaborate dioramas of folktales about the Eight Immortals, but also animal menageries and ‘international’ features such as sumo wrestlers and Thai court dancers. In short, this place is completely bonkers. And a true original. So naturally the Singapore government doesn’t know what to do with it. After it acquired the place in 1985 via the Land Acquisition Act, it tried to commercialise the park. During the 1990s, an operator was hired to Disneyfy it into Haw Par Villa Dragon World, described as ‘the only Chinese mythological theme park in the world’, complete with new thrill rides. It didn’t work out. After that, entry fees that had been imposed were scrapped and the rides removed. Another operator decided to go down the intellectual route, setting up a Hua Song Museum, about the Chinese diaspora. That closed in 2012. Since then, there were no ambitions to boost the park’s popularity until 2015, when heritage consultancy Journeys was

hired to run the place. In October it opened Hell’s Museum, dedicated to exploring the afterlife in different religions. The museum is strategically placed just before the ‘Ten Courts of Hell’ feature, so you have to pay an admission fee of s$15 to enter the museum and see the hellscape, which has been air-conditioned. The rest of the park remains free. Hell’s Museum explores the different concepts of the afterlife, as well the rituals surrounding it. There are some showy exhibits, such as a coffin in a burial pit dug to the dimensions of a local cemetery plot, and a mockup of a Hokkien funeral arrangement, complete with candles and food offerings. But most of it is World Religion 101, with a focus on local Taoist beliefs and practices. Occasionally the writing that accompanies the displays veers into grandiose nonsense: the wall text before a selection of verses about death from sacred texts reads, ‘To an unborn child, the mother’s womb is the entire universe. That is Mankind with regards to the afterlife – no one truly knows what happens after one has taken the final breath.’ To be fair, as far as novelty museums go, Hell’s Museum is a decent one. Which is the problem. Its aspirations towards objectivity and sensible exposition exist on a different philosophical plane to Haw Par Villa’s operatic absurdity. Still, Hell’s Museum is downright

this page, from top Traditional Chinese void-deck funeral diorama; scenario from ‘Ten Courts of Hell’. Courtesy Haw Par Villa, Singapore

January & February 2022

scintillating compared to what is slated for 2022: the Rise of Asia Museum, which ‘aims to explain Asian entrepreneurship and the modern rise of Asia’. Which is, first, yawn, and second, rather disturbing, given that the museum chooses one of Haw Par Villa’s most problematic aspects – unironic Asian chauvinism – and provides a twenty-first-century update couched purely in economic and political terms. There are other moral ambiguities in the park, of course. Styled as free edutainment for the masses, it is also a grand monument to narcissism (many phallic pillars dedicated to the men in the Aw family) and brand promotion (little cartoon animals holding Tiger Balm jars). But despite its contradictions, Haw Par Villa retains its own stubborn integrity. It refuses to succeed on anything but its own terms, resisting attempts at commercialisation and legitimisation. Will the new museums boost Haw Par Villa’s flagging appeal? It remains to be seen. I’m just glad the interventions have been minimal, and we’re not getting some Dragon World Part ii in a fully air-conditioned dome. My ultimate fantasy, of course, is for the park to be left alone. Let it while away its days in dowagerlike decline, losing money, taking up space, screwing up urban masterplans and grand tourism strategies, receiving few but determined travellers who have come to pay their sincere respects.

Josef O’Connor on Virtuous Circles Interview by Mark Rappolt

Based in London and one of a number of new art initiatives that developed during the covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that accompanied it, circa is a platform, founded in 2020 by Josef O’Connor, that showcases digital art, both online and on advertising screens in London’s Piccadilly Circus, and has since expanded to incorporate screens in Seoul, Tokyo, Milan, Los Angeles and New York. The advertising on the screens

is paused for three minutes every day, when the screens become a ‘digital canvas’ for artists’ work. circa commissions monthly, and each participating artist also produces a print edition, limited either by number or by time. A portion of the proceeds from sales of these editions are ‘recycled’ as cash grants to artists and to fund future commissions. Sales from the prints have in the past also supported London’s nonprofit

ArtReview

institutions such as Chisenhale Gallery and The Showroom, as well as funding circa and Dazed’s Class of 2021, a global initiative that invites 30 artists to show their work in Piccadilly and win a cash prize of £30,000. #circaeconomy funds are also distributed as direct-to-community or ‘direct to creative’ grants. The name circa alludes to the fact that artists are invited to create a response to the world ‘circa now’.

artreview How did circa come about? josef o’connor circa was the product of lots of past journeys and skills that I picked up. I can make films, edit, write presentations and go into a boardroom, which helped in bringing this project to life. I had been thinking about doing something in this space since I was nineteen, but back then Piccadilly was a mosaic of different screens, and it’s only recently been turned into one single canvas. I suppose it was just a matter of time until someone came up with the idea. ar And in a sense circa became a reality because of the pandemic and the lockdowns associated with it… jo ’ c Yes. When lockdown first hit, I was between homes, feeling really unsettled and just working off my laptop. Like everyone else, I thought everything was going to fall apart. But then there was a moment when I realised that this might actually present the opportunity to make circa happen. Lockdown created cracks in the foundations of what existed. Everything stopped. Everything paused. Footfall fell and advertising spend became less justifiable. In some ways it created a magical moment that allowed for new ideas and new possibilities to emerge. People to whom I was reaching out, emailing and contacting were suddenly available (and Lisson Gallery’s Greg Hilty and the curator Norman Rosenthal were extremely supportive of the project); perhaps I recognise that even more now, as over the past few months people have become busy again. During the first lockdown, in 2020, I did a project called ‘Face Valued’, for which I made 100 canvases, painting them each with a value between £1 and £100 before selling them online for face value. I gave all the money (£5,050) to The Soup Kitchen in Holborn, which ended up making no sense at all because I also needed to pay my bills and survive in London. But when it came to circa, that fed into the project, and almost overnight it’s become an economy. The screens are one element, but ultimately we’re driven by purpose. We sell prints each month and those prints help to sustain the project because there would be a contradiction if we were to then suddenly be entirely sponsored by a lifestyle brand or an entity that might otherwise be using the advertising lights for commercial reasons. It’s important to maintain that balance and protect the project’s integrity. ar Presumably the owner of the lights wouldn’t allow that anyway. jo ’ c Quite. A friend said to me, “Sometimes there are opportunities in life that are just great but also really difficult.” This was one of those. It wasn’t easy getting it off the ground because

of the way that you want it to be a platform that stands for something important and that says something meaningful. But there’s also a challenge in giving the artists that freedom to be able to express themselves within a public space: there are limitations on nudity, or on how far you can go politically, and things like that that you just don’t experience in the white-cube environment. ar What do you do when those things come up, as they have? jo ’ c To begin with I created a council. Now we also have a code of conduct that provides guidelines to artists. ar Who sets the codes of conduct? jo ’ c Because it’s public space, it’s an agreement with Westminster Council. Interestingly, Piccadilly itself is a listed building. If you go and watch an advert and it turns to full screen, there are still three screens to the side that honour the iconic patchwork that make the

“When you’re doing something public, you have to remove your desire and ego, and think, ‘What does the audience want to see and what should the audience be seeing that maybe they wouldn’t be seeing if I wasn’t in this position?’” lights so recognisable around the world. In a break from tradition, [Piccadilly Lights owner] Landsec supported us in gaining special permission from the council to allow artists the opportunity to use the entire screen every day. Something that even the brands cannot do. This is one example of how I had to learn to negotiate between the paradigms of capitalism and protect the interests of artists very early on. ar Do you approach circa as a curator or as an artist? jo ’ c I think that I’ve always been searching for a platform myself. I can get very stuck in my head, and what I love about working with artists on this project is the ability to jump from one idea to the other each month. The project is, in some ways, an archive: you dive into that shelf, you get a sense of, say, what Cauleen Smith [who produced a work for November 2020] was thinking about at that moment, and so on. All I’m doing is deciding who the authors are circa’s Josef O’Connor

January & February 2022

for each of those 12 volumes. So I’d say that I approach it as a conceptual thinker, and that then influences the way that the artists take up the baton and respond to it each month. I’ve always thought about it is as a bookshelf containing 12 books that form a diary of a year. It invites a definition of what art is: ‘How do you see the world today in circa 2020, 2021 or 2022?’ ar In some senses with projects like this, you’re entering the public’s space, as opposed to a gallery where they choose to enter your space. And with that comes a greater responsibility to keep them interested. jo ’ c Yes, absolutely. I think that also brings with it a huge amount of responsibility that includes maintaining a diversity among the artists that we’re choosing, opening up the opportunity. We just did a project called Class of 2021, an open call that drew 2,000 applications. In November 2021 we presented Hetain Patel in collaboration with the Film London Jarman Award, who was really aware of that kind of responsibility. He mentioned that from his perspective minority communities don’t often appear on the Piccadilly Lights or feature within mainstream advertising. His commission acknowledged this in the way that Vina Ladwa [an Indian Kathak dancer playing the role of Patel’s grandmother] proudly took ownership of the screen. The work explored his perspective of immigration and honoured his grandmother, in a trompe l’oeil setting like those we associate with Queen Victoria. It was a really powerful expression of how the platform can engage with its setting and enable artists to present an idea around the world. ar circa is not just about working with artists jo ’ c I think the circular economy element is what best defines circa. That’s what gives us purpose beyond just promoting an artist. We also collaborate with and support other spaces. We have awarded £5,000 grants to The Showroom and to Chisenhale. Then Zoé Whitley, Chisenhale’s director, commissioned Nikita Gale to produce one of the artworks. As an ecosystem, I think it’s quite unique in its model. It’s required a lot of explaining, because in the artworld many people’s first reaction was, “This isn’t going to work. No collector’s going to want to buy a print for £100.” But the print sales have since allowed us to cover our costs and enabled us to return money to the more general art ecosystem. People want to own beautiful art objects that they can afford. Things like the Patti Smith prints [series of four timed-edition prints created for the #circaeconomy in January 2021] are unique because she offered to sign all of them. That’s unheard of. We didn’t advertise or promote the fact that they were going to be

signed. It was more at the end, she said, “I’ll sign them. My people like signed things.” In that regard, it’s also what I love about circa: it’s bringing the best out of the artworld ecosystem. We recently set up two scholarships at Goldsmiths with £30,000. One is going to be for the ma curatorial course, and another is for the mfa in Art & Ecology course. ar And the artist gets a fee? jo ’ c We give the artists £4,000, which I’d like to increase. I think that’s really important. It’s a very strong responsibility. What I’ve also learned is that you can’t be giving away money and then not paying your people properly either. I’ve learned this as the project and the team supporting it have grown. ar How do you choose the artists? jo ’ c I think when you’re doing something public you really have to remove your desire and your ego from the process a bit, because you’ve got to really think, “What does the audience want to see and what should the audience be seeing that maybe they wouldn’t be seeing if I wasn’t in this position?” There are ways I try to make that work. One is through collaboration months, when I delegate the choice to a curator. As I mentioned earlier, Zoé Whitley picked Nikita Gale, and Elvira Dyangani Ose, then the director of The Showroom, picked Cauleen Smith. Beyond that, the project can evolve organically.

David Hockney [who showed in May 2021] was the first artist that we went international with. Up to that point artists had screened multiple films – three, four or even 30 in the case of Ai Weiwei; no one had showed just one work, as Hockney wished to do. We were talking about John Berger’s theory around repetition and reproduction and decided that it would be great to see this appear in multiple spaces without knowing if we could get those other screens. With Hockney, we were able to get the conversation ignited. Greg Hilty at Lisson introduced me to gallerist Hwasun Barakat in Seoul, who then worked with me to persuade the largest screen in Korea to participate. Then we reached out to Yunika Vision in Tokyo. Somebody in the studio had a contact for Pendry Hotels in la. We thought there had to be one in la because it’s Hockney. Then I met [Futurecity’s] Sherry Dobbin, who introduced me to Jean Cooney from Times Square Arts, which resulted in this global collaboration. Then, post-Hockney, we continued with Korea, la and Tokyo, and now also have Milan and one screen in Times Square. For now, that’s enough, because it’s also a lot of editing to get the files prepared each month. We also have the website, which has received over 40 million hits since launching. The footfall Hetain Patel, Baa’s House 11, 2021 (installation view, Piccadilly Circus, London). Photo: Daniel Adhami. Courtesy the artist, Piccadilly Lights and circa

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at the screens could have been zero on some evenings during the lockdown, and it’s this duality between the commissions being online and offline that I find really exciting. For December we dedicated the platform to commemorating the 40th anniversary of the aids pandemic. I wanted to give that community visibility, so Maureen Paley introduced me to aa Bronson, who reworked the iconic Imagevirus. And now I’m trying to find ways to break away from the screen and bring things to other spaces. ar Is that the ambition for the project more broadly? jo ’ c I wouldn’t say it’s like an ambition more broadly. But I don’t want to be defined by the screen. I think it’s about finding ways to involve and collaborate and bring more people into different iterations of the project. I think it should remain unpredictable. It should remain inspiring. I think that the minute it becomes a very easy project of making a 2.5-minute film once a month, it’d just be too easy. We have this saying in the studio, ‘Sounds impossible, let’s do it’. ar At the same time, by using the advertising screen, you’re also validating that space and creating value for it. jo ’ c I think that there’s always an exchange. I think that what’s great is that in the heart of London and elsewhere around the world there is now this platform that is offering free culture outdoors. My hope is that it will continue.

03–06.03.2022

10 edition th

artgeneve.ch

Art Featured

To an echo 41

Noémie Goudal

Plongée i, 2021, inkjet print, 150 × 116 cm

The Image of Thought by Mark Rappolt

Plongée ii, 2021, inkjet print, 150 × 116 cm

Plongée iii, 2021, inkjet print, 150 × 116 cm

A common-sense definition of photography would state that it is used In short, we’ve been looking at an idea of a jungle, rather than its to freeze or capture a moment in time and space. To create a durable, reality. And there’s nothing really there. lasting image. In a world that can seem constantly to be passing us by. But that’s not to say that the French artist’s work is engineered In Noémie Goudal’s work the medium is deployed to achieve precisely to be a massive downer, or indeed to make you feel stupid. As the the opposite. To create images that are unstable, unenduring and French thinker Gilles Deleuze used to say about philosophy: ‘Where to begin… has always – rightly – been regarded as a very delicate fundamentally unmoored. To challenge common sense. Take Below the Deep South (2021), a video (just over 11 minutes) she problem, but beginning means eliminating all presuppositions’. showed at last year’s Frieze London art fair. The camera is trained on Below the Deep South begins in Goudal’s research into deep time what looks like a lushly verdant tropical jungle. At a certain point, (which is to say time measured in terms of the lifetime of our planet some of the plants begin to burn. Only, in the process of combus- rather than in terms of the relatively brief life of humankind). tion, to reveal that they were in fact merely photographs printed on More specifically it alludes to the discovery in a West Antarctic sedipaper. As the video evolves, and bits of ment core-sample (drilled in 2017) of blackened photographic paper flutter We can only truly appreciate the quality evidence that the frozen wasteland had through the air, successive layers of once (around 90 million years ago – or – the artifice – of an illusion not that long ago in terms of the life of plants catch fire, one after the other, as if or misdirection by knowing the reality our planet) been home to a temperate a pyromaniac had developed a clock, to tropical rainforest. In human time we reveal the same. After each conflagration or direction that it conceals think of the Antarctic as a static frigid the jungle takes on a new shape. And as each of its new forms is revealed, we begin to anticipate the final blaze, space (despite our best efforts to melt it). In the time of the planet, it’s a at which point, presumably, the true nature of this landscape will be moving, evolving, transforming environment. To which humans are revealed. It’s a natural response. We can only truly appreciate the merely a recent menace. Although not as recent as human recogniquality – the artifice – of an illusion or misdirection by knowing the tion of things like continental drift (first proposed by Alfred Wegener reality or direction that it conceals. Otherwise we’re just left feeling in 1912) and global warming and the forces (us) driving the current stupid, unable to recognise what’s in front of us. And no one wants climate crisis. Her work, Goudal asserts, is an invitation to reconto feel like that. sider our position within the world (as opposed to apart from it), and So you’ll be relieved to hear that Below the Deep South does have a through that to reconsider our future. conclusion. By the end – spoiler alert – we realise we’ve been looking There is a long art-history of landscape construction, which at a pure illusion, a stage set. Perhaps, even, it was never a represen- reached a zenith in the rococo paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau tation of a single landscape, but rather a collage of stock imagery of well-to-do people frolicking in bucolic landscapes or gardens, drawn from various elements captured in various parts of the world. sometimes borrowed from other paintings (just as Goudal borrows

Iceberg, 2012, c-print, 170 × 205 cm

January & February 2022

Les Mécaniques – Phoenix Atlantica v, 2021, c-print, 200 × 149 cm

Les Mécaniques – Phoenix Atlantica vi, 2021, c-print, 200 × 149 cm

Les Mécaniques – Phoenix Atlantica vii, 2021, c-print, 200 × 149 cm

imagery from her own archives of greenhouse plants and forests), often including an overgrown classical sculpture or ruins, dressed up in the latest fashions or theatrical costume (‘semi-fancy dress’, as some have put it). The idea behind it all was to locate his subjects in an elevated classical past, to portray them as people of leisure (and therefore wealth) and to present the artist as the inheritor of a noble tradition. And in this last sense the misdirection in which the artist clothed his sitters was designed to provide a sense of direction for the artist. Of his work, the eighteenth-century art-historian Jacques Élie Faure (to whom Deleuze often referred) said: ‘He imbued with the utmost transitoriness those things which our gaze encounters as the most enduring, namely space and forests’. You might almost think Élie Faure was writing about the work of Goudal. Were it not for the fact that the two artists deal with radically different themes. While the construction of Watteau’s work was inherently theatrical (and Goudal has described her own work as an exercise in ‘setting a scene’), the contemporary artist’s presentations, which span photography, moving image and installation, draw as much from the world of science as they do from the performing arts. (And, after all, no human actors are present in her works.) Stratigraphy (applied to core samples) is a dating system commonly used by archaeologists to locate an object in time and space. It’s relative, using the layered strata of materials that have built up on the earth (according to climate, habitation and weather conditions) to allow the observer to deduce from the materials surrounding an object that it is older than something found among materials deposited above it. It’s a process suggested by Below the Deep South and by works such as the photographs that make up Goudal’s Tropiques series (2020), in which photographic constructions that appear to show equatorial forests are hung within the context of an actual forest (and aligned so as to merge), such that you can just

about see that one image overlays another, often around the edges or because of the presence of bulldog clips or the framework that holds the photographic image in place. In more recent works, such as Les Mécaniques – Phoenix Atlantica vii (2021), the photographic image is constructed out of strips, between which the background is visible, offering a more striated, vertiginous and kaleidoscopic encounter. The equivalent of everything at once, if you like. “Everything is a little like weaving,” Goudal says of the construction of her recent works. At their heart lie questions concerning the nature of representation and perception. As well, of course, as issues concerning the nature of nature and our relationship to it. Moreover, these move beyond the standard interrogations of photography as a medium: the where was it? when was it? and who took it? Because Goudal’s images suggest answers that might be phrased in terms of ‘both nowhere and somewhere’, ‘many times’ and ‘what does it matter –it is clearly constructed and I’m not trying to hide that’. Rather, her work might best be understood as exploring questions of how to represent reality in its contingent and everchanging form. Or an idea of deep time that, measured in billions of years, is so abstract, in terms of human measurement, that it is almost beyond comprehension. And how to relate our constructions of the world around us – our approximations of it – with the world as it really is. A reality that may be, to human understanding, no more than an idea. ‘Something in the world forces us to think,’ Deleuze wrote when further worrying about how thought begins without the influence of things like preconception and common sense. ‘This something is not an object of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.’ It’s such events that Goudal seeks to stage. ar Post Atlantica, a solo exhibition of work by Noémie Goudal, is on show at Edel Assanti, London, through 12 March

above Les Mécaniques – Phoenix Atlantica (in progress), 2021 all images Courtesy the artist and Edel Assanti, London

January & February 2022

Discarded Egos, Leaky Teeth, Chattering Bowels and a Seasoning of Critical Splanchnology

It’s time, suggests artist Dafna Maimon, that we took a good, mucky look at ourselves by Chris Fite-Wassilak

above, facing and preceding pages Indigestibles: Then There’s Today, 2021 (stills), 4k video, loop

ArtReview

A woman flops down on a couch, picks up a chicken nugget from the lists the ‘debris that our antibiological politics have generated: archaic heaped plate in front of her, dips it into a jar of dark-brown sauce and action, animism, rudimentary mentation’. In other words, ignoring chows down. Then she does it again. And again. After following her biology and its messy materiality is making us stupid and superstilast session of fried chicken and breaded chops with more nuggets, tious. To counteract this, she proposes a ‘critical splanchnology’ (the her stomach voices its protestations as a croaking grumble. Well, at study of viscera as a way consciously to re-recognise that there is no least it sounds like a grumble, in the video element of Dafna Maimon’s separation of body and mind. Dafna Maimon could be seen as the installation Indigestibles (2021), shown at last year’s Helsinki Biennial. wayward choreographer of such a splanchnology. The Berlin-based But that’s when we start the journey down the other part of the instal- Finnish-Israeli artist’s performances, sculptures, installations, videos lation, the long, oversize and dimly lit velvety tube next to it: an and drawings set out a comedic but grim portrait of where we’ve extended plush red walk-in gastrointestinal tract, complete with its arrived as a species, as the planet’s self-appointed apex omnivores. own outspoken chorus of intermittent moans and extended, breathy Maimon’s recent works can be seen as a trilogy of sorts on the process sighs. It seems natural to wonder whose of ingestion: from diseased cooking, in her Voices bubble up, shouting voices these might be. Perhaps they belong performance Wary Mary (2019), to chewing and competing, in what seems and mastication in her video and installato the woman’s intestinal villi – the small tion Leaky Teeth (2021) and the noisy appendages that line our gut, absorbing like a translation of the woman’s nutrients? Or to some among the billions journey into the intestines of Indigestibles. unsettled stomach sounds of microbes that live nestled along the Each of us humans has two brains: our intestinal tract. Every once in a while there’s a squeal, perhaps a bit of much-vaunted bobble-head top brain, and what people like food pork being broken down. At points the voices bubble up, shouting scientist Herbert Watzke refer to as our ‘gut brain’. The gut brain is and competing, in what seems like a translation of the woman’s relatively sophisticated, comprising around 500 million neurons, unsettled stomach sounds: “Us! Hear us? Us hear us? Can us stop us?”; which is roughly equivalent to the number you might find in the and then, like bickering children: “Stop it! You stop it!” None of this brain of a cat. Consequently, the enteric (intestinal) nervous system, as commotion seems to affect the woman in the video, however. She just the ‘gut brain’ is more formally named, is highly sensitive, capable of keeps eating: more chops, meatballs, nuggets, and mound after sorting through the millions of molecules we put in our bodies and communicating constantly to negotiate the intricacies of digestion mound of fried chicken. In her monograph Gut Feminism (2015), gender studies researcher (and, on a more fundamental level, when to go looking for food and Elizabeth A. Wilson notes how the insights of biology have been when it would be better just to stop). In evolutionary terms, the gut summarily dismissed in recent decades in order to strengthen cultural brain preceded that of the one upstairs – which perhaps enables us to and political arguments about how things like gender are shaped; she understand the history of human evolution as a series of ingestions:

January & February 2022

consecutive consumptions that led to symbiosis rather than just, something for her blog, intermittently watching a tv show called Last Resort: Dogs on Demand and eating plate after plate of processed meats. well, death. There’s been a complicated, half-digested shift in how pop-tech Occasionally her phone rings, and each time, the video cuts to another society has come to perceive this second brain – generally with a sort of woman on the other end of the line, listlessly chewing a bit of chicken. distanced, morbid fascination, as if it were an eccentric houseguest In Maimon’s projected version of the present, humans are stuck and rather than an integral part of each of us. Medicine’s demands, particu- bored. The other living animals we see are in even worse shape, ogled on larly around issues of hygiene, are becoming ever more determinant of the tv as distant entertainment, or simply extinct. Shelly’s one plant modern living, and yet we still ignore the body as a thinking, feeling pot is lined with dead moths and bees, while the tv constantly blares aspect of being. The modern, medicated body is a distanced machine, news updates about the death of the world’s last orangutan and last surviving great ape: “We are now alone there to be sedated, fuelled, fed antacids, not integrated or listened to – As the flesh-woman rolls around the floor walking upright in this world”, the newscaster declares. that studious nonattention has created of the intestine, we are left simply with a particular kind of impasse. That imA loopy, wobbly disruption to this the encouragement, “Explore. Enjoy” passe is where Maimon works: her monotonous existence comes from the human protagonists are solitary women trapped in a limbo of contem- denizens of the gut brain: yelping villi, bouncing bacteria and sensuporary conveniences. The prim businesswoman in Maimon’s video ously dancing microbes. In Wary Mary, a performance Maimon staged Leaky Teeth, shown as part of an installation at the Institut Finlandais in an anatomical theatre in Berlin, a narrator recounts the story of in Paris last July, arrives at a modernist house in the middle of nowhere, Mary Mallon, a cook in early-twentieth-century New York who unwitwaiting for a plumber to come fix a water leak. She waits for days, tingly spread typhoid fever, leading to her becoming known as dawdling around the house, working on spreadsheets and entertaining Typhoid Mary, ‘the most dangerous woman in America’. Maimon’s herself by watching a reality-tv show titled Nest Assured: Birds on Demand performance is sympathetic both to Mallon’s status as a working-class while nursing a severe toothache and, consequently, pureeing her food scapegoat and to the typhoid bacteria themselves. Three dancers, before eating it. Shelly, the incessant consumer of Indigestibles, also dressed in velvety pink, with huge pillow-stuffed soft bellies, twirl, dawdles, pottering around a small flat as she tries and fails to write bop and push around the theatre to a wonky, slowed-down rumba

preceding page Wary Mary, 2019, performance, Tieranatomisches Theater, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Frank Sperling

ArtReview

tune. They look like swollen buboes, or maybe they’re emboldened embodiments of typhoid’s salmonella bacteria. At times they come together in slow, balletic arrangements, and at others they loll ridiculously around the theatre’s floor on their bulbous abdomens, before being rolled up in an oversize cloth tongue. In the video of Leaky Teeth, a set of primeval cave-beings – grunting, grimy early humans who writhe around smelling each other and licking the moist walls of the tooth that surrounds them – live in the protagonist’s wisdom tooth. The woman’s tooth decay gives them a portal through which to access her body; at the end she collapses on the floor, only to be corporeally replaced by one of the tooth-dwellers. The primal being revels in the house’s textures, rubbing her face on the woman’s laptop keyboard, stroking a slipper, cradling a wicker chair, until a door creaks open from a gust of wind and she finds her way outside, escaping into the open air. The installation of Leaky Teeth included several drawings, densely textured swirls of ochres, browns and dark reds, from which a tooth, a hand or something resembling an intestine emerges. Sections of the tooth-cave seen in the video were arranged on the gallery’s walls and floors, looking more like enlarged, crinkled bits of skin pocked with bruises and patchy growths. As with the giant intestine-portal of Indigestibles, Maimon places us inside the body and asks us to have a good, mucky feel around. Heartburn (an instructional do it at home video) (2021) was released online in conjunction with the Helsinki presentation of Indigestibles. We see the inside of the cloth intestine, occupied

by a woman who seems dressed as an indeterminate body part, as a narrator leads us through a relaxation and awareness session: “Welcome to deep inside you. You’re going to be spending some time here.” The video encourages you to feel your breathing, then to explore the space around you using first your mouth, and later your “primitive gut tube”. Here, as the flesh-woman rolls around the floor of the intestine, we are left simply with the encouragement, “Explore. Enjoy.” In recent years, researchers like Watzke have suggested that ‘omnivore’ isn’t precise enough to describe the peculiar evolution of the human digestive system, proposing instead ‘coctivore’, from the Latin coquere, to cook, as better reflecting how our cooking of food allowed us wider access to nutrients, leading to smaller stomachs and greater mobility. Maimon’s work plays out where the coctivore’s stomach is leading: to a sauce-loading and lip-smacking lonely little corner where everything is overcooked and overconsumed. The shameless sharing of salmonella, the cavorting slap of bouncing viscera, the moaning mingling of bacteria – these, Maimon suggests, are a way to feel our way back into the contradictory multiplicities of the body. It’s not so much a case of ‘you are what you eat’ in Maimon’s world, but ‘you are how you eat’, how you chew and swallow, and who you are eating with – the slow communal dance of ingesting the world, waving gently as I dissolves into us. ar Chris Fite-Wassilak is a London-based critic and author

above and facing page Indigestibles: Heartburn (an instructional do it at home video), 2021 (stills), 4k video, 12 min 8 sec. Script in collaboration with Andrew Kerton all images Courtesy the artist

January & February 2022

The Pink Panther (film still), 1963, dir Blake Edwards (United Artists)

The Critic at the End of the World by Rosanna McLaughlin

On a fine January morning, Pandora Storm sat in her room at the W Hotel, having arrived from Gatwick the previous night to speak at Anthropo(s)cene, the fifth edition of the Valboir Art/Climate Summit. What an extraordinary few months it’s been, she thought, taking in the view. Beyond her window, the peaks of the Swiss Alps were festooned with ribbons of cloud, and plump mounds of snow lay upon the roofs of the ski lodges like feather pillows. Noticing a bulging tote bag that had been placed on the coffee table, she emptied the contents onto the bed. Inside was a box of handcrafted Swiss chocolates, a facemask with the Anthropo(s)cene logo printed on it, a set of locally produced organic toiletries and a letter from the curators. Dear Pandora We are delighted to welcome you to Anthropo(s)cene, an art summit at the end of the world. Over the course of three days, 20 international artists, activists and thinkers will gather to discuss the climate emergency and participate in a curated programme of radical interventions in Valboir and the surrounding area. In this moment of epic liminality, we congregate here, in the frozen Alpine landscape, to ask: What cultures have emerged as humanity stares into a void of its own creation? What art is being made as we contemplate civilisation’s end? And, most importantly of all, who will put the ‘scene’ into the anthropo(s)cene? Sincerely Olga Bröt and Martin Ruffles That person, Pandora felt sure, will be me. And why not? Over the past 18 months she had become expert in making a scene. Not so long ago she was a nobody writing her first article for autoimmune online: ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, a list of the moral failings of the contemporary artworld, from its romance with dirty money to its toxic collecting policies. She had soon ditched the stuffy moniker ‘art critic’ for the more exciting ‘art activist’, and now here she was, at a Swiss ski resort, where in a few hours’ time she would take to the stage at an international art and climate summit, having been invited to provide ‘brave and honest feedback’ on the programme during the opening night for a modest 4,000 Swiss francs. Pandora’s star had begun to rise in December, when she publicly resigned from her position as 2021 Critic-in-Residence at the Lyle, in protest at the museum’s ongoing sponsorship by British Petroleum. The plaudits were still streaming in. Just the previous day she had been named by The Custodian in a list of ‘Cultural Agitators to Watch in 2022’, an article accompanied by a professional blackand-white photograph of Pandora leaning against a brick wall and scowling, shaved head bowed, septum piercing glinting in the light. Along with the letter of resignation and a copy of her cv, she had sent the photograph to every media outlet she knew of. Pandora picked up her phone and reclined on the king-size bed in her hotel slippers and towelling robe. Leaning into the pleasantness of the moment, she enjoyed the scent of the complimentary hand cream – pine and lemon-balm, she decided, suited the pH

balance of her skin – and the familiar sight of the fire and raised-fist emojis that flooded her Twitter notifications. The calming atmosphere, however, was soon disturbed by the discovery of an unflattering tweet. ‘If you resign a week before your residency ends, and you’ve already received the final paycheck, does it still count as protest?’, asked a user called @timbot. Pandora bristled. She had never heard of @timbot, but cursory investigation revealed he had participated in the Lyle’s critic-in-residence programme a few years prior, and that he now made a digital zine called Rootstalk, dedicated to rhizomatic plant life, which he offered to send to his 62 followers for free. Despite the tweet having yet to attract a single like, Pandora decided that it was necessary to take action. ‘Tired of ppl in positions of privilege trying to silence me,’ she wrote in reply to her 25k followers, adhering to the maxim that attack is the only reliable form of defence. ‘Just resigned from world-famous institution bc I didn’t want 2 compromise my politics. Bootlickers like @timbot shld watch their backs.’ Having dispatched her adversary, it was time to get ready for the day ahead. Lamenting the difficulties of having to dress for the weather and the revolution, Pandora eventually settled upon a lilac lipstick and matching beanie hat, a necklace with the word ‘misandrist’ cut out in neon orange Perspex dangling from a silver chain and a shiny black puffer jacket that extended right down to the ankles of her black leather boots. Hiding her copy of Knausgård’s My Struggle: Book Five in the safe, along with her passport – there was no telling when she might be called upon to host an afterparty in her room, and she was loath to give the wrong impression – she headed downstairs to join the group that had assembled for the vip tour. The first stop on the itinerary was the hotel itself, where Untitled (Global Capital = Chronic Precarity # 18) (2021) by Milo Morales was slung over a free-standing wall in the lobby. It was a patchwork made from dirty scraps of canvas. Each piece of canvas had been used as a doormat during one of the ten artist residencies Morales had attended in 2021, a process the artist referred to as ‘precarious praxis’. Avoiding eye contact with the other guests, Pandora stalked the lobby on the hunt for material. “You wouldn’t believe how frustrating it was to miss out on residencies in Okinawa and Paris due to border closures”, she overheard Morales explain to a man in a navy blazer and red chinos, who commiserated with his predicament, having himself been stuck in a single property for the best part of three months. “I’m glad, at the very least, that I was able to make it to Joshua Tree, Dubai, Milan, Kochi, Miami, Vancouver, São Paulo, London, Barcelona – and, of course, Valboir.” The two men were standing in front of a section of the patchwork covered in Balenciaga footprints – evidence of the ‘precarious praxis’ enacted on the doorstep of a cabana in South Beach, Miami, in December. Pandora surreptitiously took a photograph and uploaded it to Instagram, along with the caption, ‘the 1% are out in force’. By midmorning Pandora was sitting in a cable car gliding up Mont Fort, on her way to see a sculpture by the artist duo Ekblad and Boogman. Upon arrival, the group encountered an astonishing sight: a lifesize Louis Vuitton shopfront, carved from a giant block of ice, installed on the banks of a frozen mountain lake. As the white facade of the shopfront sparkled in the winter sunlight, Ekblad and Boogman gave a heartfelt talk about the vagaries of conspicuous consumption, and the anticapitalist politics of producing art using ephemeral materials. “It was quite an undertaking,” added Olga Bröt. “We acquired the services of a team of ice-carving experts from Warsaw, and the sculpture was injected with liquid nitrogen and transported up the mountain in a large wooden crate, suspended from the bottom of a helicopter.” The visit to the lake was not without its trials. When Martin Ruffles took a group photograph without Pandora’s consent, she insisted that he delete it immediately. Following reassurances from the curatorial team that not only would no further breaches of her privacy occur, but that a programme of sensitivity workshops would take place for the summit’s staff, which Pandora generously offered to run herself, the group eventually descended the mountain, Martin sitting alone and chastened in his cabin. Once they reached the road, they were whisked away in a fleet of electric cars to see Daddy Bear, the next sculptural intervention on the itinerary, installed in the foyer of the Valboir Local History Museum: a taxidermy polar bear, seated in an oversize wheelchair, hooked up to an IV drip by the back of its paw.

ArtReview

That afternoon, while the programme of talks began in the town hall, Pandora took a nap and a swim in the W Hotel’s heated outdoor pool, and wondered what to do about the evening’s speech. She filed her nails, ordered room service and flicked through the photographs she had taken that day, hoping to find inspiration: the Balenciaga footprints, the curators chugging Glühwein in front of the ice sculpture, an old lady in a mink coat standing beside the dead bear. The problem was, she’d already posted them all online, and after the morning’s exertions she had no desire to sit at her desk and write. When nothing came to mind, she turned to Twitter, and was instantly heartened by the many followers who had rallied to her defence following @timbot’s attempted smear campaign. While scrolling through and liking messages of support – ‘speak truth to power queen’, ‘don’t make me come for you @timbot’, ‘pathetic attention seekers like @timbot don’t deserve the air they breathe’ – an idea suddenly came to her that she knew would really shake things up. By the time the light had begun to fade, Pandora was busy in the W Hotel’s meeting room, armed with a pair of scissors, some tape and a stack of cardboard boxes that she’d procured from a woman at reception. Usually reserved for corporate events, the meeting room had been transformed into an ad hoc community centre by the Bristol-based art collective Soft Riot. Pandora was impressed by how busy they had been. The chairs and desks had been taken to a nearby storage facility, the polished wooden floor covered with rag rugs, the word ‘Revolution’ sprayed onto the windows in seven different languages using a special type of wipe-clean paint, a library of handbooks for protesters built in the corner and the white walls decorated with picket signs that members of the collective had made onsite. At 7pm the audience began to make its way in. Soft Riot had curated a cocktail menu for the occasion, and after drinks had been ordered and selfies taken in front of the picket signs – ‘System Change Not Climate Change’ and ‘Capitalism Isn’t Working’ proved particularity popular – the guests sat down on giant beanbags that had been scattered across the floor. Once all had settled, the lights went out. When they came back on, a chorus of gasps filled the room. For much to everybody’s surprise, rather than standing with a microphone in hand, ready to give a talk, Pandora was lying inside an open coffin constructed from cardboard. Her mouth was covered in duct tape, her hands were bound and her all-white outfit had been daubed in blood-red handprints. At Pandora’s request, a member of Soft Riot handed out sheets of paper among the audience, each bearing the following statement: my silence represents all of the voices that have been erased by the organisers of this event. this is not a summit about climate change. it is a shameful display of global privilege. i refuse to speak until their voices are heard. i refuse to speak because doing so would make me complicit. As the room digested Pandora’s powerful message, something remarkable began to happen. First, the members of Soft Riot all lay down on the floor, striking a similar pose by pressing their wrists together over their stomachs. An art critic from Stockholm followed suit, having carefully removed her Acne scarf and placed it in her Anthropo(s)-cene tote bag. Then, slowly but surely, everyone in the room – members of the press, artists and writers, local dignitaries, a representative from the summit’s corporate sponsor, Schweizer Bank, along with Ekblad and Boogman, and Olga and Martin – rose from their beanbags and assumed the same position. For almost an entire minute, 52 people lay on their backs in complete silence, electrified by the spirit of resistance and collective action. Later that evening, Pandora stood by the bar, sipping a Solidarity Sour through a cardboard straw inserted through a hole in the duct tape. “You absolutely must come to Norway for the oil show,” said the director of a museum in Oslo, handing her a business card. Determined to maintain her vow of silence, Pandora said nothing, but she thought to herself, I just might do. ar Rosanna McLaughlin is a writer and editor based in Glasgow

January & February 2022

Enter the ‘Mutaverse’ by Fiona Glen

Forget Facebook’s ‘Metaverse’, digital media has more to offer as a force for animating beyond-human thinking and connecting a wild world with its disobedient, mutating other

both images Jean-Baptiste Castel and Astrid Feringa, This is not the Amazon (stills), 2019, video essay, 9 min 47 sec. Courtesy the artists and fiber Festival, Amsterdam

ArtReview

Before 2020, far fewer people would have turned to the internet to is practically the definition of ‘oceanic feeling’ – a term coined by the access an exhibition or an experience of a natural environment. French writer Romain Rolland in a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud. Restricting us to our homes and shuttered neighbourhoods, lock- Rolland used it to express a sense of being at one with the world, downs shattered any sense of digital platforms being the ‘wrong’ way undifferentiated from an endless or eternal lifeforce. From Davies’s to connect with the natural world or with art. As creative experiences memory of aquatic interconnectedness, she created one of the earliest and spaces proliferated online, they demonstrated digital media’s vr artworks: Osmose (1995). Wearing a head-mounted display large versatility in constructing immersive worlds and in representing enough to hint at a traditional diving helmet, along with a motionexperiences beyond human perception – both possibilities that have tracking ‘interface’ vest, ‘immersants’ would navigate a porous terrain with their breath and movements, rising and falling amid attracted ecologically engaged artists to the virtual realm for years. Digital exhibitions and art projects have certainly attained an luminous water, forests of vegetation and clouds of sparkling points unprecedented level of acceptance since the onset of the covid-19 like microfauna. pandemic. While many internet-based projects of the past two years The illusion of being free of gravity lends the ocean – like outer space – to comparison with the virtual. have been funded and platformed by Online projects offer such ease of access All three of these realms hold promises arts institutions – some willingly emthat the partial decentralisation of bracing the digital and some simply of freedom and have been rich locations forced online – the web offers a particu- the artworld looks set for the long term for speculative storytelling. But speculation can also be an act of financial larly flexible and accessible arena for self-organised projects by early-career and emerging artists. Even as prospecting, and each of these spheres is easily co-opted. In the sanithe large art fairs return to their prepandemic magnitude and recov- tised corporate imaginaries of the virtual, perhaps we would float in ering galleries encourage audiences back towards physical exhibi- bright, blank emptiness: an infinity pool of Facebook blue. tions, fully or partly online projects offer such ease of access that the Facebook’s recent announcement of its future ‘Metaverse’ partial decentralisation of the artworld – like many other realms – included a telling scene within a vr ‘forest room’ full of generic nature looks set for the long term. sounds and pleasingly green trees. Here users’ avatars stood, with A growing sphere of digital engagements, platformed by smaller, koi carp sailing around their heads, experiencing precisely the same transdisciplinary arts festivals like Amsterdam’s fiber Festival and possessive view of underwater life that aquariums have offered for Sonic Acts, centre ecological issues. fiber’s programme in November 150 years. This banal vision of an immersive world – and how environ2021 was hybrid, featuring contributors from around the world. ments can be coded as entertainment – came after Mark Zuckerberg’s Maintaining a critical perspective on technology and art, the festival demonstration of how Metaverse users could change the views from avoided evangelising representations of these disciplines as world- their virtual ‘homespace’ to any scene they wanted, conjuring simurighting forces. Part of a livestream of artists’ films, Astrid Feringa and lated landscapes that would be as unchanging as screensavers. Jean-Baptiste Castel’s This is not the Amazon (2019) began immersed in ‘Virtual’ ultimately derives from the Latin virtus, meaning poa rainforest, before slowly revealing the scene to be neatly contained tency, or in a literal sense, manhood. Many virtual worlds articulate within a computer-generated apartment simulation – as constructed a certain phallocentric worldview, centring the upright player, who acts, often violently, on a passive world constructed as a playground and, effectively, domesticated as rendered images of real estate. The ambivalence of such artworks forces us to remember our tech- for their desires. Military training, high-budget Hollywood action nologies of representation, even if this doesn’t resolve the problems sequences and first-person-shooter games have shared origins. But of actually making and managing lifelike images of ‘nature’. When beyond the controlling and aggressive roles that these experiences artists render elaborate virtual worlds to critique extinction, extrac- centre, digital world-building has, since its inception, offered artists tivism and toxicity, the medium can risk defeating the message. The rich grounds for animating beyond-human thinking – carrying carbon footprint of the internet rivals that of the global aviation audiences into a sense of interconnection with a wild world and its industry, the heat produced by servers disobedient others. in animation studios is high enough to But while Davies’s Osmose aimed Now that we live intimately with the radically to dissolve perceived boundheat swimming pools and a wicked triad digital, we know that our relationship aries between the self and the universe of mining, e-waste and chemical electo seemingly disembodied machine tronics recycling is leaching and leakusing technology, her vision of transcendence reveals an early-internet ing into ecosystems worldwide. Even intelligences is less than innocent leaving nfts out of the equation, digital idealism. Weaving in New Age-y cosmic art is not a simple route to environmental harmony. Environmental trees, quotations from great turn-of-the-century thinkers and the engagements through technology open up many new possibilities. cyber-stereotypical streams of binary code, Osmose had its naiveties. But digital world-making, like any other practice, demands self- Now that we live intimately with the digital, we know that our relareflexive use and consideration, not only of its material impacts, but tionship to seemingly disembodied machine intelligences that act also its effectiveness in engaging with the ecosystems and dynamic upon our wetware, shaping and being shaped by our behaviours and relationships with which artists aim to affectively connect us. impulse, is less than innocent. During the early 1990s, while scuba-diving over a deep-ocean The digital films of Joey Holder’s exhibition Abyssal Seeker (2021), trench, artist Char Davies experienced the sensation of hovering in shown at London’s Seventeen gallery last spring, offer a very different pure space. Here, as she told Wired in 1996, she felt almost bodiless, vision of a simulated ocean, combining science fact with mythic with ‘no separations between inside and outside’. Davies’s description figuring to create a speculative realm in which humans must cohabit

January & February 2022

Joey Holder, Centurio senex, 2021, pigment print on cotton paper mounted on aluminium, 41 × 53 cm. Courtesy the artist and Seventeen, London

ArtReview

both images Joey Holder, Abyssal Seeker [Demersal Zone] (stills), 2021, digital film. Courtesy the artist and Seventeen, London

January & February 2022

both images Sahej Rahal, Bashinda (still), 2020, ai simulation. Courtesy the artist and Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai

ArtReview

with the denizens of the deep. In the all-encompassing darkness of an divisive dynamics in their platform and to craft lonely, addictive undersea cave system, greenish eels and snakes wrapped into infinity personal worlds for their users. Algorithm-led feeds and targeted loops twist and twitch in repetitive cycles, while soft-bodied beings advertising replay our browsing histories to us as uncanny (self-) and creatures covered in exoskeletal spines pulse in the all-encom- portraits infused with desire. passing darkness of undersea caves. We are already used to living in intimate collaboration with In its etymological passage via Old French, speculation formerly machinic beings, processing information and being processed meant ‘rapt attention’, or an act of intense looking in the pursuit of through the data we create. As gpt-3 sagely offers on the New Mystics truth. Beyond sketching the hypothetical, speculative creation can page, ‘the internet is a collection of micro-grand universes’ – a cluster still offer a form of close attention to the present – extant dynamics of realities tended collectively by human and nonhuman intellioften become clearer as they are examined, enhanced and altered by gences. Through the digital, we already dwell within a multiverse, fiction. Abyssal Seeker reckons with dark ecology and the profound unpredictable and negotiated with unseen actors. weirdness of the existences clustered In Sahej Rahal’s ai simulation, in Earth’s biome: the irreducible otherBashinda (2020) – meaning ‘inhabitant’ In the current ecological emergency, ness of living beings with whom we our interdependency with and impact in Hindi and Urdu – a camera view share our home, or even our bodies. In follows a dusky red being with many on evolving living systems is becoming pool-noodle-like legs sprouting from an ecological emergency, our interdeall facets of a headless, rugged, rockpendency with and impact on evolving starker and impossible to ignore living systems is becoming starker – like body. With limbs rolling into action and our ongoing pandemic has made it impossible to ignore the from every side, this creature strides, tumbles and pirouettes over multitudes of microorganisms that fill and surround us. Now it is the peachy grass of its digital biome as mountains rise and fall in the not just aspirations of cosmic oneness that lead us to imagine (and background. Bashinda is experienced by humans as a video, but it is confront) radical and risky states of being with others; it is an urgent really a game played live by a consortium of ais independently operating different limbs within the strange digital organism at its heart. case of survival, where relations must be remade. The films of Holder’s Abyssal Seeker are featured in New Mystics, Through Bashinda, Rahal contests an Indian mythological figuring an online project organised by Alice Bucknell that explores tech- of society through the body of Manu, the first man according to the nology as magic and considers uncomfortable intimacies in how ai Manusmriti. In this hierarchy, partly echoed by Hobbes’s Leviathan is being used – for example, to tailor personal astrological charts. (1651), different classes operate as different anatomical parts within a Twelve contributions from artists including Lawrence Lek and body politic: the ‘lowest’ groups are relegated towards the feet while Patricia Domínguez were released between the summer solstice and others are elevated to the head. Instead, Rahal imagines the beings of autumn equinox of 2021, each accessed by clicking a card on the New Bashinda as distributed, mutable entities where mind and body merge. Mystics web page. Lined up in rows, these cards that turn with each Their agency becomes complex and multiple in a radical restructuring mouseover resemble a combination of tarot deck, online poker game of the social body, inflected by the science of embodied cognition. and Instagram grid. New Mystics felt potent when our pandemic-era While the dynamic of all-powerful conscious players acting upon isolation had only deepened our everyday relationships with algo- nature as an objectified backdrop is inherent to realms like Facebook’s rithm- and ai-led technologies, often in mysterious interplay with Metaverse, works like Bashinda and Abyssal Seeker instead present a ‘mutaverse’ where the human-centric perspective is troubled and our (self-)knowledge. Drawing heavily on Donna Haraway’s attention to nurturing expanded, forced to operate in dialogue with more-than-human agennew states of becoming with nonhuman beings, New Mystics is also cies. Perhaps in the mutaverse we might finally attain the state where inspired by K Allado-McDowell, who started cowriting Pharmako-ai we are ‘not afraid of [our] joint kinship with animals and machines’, (2021) with the natural language processing model gpt-3 in the lock- the relationality sketched decades ago by Haraway in her foundational ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985). down summer of 2020. New Mystics also collaborates with gpt-3, which uses In a mutaverse, ideas are unfaithful In a mutaverse, ideas are unfaithful and uncontrolled, polluting each other deep learning to simulate human-writand uncontrolled, polluting each across unstable boundaries and forming ten prose. Paired with a human artist other across unstable boundaries and a human writer for each New Mystics ever-shifting alliances. instalment, the model acted as a ‘digital Mutation is a function of life, fueland forming ever-shifting alliances ling evolution as much as disease; oracle’, delivering conversational reflections about magic, the internet and art. On Holder’s work, gpt-3 recoding and metamorphosis are earthly states. In our arrhythmic muses: ‘In Covid times, creating this [digital] space, you suddenly moment of continued semisuspension, it has become impossible have the power – you can invite whoever you want to your world [...] to maintain the fantasy of the world as a single, smooth-running machine. Our realities are multiple, partial and contradictory. You feel that you’re in a ritual space with people.’ In our digital present, sites of connection are also sites of discon- Beyond the shiny monolith of a homogenising market Metaverse, nect. If a heartening message throughout covid-19 lockdowns has many digital worlds already shift and glitch, overspill and interlock: been ‘together in isolation’, life in late-capitalist digital media some- an assemblage of mutaverses that echo, intoxicate and challenge times feels like isolation in constant togetherness. Despite their each other. ar constant self-definition as ‘bringing people together’, growing evidence suggests that social media companies have chosen to embed Fiona Glen is a London-based writer and artist

January & February 2022

Subject Object Verb Series 2 Episode 8 Listen Now Ross Simonini with Klein artreview.com/podcasts

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The (He)art for (He)art Program Artists in Residence

Research & Collaboration Shiva Lynn Burgos with Nice Museums of Archaeology & Prehistory

François Delagnes Starting 01.22.22 A special yearly participation to capture the four seasons’ shades.

Supporting

Shiva Lynn Burgos 02.08.22 - 03.20.22

Firouz FarmanFarmaian’s “Gates of Turan” Kyrgyz Republic Pavilion 59th Venice Biennale 2022

Tina & Charly 03.25.22 - 04.10.22 Chervine 04.15.22 - 05.31.22

Agenda Hilario Isola Valentina Bonomo Gallery Via Portico d’Ottavia, Roma Opening 04.07.22

Damien Deroubaix 06.24.22 - 07.31.22 Gabriel Rico 09.02.22 - 10.01.22

THHP Artists in Residence Group Show #4, Nice Opening 05.27.22

Firouz FarmanFarmaian 10.08.22 - 11.12.22

photo Nicolas Gavet

Flavio Cerqueira 11.26.22 - 01.05.23

+ Online Agenda

Artists participating in our program: Hilal Sami Hilal, Reynier Leyva Novo, Dimitri Mallet, Douglas White, Claire Morgan, Shezad Dawood, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Petroc Sesti, Studio Drift, Lucy & Jorge Orta, Elizabeth Von Samsonow, Eric Van Hove, Yahon Chang... www.theheartforheartprogram.org | 43 rue de la Buffa - 06000 Nice - France | +33987573031

Art Reviewed

From a vanished past 71

Christian Marclay Found in Odawara Enoura Observatory, Odawara 27–28 November On a late-November day so crystalline it sent the spirit soaring, several dozen spectators watched as Christian Marclay raked pebbles around a tattered piece of a hollow globe. The moment was part of Found Objects, the second of three performances that ran for two days at Enoura Observatory, an art complex about an hour and a half from central Tokyo. Joined by musician Yoshihide Otomo, sound performer Akio Suzuki and artist and khoomei singer Fuyuki Yamakawa, the artist banged, bumped and blew on a collection of materials he had gathered from the surrounding area. Instructed not to speak or clap, the audience stood in hushed reverie as the four performers batted around industrial mixing bowls and dragged a flimsy chair across the surface of a stone stage to create acoustic sounds. The sober wall was broken when Marclay tossed a hemisphere through the air that fell with a satisfying smack on the gravel surrounding the stage. Titters followed. As far as outdoor experimental sound performance venues go, Enoura Observatory is a dreamy one. Conceived and designed by artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto, and run by his foundation, it opened as an art and culture space in 2017. It’s also a piece of Land art in its own right. The observatory sits on the side of a mountain facing the Sagami Bay, and at sunset the galleries’ glass facades fill with a rosy and yellow warmth, reflecting back the surrounding moss, bushes and stone. Stones and archaeological objects, some dating back to the year 250, are arranged throughout the site, with certain vantage points best viewed at the year’s solstices and equinoxes.

The artists led the way to a second stage made of optical glass layered over a cypress framework. In the shadow of the mountain, and with a clear view of the water beyond, spectators pulled on gloves and crossed their legs against the cold as the four grown men rolled marbles, blew on empty wine bottles, tossed dry leaves and pushed Styrofoam about so that it screeched across the glass. In the clear afternoon stillness, Yamakawa, crouched on all fours, relinquished his instruments and banged his forehead full-on against the stage, his impressive long locks fluttering. After living many years in New York, I find there are times when Japan feels too buttoned up. One exception is when I watch kids play: loud, unfettered, not yet attuned to all the social rules. This performance was not dissimilar. The essential curiosity, adaptability and eagerness needed for such a fearlessly impish display were infectious. The artists left the stage, and we were ushered to follow – to where exactly? I wasn’t paying attention, too engrossed in watching Marclay and Otomo heave and hurl objects to the ground ahead of us, including a 25kg weight-plate and a sphere large enough that it took two hands to lift, and which issued a particularly thrilling sound like a laser-gun blast when thrown. The ground turned out to be the roof of a 70-metre tunnel, which we passed through next, to a score both industrial and womblike. Like pilgrims, we followed the musicians, who scattered to various locations along a route winding through the 9,500sqm property.

Found Objects, 2021 (performance view, Found in Odawara, 2021). Photo: Timothee Lambrecq

ArtReview

As the performance became less staged and focused, the experience in turn started to converge around a point: with the artists hidden from view, the aural scope of what it felt we ought to be listening to, and for, widened. It became harder to parse what was being made for our pleasure and what was already there. Our ears now trained, we homed in on every bit of aural friction in the environs. Live birds and planes and treetops performed for us, too, and so did we for each other. The low growl of the zipper on someone’s bag, the dusty clicks of rocks skidding under soles, the dry chuckle of a wordless joke recognised, even words on the back of someone’s jacket: a circle of the letters whoooooo. And we strained to hear more. Traversing the expansive space, we passed a mandarin grove, then found a squatting Suzuki, who was dropping pieces of bamboo and plastic bottles against a tree stump. The voice and visual artist Ami Yamasaki, who had performed earlier in the afternoon, joined from the audience, issuing intermittent dolphin calls and bird chirps. The final gathering spot was a bamboo grove, a trove of sounds waiting to be released. Pebbles thrown at random knocked pleasantly against hollow culms, as someone crunched a plastic water barrel. Fuyuki straddled a fallen piece of bamboo, forcing it to splinter under his weight, as Yoshihide hit a bass drum. Just then the perfect weather almost seemed like a missed opportunity; I imagined for a moment a great storm, and the world of wet, dirty, wild texture it would have played back to its rapt audience. Thu-Huong Ha

Found Objects, 2021 (performance view, Found in Odawara, 2021). Photo: Changsu

January & February 2022

Jonathan Jones untitled (transcriptions of country) Palais de Tokyo, Paris 26 November – 20 February A Year in Art: Australia 1992 Tate Modern, London 8 June – Autumn 2022 These simultaneous exhibitions in Paris and London, exploring the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the land, highlight the political, historical, cultural and spiritual importance of the concept of ‘country’. At the Palais de Tokyo, Jonathan Jones shines a light on the 1800–03 expedition to Australia by French explorer Nicolas Baudin, which added substantially to Empress Joséphine’s collection of exotic flora and fauna. At the heart of Jones’s display are more than 300 delicate, black-oncream, 20 × 30 cm embroideries, depicting plant species Baudin and his associates collected.

Made in collaboration with members of migrant and refugee collectives in Sydney, where the Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist lives and works, the embroideries are laid out in two doublesided vitrines. On a long wall behind the vitrines, a series of exquisite wreaths made, respectively, from seashells, gum nuts, paper daisies, possum fur, emu eggs and black swan feathers – materials of special significance in many Aboriginal communities – encircle six engravings of Aboriginal people developed from sketches made by artists accompanying Baudin. Jones embraces what for

Jonathan Jones, untitled (transcription of country), 2021 (installation view). Photo: Aurélien Mole

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Napoleon was a symbol of imperial power to celebrate both the individuals pictured and the humane and dignified manner (unusual for the time) in which they are portrayed. A lyrical film meshing closeups of the embroiderers at work with images of Sydney’s watery surrounds, and a soundscape inspired by the French expedition’s musical notation of a dance ceremony called a corroboree complete the display. Jones’s installation is rooted in the personal. Driven by curiosity about his own heritage (the name on his birth certificate of the father he never knew corresponds to that of a member

of Baudin’s crew), he has found in an episode of French colonial history a wider story of Indigenous Australian values. ‘Plants, like animals, are for Aboriginal people highly political: they are our kin, our ancestors,’ runs a quote from the artist on the wall. Today, Baudin’s plant samples reside at the National Herbarium in Paris. For Jones, the Palais de Tokyo show is a collaborative effort to, symbolically, ‘bring them home’. As French explorers presumably did not consult the Indigenous inhabitants before whisking off the specimens, the installation, which will later go on show in Sydney, is for the artist an act of healing that reunites Aboriginal people with their plants, some of which are now extinct in Australia. As part of the process, members of the collectives who worked on the embroideries learned about flora and fauna from the continent’s original inhabitants. Tate Modern’s group show also explores Indigenous Australian attachments to ideas of land and country. Built around the landmark

Mabo judgment of 1992, which overturned the concept of ‘terra nullius’ (the idea that nobody owned the land white settlers had occupied), the show features Indigenous Australian art from the past 30 years. It opens with a wall text introducing Eddie Koiki Mabo, a longstanding campaigner for Indigenous land rights (who died from cancer five months before the judgment was delivered), then presents a handful of works that fits the stereotype many gallerygoers outside Australia still have of Aboriginal art, from ‘dot paintings’ by Emily Kame Kngwarreye to bark work by John Mawurndjul. However, the 30-plus works by eight artists that follow may come as a surprise. Gordon Bennett meshes European art-historical references with ironic comment on colonial history – in Possession Island (Abstraction) (1991) he reworks a nineteenth-century etching of Captain Cook’s arrival by obscuring a Black man holding a tray of drinks beneath Kazimir Malevichinspired squares in the colours of the Aboriginal

flag; Judy Watson’s bloodstained works from 2005 draw on documents from the Queensland state archives to underline the brutality of official attitudes; and Tracey Moffatt’s eerie 1997 photographic series alludes to the ‘Stolen Children’ era of government-mandated removal of children from Aboriginal families from the early 1900s to the 1960s. The pathbreaking, First Nations-led 2020 Biennale of Sydney, curated by Brook Andrew – like Jones, a Wiradjuri artist – underlined the rise of a generation of mainly urban Aboriginal artists intent on interrogating their heritage. Over 20 or more years, these artists have persuaded parents and grandparents to open up about painful episodes in their history; today they collaborate with their elders to bring Indigenous knowledge and stories to light through the diversity of their art. Australia 1992 and untitled (transcriptions of country) reflect that process and invite white European audiences to reexamine their perceptions of the world. Jane Ure-Smith

Tracey Moffatt, Up in the Sky (detail), 1997, lithograph on paper, 61 × 76 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Tate, London

January & February 2022

Chiara Fumai Poems I Will Never Release La Loge, Brussels 9 September – 13 November In 2016, at an edition of Riga’s Survival Kit arts festival whose theme was the ongoing ‘esoteric turn’ in contemporary art, I saw Chiara Fumai give a workshop on making magic sigils. She demonstrated to a rapt audience how they could write down their desires and then remove several letters to create a talismanic symbol. A charismatic performer, the Italian artist captivated the audience with her conviction that one could effect change in one’s life by generating these pictograms. The event was enlivened by Fumai’s irreverent humour and tendency towards satire. These are aspects of this artist, and her practice, that are now overlooked and have been eclipsed to some extent by her untimely death, in her late thirties, in 2017. Fumai was essentially a bricoleur, one who sampled elements from a multitude of disparate doctrines. Her magpie methodology is particularly conspicuous in this Brussels chapter of her travelling retrospective, which features works dating from 2007 to 2017. Take, for example, the sprawling mural This Last Line Cannot Be Translated (2017), which adorns the walls of the largest of La Loge’s gallery spaces and could be described as syncretic. Fusing fragments of gnostic and kabbalistic symbolism with intentionally impenetrable magickal formulae of Fumai’s own making, it epitomises her attitude: referencing strands of occult wisdom to antagonise the intellectual, cultural and religious institutions that govern contemporary society. All these symbols, meanwhile, are surrounded by a jagged

line that looks like automatic writing but is interrupted by spraypainted symbols. Like several pieces in this exhibition, the mural is a reconstruction that has been authored by The Church of Chiara Fumai, the custodial organisation founded in 2018 to promote and preserve her formidable legacy. Fumai used her voice to great effect in her work, frequently dictating manifestos and statements to camera. Now her speech echoes throughout these galleries: from the basement one hears fragments of Valerie Solanas’s ‘scum Manifesto’ (1967), while the phrase, “Is there a spirit there? does it wish to communicate?” echoes from the upper floors. This idea of mediumship is a recurring trope; Italian medium Eusapia Palladino is invoked in a number of works, and indeed Fumai’s entire oeuvre could be read as an exercise in channelling. She made herself a vessel for voices she felt we all needed to hear, a transmitter motivated by a desire to foment change. In emulating the practices of spirit mediums, Fumai sought to create a scenario in which traditional modes of authorship were altered and expanded. Her engagement with esotericism was motivated by a desire to transcend and resolve inequalities and injustices that beset our current condition. Accordingly, she drew not only from these occult traditions but also from the histories of radical feminism and Marxism; figures such as Ulrike Meinhof and Carla Lonzi are summoned directly via incantatory quotations.

In coupling these diverse sources, Fumai created a dense but potent body of work that celebrates the legacies of women who have come to represent feminist empowerment. Using the conduits of cultural production, she resurrected, reworked and recirculated these legacies. La Loge – a former masonic temple dating from the 1930s – is obviously an apposite location for this exhibition. The interior is embellished with occult symbols, some of them echoed in Fumai’s own work. Real and fictional initiatory orders feature prominently in her oeuvre, as demonstrated in There Is Something You Should Know (2010–11), a mise-en-scène of liturgical equipment installed on the empty dais of the temple where ceremonies once took place. These props were used by Fumai in initiatory actions relating to an imaginary sect she conceived as an homage to filmmaker Jack Smith called sis (Scuola Iniziatica Smithiana); the piece feels especially poignant in that, until recently, it was not a discrete artwork but rather a selection of objects sporadically activated through performative rituals. Fumai’s death has altered the status of this collection, and now endows them with the aura of relics. In the case of a prematurely departed artist, hagiography becomes inseparable from material legacy, and it is impossible to interpret artistic legacy without recourse to biographical detail. Now all Fumai’s art is suspended at a twilight juncture, brimming with promise yet perpetually locked in a terminally unresolved state. Pádraic E. Moore

The Book of Evil Spirits (still), 2015, single-channel hd video, colour, sound, 26 min 24 sec. © and courtesy The Church of Chiara Fumai and La Loge, Brussels

ArtReview

Poems I Will Never Release, 2021 (installation view). Photo: Lola Pertsowsky. © and courtesy The Church of Chiara Fumai and La Loge, Brussels

January & February 2022

Post-Capital: Art and the Economics of the Digital Age mudam, Luxembourg 2 October – 16 January Draped over the battered, dirt-encrusted, corroded fuselage of a mig-21 – its detached wings trussed alongside its body and parked unceremoniously in the pinkish postmodern marbled atrium of mudam – is a loop of heavy, translucent silicone hose. The murky liquid being pumped through it, we’re informed, is liquidised pizza. By turns absurd and obscene, this is Roger Hiorns’s The Retrospective View of the Pathway (2017–), and it hints at the historical transformation in capitalism that curator Michelle Cotton’s succinct survey (featuring the work of 21 artists or artist groups) of postcrash, pre-covid art otherwise takes as given. In the title words of McKenzie Wark’s 2019 book (an extract of which appears in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition), ‘Capital is dead:

is this something worse?’ Post-Capital is largely preoccupied with the social and individual wreckage of life in the postindustrial, serviceoriented, hyperfinancialised attention economy of the twenty-first century. Capitalism may have triumphed over communism, hints the Soviet-era MiG, but a homogenised, denatured, generic culture of consumerism, commodified subjectivity and endless informational circulation is the result. Post-Capital presents a world in which digital culture progressively subordinates the experience of materiality, while work has become atomised and individuated, performed by individuals captured somewhere between service-sector intangibility and the logistics of the distribution depot. The digital gig-workers of Liz Magic Laser’s dismally funny five-channel video

In Real Life (2019) are co-opted into a fictious self-improvement tv gameshow, where a benignly smiling life-coach helps them better handle the stresses of their isolated, globalised, proletarian existence. Nearby stands the ghostlike form of Simon Denny’s Amazon worker cage patent drawing as virtual Aquatic Warbler cage (us 9,280,157 b2: “System and method for transporting personnel within an active workspace ”, 2016) (2020), a lifesize mockup of a vehicle Amazon designed for its warehouse workers – a motorised steel cage on wheels with robotic grabber. It’s where the unlucky among us might get to sit all day, picking stock to send to those of us chained to our laptops designing websites. The fulfilment centre is also the site of the wryly surrealist sci-fi of Cao Fei’s video Asia One (2018), with its bored young workers

Simon Denny, Amazon worker cage patent drawing as virtual Aquatic Warbler cage (us 9,280,157 b2: “System and method for transporting personnel within an active workspace”, 2016), 2020, powder-coated metal, mdf, ios Augmented Reality interface, 293 × 222 × 253 cm. Collection Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

ArtReview

attending to the otherwise automated world of stacked product shelves and conveyor belts, shadowed by a creepy little helper robot. Cao’s expansive video simultaneously captures something of the arrested emotional life of millennial existence – the two protagonists never quite manage to form the romantic connection for which they seem to long – and an unease regarding the lack of purpose of the contemporary (now Chinese-driven) capitalist world. Like a bad conscience, the ghosts of history erupt within this droning torpor, with the unexplained appearance of a troupe of young dancers who seem to have dropped out of Mao-era propaganda cinema, soundtracked by antique revolutionary songs extolling the virtue of industrialisation and increased production. With its ambiguous nostalgia for the propagandistic exuberance of the Great Leap Forward, Asia One is the show’s pivot, articulating how the vanishing sense of a better future has produced a listless culture of

introverted subjects, subordinated to labour empty of meaning. Even inner life, as other artists here realise, is now commodified by ‘affective’ capital. It underpins the hollowedout cgi bodies of Black people that figure in both Martine Syms’s chatbot work Mythiccbeing and Sondra Perry’s multiscreen it’s in the game ‘18 or Mirror Gag for Projection and Two Universal Shot Trainers with Nasal Cavity and Pelvis (both 2018). The latter ruminates on Perry’s brother’s experience as a college basketball player, and how his biometric data was sold by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to the game company ea Sports, to become the parameters for an in-game version of himself. Elsewhere, performance artist Ei Arakawa, unable to perform (and make a living) during the pandemic, presents a fabric led screen whose pixelated version of euro coinage represents the equivalent of the honorarium for a performance at the ninth Berlin Biennale, divided by the hours he spent preparing and performing it. It amounts to a modest

72 eurocents per minute – a double-edged comment on low pay for artists, and on how contemporary art has become a part of capital’s appropriation of culture. It’s not so much that capitalism is dead, but rather that today its subjects (us) seem so completely drained of agency. That the human subject is subordinated to technology and economic transaction has become a pervasive critique in recent years, and perhaps ironically, Post-Capital’s very focus on works that address this raises the question of whether art can truly criticise or otherwise escape it. What, after all, can art – and we – really do, if our lives are now so captured by the systems of a global capitalism that has no definable centre or purpose beyond its own reproduction? Post-Capital offers no answers. Still, if there’s some agency in looking at these works about our collective loss of agency, it might lie in provoking a further reflection on the selffulfilling fatalism of this sense that nothing can be done. J.J. Charlesworth

Cao Fei, Asia One, 2018, video, colour, sound, 63 min 20 sec. Courtesy the artist; Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou; and Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London & Los Angeles

January & February 2022

Louise Lawler lights off, after hours, in the dark Sprüth Magers, Berlin 17 September – 30 October The organising principle of Lawler’s latest body of work is deceptively simple, with characteristically disproportionate results. She gained access to moma’s 2020–21 Donald Judd retrospective after hours and photographed the sculptures in sepulchral twilight. Flipping a switch, then, on Lawler’s long-running fascination with photographing artworks in exhibition contexts, in transit, etc, the new photographs are appropriately among her most minimal. Judd’s precision-tooled boxes and stacked shelves only slowly manifest in the gloaming. Their metallic surfaces catch daylight’s last ebb, or sculptures sit in the shadowy background while other geometry takes precedence: a polygon of windowlight inching across the floor, a glowing red exit sign. There’s a strange parallel to occupying physical space in navigating these photographs: amid dark adaptation, you feel your way around,

get your bearings, the depicted gallery building itself before your eyes. What you initially see – not much – is not what you get. Beyond that, though, and despite their compositional gravity, the works seem quivery with potential readings. The aforesaid exit sign, which recurs like a chorus, might feel like a key, even an overemphasis of one of the show’s implicit themes: here is sunset on high modernism, as Judd’s generation takes their leave. Part of Lawler’s achievement in these photographs lies in the fact that her act feels, in a way, generous: changing the light in which Judd’s works are seen (or barely seen) affords them a new and moody beauty, like great architecture rising out of dense fog. It allows us to see these very familiar sculptures anew, and gifted – in a way, admittedly, that Judd might not have wanted – with wintry emotional

Untitled (Sfumato), 2021, dye sublimation print on museum box, 122 × 183 cm.Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London & Los Angeles

ArtReview

contours. These are palpable enough that one might ask where the pathos in these photographs stops: whether with Judd and his generation, or (this is moma) with the so-called American century, now fading in the rearview mirror, or American imperialism, or whatever. Lawler, nevertheless, isn’t going to nail that down. Her practice, for decades, has skewed to radical openness: touching the world with virtuosic lightness, slyly showing the myriad ways an existing artwork can speak when seen in different contexts. To do that to Minimalism, which intended to reduce art to materialist essentials, sidestep metaphor, etc, is pretty funny. Yet all Lawler would likely admit to, in terms of intent, is that she photographed these Judds off-duty. As for what you do with how they look and feel, well, that’s entirely your business. Martin Herbert

Cynthia Talmadge Franklin Fifth Helena 56 Henry, New York 17 November – 16 January Melancholic creators the world over have found solace in the analyst’s couch since Freud beseeched us to search our interior worlds. Obsessively and meticulously built from sand, Cynthia Talmadge’s exhibition functions as the claustrophobic reservoir of a mind. It’s also a hodgepodge of the high and low: a contemporary studiolo (the Renaissance elite’s room for study and contemplation) pieced together through dyed sand grains, a throwback to those do-it-yourself craft kits, but also rich artistic practices across the globe, from Aborginal representations of dreamtime to Japanese bonseki. Viewers enter a panelled space about the size of an Upper East Sider’s walk-in closet, or panic room. Each panel is a trompe l’oeil sand-painting depicting a series of trellis arcades, shelves and mirrors; and, collectively, a midden of notes, artist supplies, books on psychiatry and a

dartboard. Amid all that there’s also a ‘taped’ picture of a midcentury chaise longue autographed with Marilyn Monroe’s signature. Depending on how deep viewers wish to venture into the intertwined histories of psychoanalysis and pop culture, there’s a plethora of references to Ralph Greenson, Monroe’s analyst, and the patient–therapist boundaries they blurred (the title is an amalgam of their respective addresses during that time). Like a serotonin dip after the party, Talmadge’s ceiling panels crown the gallery with deflated beach balls and balloons, a few lonely paper streamers. The most salient moments of Franklin Fifth Helena reveal themselves through careful visual hunting: the sandy panels also act as mirrors, reflecting the opposite panels, revealing the inverse of things, leading to an endless search for discrepancies that never materialise. These windows, and their mysterious ephemera and clues, further obfuscate

a tidy story, and confound the distinctions between Monroe, Greenson and the artist. The installation channels, and matches, the granular obsessiveness of Liza Lou’s Kitchen (1991–96), the domestic space bedecked with beads, but also the work of Pattern and Decoration artists like Miriam Schapiro, whose glittered femmages elevated the sewn, stitched and floral as a fuck you to Clement Greenberg. Talmadge’s work does not jettison painterly conceits entirely. The clever deployment of Renaissance linear perspective bewitches, and encourages viewers to wonder: to whom does this studiolo belong? Here we have access to an imagined mind – perhaps infused with drops of the artist’s own, perhaps not. An individual fashioned by a good modern education lived here. The space is a wellspring for the intelligentsia, yes, but it is buoyed by the interior world’s mess. Owen Duffy

Franklin Fifth Helena (left wall), 2021, sand on panel, 300 × 335 cm. Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry, New York

January & February 2022

errata maiiam Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai 30 July – 14 February A seemingly trivial art-historical mistake provides the intellectual springboard for part one of ‘Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories’ (a four-part exhibition series-cumdialogue between the collections of maiiam, the Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Berlin’s Nationalgalerie and the Singapore Art Museum). Deep inside errata sits a display case containing archive materials from Singaporean researcherartist Koh Nguang How’s 2004 investigation into an error he found in the catalogue for the Singapore Art Museum’s inaugural 1996 exhibition. Evidence outlining why Chua Mia Tee’s National Language Class – a cornerstone painting within Singaporean modernism/ nationalism – should have been dated 1959, not 1950, sits alongside flyers, a timeline and a rationale for Koh’s enquiry: ‘He understands that none of the pieces of the puzzle is too small to be insignificant, and it is his persistence and consistency in pursuing the intricate trivialities that enables the completion of historical construction’. In the wall text, Koh’s corrective impulse is equated with maiiam and the socially engaged practices it traverses. From the 1990s until today, this private museum’s founders, Eric Bunnag Booth and his stepfather, JeanMichel Beurdeley, have been steadily acquiring Thai contemporary art that resists the stultifying state-sanctioned rubric of nation, Buddhism and monarchy. Their collection – this show’s departure point – is nothing less than ‘the manifestation of errata in Thailand’s public and some private collections’, the intro posits, comprising works that ‘discursively contemplate the errors in the grand narrative of national centric art works’, or deal with ‘absent or untold history from the region or beyond’. Unlike Koh, however, errata does not painstakingly unpick said errors – the arthistorical lacunae and mistakes maiiam is attempting to redress through its collecting habits are to be inferred, not illustrated. Instead, the works by Thai artists are grouped into six chapters that resonate beyond national borders courtesy of loans (video art, mostly) from the other museum partners, as well as pieces from

its growing Southeast Asian collection. Together, these themed constellations demarcate loosely what maiiam stands for – its left-leaning preoccupations and ideological affiliations – but not exactly what errors it is reacting against. In the chapter ‘On Contesting Grand Narratives’, four artists subvert or question the influence of the Indian folk epic Ramayana on Southeast Asia’s aesthetic and sociopolitical landscape. Anuwat Apimukmongkon’s mongkut (Thai crown), fashioned from rough-hewn corrugated paper – a mordant critique of Thai Hindu-Buddhist regalia – is a highlight, as are the five pastel pen drawings by Agung Kurniawan, each rendered sumptuously and broaching queer issues in Indonesia through a reinterpretation of the Ramayana’s love triangle. The biggest grouping, ‘On Cold War Remnants’, explores how repressive state ideology and anticommunist policy was, during the dawn of the so-called American Era, contested by marginalised groups near and far. Setting the tone is Oh Yoko! (1973), Keiichi Tanaami’s cute, psychedelia-filled animation for John Lennon’s song of the same name. Its breezy lyrics remain audible as you take in the half dozen works, from a fibreglass recast of Indonesian sculptoractivist Dolorosa Sinaga’s bronze sculpture signifying women’s comradeship during the Suharto regime (Solidarity, 2000), to Tisna Sanjaya’s fantastical illustrations depicting bacchanals of corruption, to painting series appropriating images from the Bangkok street massacres of 1973 and 76 by Arin Rungjang and Thasnai Sethaseree. Beyond a dividing wall are two works by Joseph Beuys, including a video projection of his three-day live-in with a wild coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). The penetrating influence of his activism and social sculpture on Thai artists and events is reified here through a juxtaposition with three works, including photograph documentation of Kamol Phaosavasdi’s declarative 1985 performance critiquing the then stagnant Thai art scene (Song for the Dead Art Exhibition (1985), 2014). Further on, bold displays of local and international works also invite rumination

facing page, bottom Dansoung Sungvoraveshapan, Duo Monk, 2003, c-print, 32 × 23 cm. Courtesy maiiam Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai

facing page, top Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ne, Ne, Ne, Ne (still), 2016, hd video, 32 min. Courtesy the artist

on the female body as a means for exploring identity politics or social critique, on the alternative histories of sites of social trauma or colonial resistance (from a rebel village in Thailand’s Deep South to a slum in Jakarta), and on artistic challenges to official historiography. And three more archives spotlight marginal events, collectives and artist-run projects, including the Beuys-inspired Chiang Mai Social Installation festival (held for four editions during the 1990s), and the forthright art criticism (also Beuys-inspired) of Thai critic-curator-activist Thanom Chapakdee. Each zone speaks of a network of concerns, unpacks small narratives. Yet the curatorial team’s suggestion that the maiiam collection embodies a ‘performative action’ – a remedial form of institutional critique à la Koh – also begs a broader hypothetical question: what errors, exactly, is errata a response to? Within Thailand, maiiam currently stands alone as the only institution, public or private, with a readily accessible permanent collection of Thai contemporary art. Even the obvious contender, the national collection of the Thai government’s Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (exhibited earlier this year in a show that Bangkok Art Biennale director Apinan Poshyananda chided for offering ‘no trajectories’ and serving a ‘Thai-centric discourse’), still lacks a longawaited home. This line of conjecture is, however, moot: here is a nimble collaborative experiment in collection framing, not a show that traduces. Within the four walls of maiiam, it functions as a well-structured, scholarly foil to Feeling the 90s: the inaugural hang of its collection upstairs. Neither claims to be definitive. But whereas that instinctive and personal presentation of purely Thai artworks lacks context, and occludes both local dynamics and foreign influences, errata proposes an overdue correction of sorts – a Thai art history that retraces the trajectory of Thai artists by intersecting with local, regional and global perspectives, by exploring and engendering entanglements that resist national framings and nationalist tropes. Max Crosbie-Jones

ArtReview

January & February 2022

Martin Margiela Lafayette Anticipations, Paris 20 October – 2 January In 2008 the Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela laid down his needle and scissors and picked up a paintbrush. Though, as a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, it was certainly not his first time. His first solo exhibition as a visual artist is contiguous with what he did as a couturier, albeit liberated now from the shackles of wearability and profit margins. It’s still about process, but instead of sewing dummies and shoulder pads, he has the tricks and tools – like Super-8 films and Flemish oil painting techniques – of a new trade to riff on. Film Dust (2017–21), a suite of three large minimalist canvases, is an elegy to the specked frames at the beginning of film reels. The human flotsam of hair and dust that would attach to celluloid is memorialised in diluted oil paint on discreetly glittery glass-beaded

projection-screen fabric, reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s photograph Dust Breeding (1920). The exhibition puts to us the question Sophocles asks: what are we? And then answers: dust ghosts, a rustling of air. More generally, the air in this exhibit hums with echoes of Belgian surrealism, and the conceptual firmament of René Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers, streaked through with the French contrails of Duchamp. Margiela begins the show with a Duchampian soft sculpture, a large lolling faux-leather dust cover. But pulled over something hulking and lumpen, Dust Cover (2021) is not the neat symmetrical sex joke of Duchamp’s Traveler’s Folding Item (1916) – a readymade leather typewriter cover placed on a stand high enough for the viewer to want to peak under the ‘skirt’.

Playfulness is not within Margiela’s ken. There is an attempt at a game in the ‘ghosts’ he has scattered throughout the exhibition. These are blank placeholders with titles and descriptions of absent works, shown only in the exhibition’s catalogue. Untitled (2014) is described as a bust without a face, executed in oil pastel on black velvet. (It is, it turns out in the catalogue, a Tom of Finland-like male torso with covered face, with a Magritte quality without the levity.) The ghosts are coy. They remind us of Margiela’s J.D. Salinger-like mythos: the faxed interviews he used to give and his eschewing of photos and public appearances. The ecru-coloured placeholders could also be a nod to Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951), and their proposition that blankness allows for artworks to shift

Martin Margiela, 2021 (installation view, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris). Photo: Pierre Antoine. Courtesy the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

ArtReview

and reflect on their exhibiting context – and for the viewer to project onto them. Except Margiela’s blank slates, circumscribed by written descriptions, do not give themselves up so easily to the viewer. Instead, they require us to activate our inner eye to ‘see’ them: a different and more controlling experience. One of the last garments Margiela made before he exited fashion was a jacket of blonde hairpieces, and this exhibition picks up where that left off. There is a lot of hair here, and it is deeply autobiographical: Margiela’s father and brother are hairdressers and his mother, briefly, a wig-seller. Cartography (2019) is a print on hefty pvc, wood and polyurethane foam of the back of a head. The whorl direction in which the hair grows has been diagrammed with arrows, probably an allusion to the theory that hair that grows anticlockwise indicates homosexuality. Elsewhere, there are photocollages of women’s faces encased in hair like fencing masks. There is also a triptych of men’s hair-colouring instructions to hide the grey. Each strand is magnified

to the size of bucatini and built up, as the Quattrocento Italians learned from the Flemish, in layers of oil paint and glaze on oak panels. Vanitas (2019) is a row of five bewigged silicon heads, featureless and round as bowling balls. Margiela dyed hair taken from his brother’s hair salon and implanted each follicle into the scalps. With each head greyer than the last, Margiela pulls at the knot between vanitas and vanity, mortality and its concealment. A bus shelter upholstered in fake fur looks comfy but is off limits, kept behind glass like a lion in a cage. In another room, something scrolls up and down in a fluorescent tube-lit billboard. It’s hard to see what it is up close, but walk away, look again and it’s a pastel of a closeup of a crotch or an armpit. Hair betrays the animal in us. As does our smell: the ad for the exhibition is a photo of a deodorant stick, big as a totem. And when Margiela isn’t discoursing on hair, there is meat. The exhibition feels like a butcher shop of unidentifiable cuts – a bit of torso here, a shoulder perhaps

there – rendered in moulded marble or pigcoloured silicone and set on pedestals. A wallsize photo of a circa 1960s office features a tripod projection screen in the middle of its room. There is an anatomical drawing on it, but which part of the body it represents we can only guess. A lab-coated man on the telephone sits at a desk nearby. What he understands we cannot tell. In the midst of beastly death, Margiela attempts to say, we are in life. And it’s revealed in the ways in which we try to conceal death’s advance, to reverse life’s retreat: hair dye and lipstick and nail polish – these are our weapons. These silly sundries are fashion’s lifeblood, but there is something poignant and vital about trying to keep up appearances. The exhibition ends in a small room with big glue-on fingernails in glossy red Nymphenburg porcelain. Roughly the height of modest two-by-four planks of wood, they would have been more effective at oversize Claes Oldenburg-scale, an epic vanity of vanities whose pointlessness would have been exactly the point. Clara Young

Vanitas, 2019, silicone and natural dyed hair. Photo: Pierre Antoine. Courtesy the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

January & February 2022

Isabel Nolan Spaced Out Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 25 November – 12 January The title of Isabel Nolan’s latest exhibition might on the one hand point towards a set of objects alongside each other, given space for consideration after the process of making has occurred; on the other hand, given the range of works on show, it could pertain to a state of being. A stoned teenager, perhaps; an ecstatic saint; a clump of time; a memory perturbed and moulded by all the mundane and ordinary interferences of everyday life; or even a cosmic event, say a supernova. There is no information in the exhibition that might clarify matters one way or another. But even that seems like a performative gesture in and of itself. Writing is a material often utilised in Nolan’s practice, in the form of texts that, at times, appear as wall-based artworks. Not here though. There

are the objects and there are their titles: Pull (2020–21), Into the dark (2021) or Overgrown (2020–21), for example. In Et sic in infinitum (and so on…) (2021), one of the many oil-on-canvas works in the show, words appear and disappear: I can just about make out the words ‘with’ and ‘the’ written in paint as they slip away into a multitude of thorny modernist curls and painted licks. The exhibition consists of 13 wall-based works, ranging from small oils to largescale, hand-tufted, 100 percent New Zealand-wool tapestries. When the sky above will not be named (2021), one of the two large tapestries in the exhibition, engulfs the viewer. An exploding sun that could be contracting or disintegrating leads one’s eyes into a rapturous cacophony

Miracle of Fire, 2021, hand-tufted 100 percent New Zealand wool, 12mm pile, 300 × 224 cm. Courtesy the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

ArtReview

of colour, reminiscent of the visual vocabularies and concentric circles of Sonia Delaunay’s and Robert Delaunay’s electric-light-inspired paintings of the earlytwentieth century. Miracle of Fire (2021), the other tapestry, recalls the architecture depicted in Sassetta’s Saint Francis before the Sultan (1493), which hangs in London’s National Gallery. Here a ball of fire burns inexplicably at the centre of a temple. The miracle of fire is, of course, no miracle: it is the physical working of the sun, and its unbounded form taunts the rigid structure of the religious building it is situated within. That disjunction feels germane to the show as a whole: Nolan’s recent works are insights, in material form, into the numinous condition of living in a world in a constant state of flux. Frank Wasser

After the Storm: Five artists from the Philippines Mizuma Gallery, Singapore 16 October – 14 November Last year, curator Tony Godfrey planned for a show exploring the new ways art can be made after the pandemic. Held in October, the exhibition was titled, rather optimistically, After the Storm. But there has been no ‘after’: Manila went into an extended lockdown for most of 2021 as the Delta variant flared up. The new works in this show were made in the thick of the crisis but demonstrate an insulated calm, as if art were a therapeutic refuge. Elaine Roberto Navas’s drawings of gnarled tree trunks from the park opposite her home, for example, have a monastic sense of introspection. With the leaves cropped out of the compositions, the focus is on the knobby burls and twisted roots described in busy black strokes. Named after dance forms like Ballet and Jazz (all works 2021), these woody pillars suggest movement in stillness and activity in repose. Given how lockdowns restrict travel and force people to pay closer attention to their immediate surroundings, it is unsurprising that many artists drew on humble, everyday objects as material. In Monoswans Juan Alcazaren sliced

up plastic stacking chairs – ubiquitous in Asia and seen anywhere from roadside eateries to funerals – and reassembled them into swan sculptures. You might say this was an ugly duckling tale: the chairs transformed from cheap, overlooked furniture to elegant birds. Meanwhile, Leslie de Chavez’s Begotten Jewels (Lot no. 1) feature assemblages of objects such as cutlery, toy soldiers and microscopes mummified in plaster and bandages. Covered in white, identifiable only by their silhouettes, the pieces seem fragile, like petrified remains from Pompeii. Notably, both Alcazaren’s and Chavez’s interventions with found objects anonymise them, either by dismemberment or bandaging. In contrast, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo works with found objects in a way that brings out their particularities. For the series of works titled Scribbles, started pre-covid-19, she visited stationery stores to collect the scrap paper on which customers try out pens. Her works are collages of these papers, which are covered in multicoloured squiggles. By combining these

sheets she creates busy patchwork surfaces that are as carefree as the accidental music that issues from an orchestra warming up. The offcuts from artist friends have also become her raw material for another series of work: castoffs from the creative process, having outlived their purpose, are salvaged and rehabilitated in box frames. Geraldine Javier’s used sandpaper, originally black but rubbed off into splotches of green-yellowish hues, becomes a leafy background to a moody ‘forest’ constructed out of guava branches in Kulimlim (Darkness). Flotsam collected by artist Martha Atienza from the beach are pinned onto a used mounting board from a frame shop in Salin sa Inanod (Left by the Current). Decimated pieces of rubber flipflops are placed against an equally wrecked mat board, once used as a cutting mat and scoured with cross-hatched lines from countless penknives. Poignant at any time, this work takes on a particular grace during a pandemic. We could all do with the hope of second lives. Adeline Chia

Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Pocket Garden, 2020, used pencils, wood, glass beads, 6 × 10 × 8 cm. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore

January & February 2022

Sin Wai Kin It’s Always You Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong 23 November – 8 January The ubiquitous motto of Hong Kong’s current Canto-pop boyband sensation Mirror reads, ‘Together we reflect unlimited possibilities’. Here, a karaoke-style music video of what is presumably a boyband, consisting of four distinctive members performing a choreographed routine, plays on two large screens. The lyrics “I see myself in you reflected back in me. It’s always you – you’re like infinity” flash across the screen. This is artist Sin Wai Kin’s latest two-channel video, It’s Always You (2021). It’s a sheer coincidence that Sin’s latest iteration of their drag persona – assuming the fictious boyband’s four masculine roles – is in sync with Mirror’s current pop cultural reign. But while Mirror’s name wants us to believe they reflect their true selves through their music, Sin posits the possibility of a fluid and infinite spectrum of identity and the multitudes it can contain. The artist plays the role of The Universe (the pretty boy), The Storyteller (the serious one), The One (the childish one) and Wai King (the heartthrob) – all four members illustrating another line from the video: “Together we’re the one, and as one, I’m many”. Formerly known as Victoria Sin – the Londonbased artist’s retired hyperfeminine persona – Sin recently announced they would now go by their gender-neutral Cantonese name. This exhibition traces their journey from Victoria to The Storyteller, the latter a role they performed live for the first time at this minisurvey show’s opening. The exhibition also features Narrative Reflections on Looking (2016–17), a series of four films exploring Sin’s relationship to images

of idealised femininity – and how fetishising those ideals has become normalised: often clad in shades of pink, red or white, outfitted with feather boas, an alarming amount of bling and an exposed silicone breastplate, Victoria Sin’s image is composed of exaggerated conventional feminine attributes. While Sin is theatrical in appearance, their narration in voiceover and script is subtle and nuanced – the varying inflections in the artist’s voice at once seductive but also instructive, similar to the tones found in guided meditation recordings. In striving to deconstruct dichotomies and binaries, Sin presents a hyperbolic female (and later male) construct: “What is she whispering softly in your ear? Sweet nothings?… Let her touch you, comfort you, please you,” they croon. The scripts are sourced from Sin’s personal experiences (with psychedelics, for instance) or books (such as Aldous Huxley’s 1954 autobiographical The Doors of Perception) and films abstracted through a lens of fantasy or science fiction; this is most evident in The Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), a videowork that charts the artist’s transition from feminine to masculine drag. Beginning with Victoria Sin, the masculine character The Universe later emerges; a lotus flower painted on their face alludes to the Jing role type in Cantonese opera, known for their lyrical singing and martial arts. The artist also draws on Taoist writing, such as the passages ‘Butterfly Dream’ and ‘The Death of Wonton’ in Chuang Tzu’s eponymous book, written over a thousand years ago. In a particularly arresting scene in The Dream of

It’s Always You (still), 2021, 4k two-channel video, 4 min 5 sec. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong

ArtReview

Wholeness in Parts, the artist wolfs down a bowl of wonton noodles, while a voiceover elaborates on the description, “eating… putting things into a hole in my body and crushing it until it was squished, where I could transform it into energy”. The wording evokes imagery from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1988), an influential text for the artist for its advocacy of alternative narratives for existing and thriving. Diversifying their narrative approaches, Sin created Dreambabes 2.0 (2021), a zine showcased at Just in Case, a group exhibition at Asia Art Archive that coincides with Blindspot’s show. Sin edited the volume and contributed to it (along with other artists), to explore how science and speculative fiction can be used by queer communities to challenge the foundations of storytelling. The Storyteller, a character created during the pandemic, becomes a key figure in Sin’s world of characters, and takes centre stage in the video Today’s Top Stories (2020). Purposefully glitchy (an aesthetic, perhaps, meant to reflect news media’s problematic nature), The Storyteller as news anchor reports polarising perspectives, with the work demonstrating how stories are told to create binaries of objective knowledge in culture. Culminating in the videowork It’s Always You, the show comes at a time when K-pop dominates pop culture, bringing with it the illusions of fantasy and escapism. The possibility of change and promise of temporality in Sin’s work anticipates the evolution of their persona, invoking the question: what character comes next? Aaina Bhargava

Today’s Top Stories (still), 2020, single-channel video, 6 min 30 sec. Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong

January & February 2022

Gillian Wearing Wearing Masks Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 5 November – 4 April In her series Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992–93), Wearing photographed strangers holding placards that revealed their inner thoughts. Signs… established her reputation as an artist mining tensions between true self and social normativity. This retrospective, featuring over 100 works in photography, video, sculpture and painting, cleaves to the notion that social masks brutalise, but also shows Wearing experimenting with masks as gender- and identity-bending, therefore liberating. In some works Wearing’s idea of the gendered self is obstinately psychoanalytic: a mask that’s most vicious when internalised. In Wearing’s two-channel colour video 2 Into 1 (1997) a mother and her two boys are lip-synched so that she

speaks in their voices, and vice versa, dissecting each other’s faults. The day I saw the show, a visitor walked out of another video, Sacha and Mum (1996) – in which two actors play an abusive mother and her daughter – complaining there was no violent-content warning. In texts that accompany Wearing’s photographic series A Woman Called Theresa (1998), of an alcoholic woman and her lovers in intimate poses, some of the men unleash diatribes against her – an illusion of domestic spontaneity unmasked and revealed as riddled with insecurity and anger. In Wearing’s work from the early 2000s, however, masks shed their baggage as instruments of traumatic gender normativity. Already in 1995, in the video Homage to the woman with the bandaged face who I saw yesterday down Walworth Road, in which

Wearing walks the street wearing a crude gauze mask, with narrow slits for eyes, her fascination with this disguise lies in its blankness and ambiguity. A similar impersonator-duality fuels Wearing’s ongoing photographic series Spiritual Family (2008–), in which she impersonates other artists. Me as Madame and Monsieur Duchamp (2018), a double portrait of Marcel Duchamp and his alter ego Rrose Sélavy, and Me as Cahun Holding a Mask of My Face (2012), in which Wearing, posing as the cross-dressing modernist Claude Cahun, daintily dangles her own face’s mask on a string, suggest that art and life stem from the same impulse to playact, with masks and other accoutrements of deception as a way to break out of the stalemate, or even the trauma, of the gender bind. Ela Bittencourt

Self-Portrait, 2000, framed c-print, 172 × 172 × 3 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York & Los Angeles; and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

ArtReview

Toon Verhoef Goeben, Berlin 30 October – 27 November Looking through the windows of the project space Goeben is, during this exhibition, a preliminary act for scrying: pour water over some tea leaves, as it were, and start drinking. Walk inside and peer into the leaves at the bottom of the cup. Or forget about tea and rather transpose this mindset of divination, of finding meaning in whatever you deem a suitable medium, to looking at Toon Verhoef’s eight abstract, mostly largescale paintings. Doing just this, I begin to see an orange-hued tree in one, logs falling against a pristine blue sky in another. Elsewhere, cigarettes float among sunsets. A bat hangs from the top of another canvas – or maybe it’s an opossum. Most resonantly, most darkly, it’s a human in a straitjacket hanged from their feet. According to the press release, the Dutch artist’s paintings

supposedly take moments of reality as their starting points, but each one is ripe for individual projections. Accordingly, almost like a Rorschach test, what I see tells me more about myself and the current state of my unconscious than the artist’s intentions. The untitled works date from 2013 to 2021, though Verhoef has been honing his artistic language since the 1960s. In this small but mighty show it becomes apparent that this language is precisely the absence of one: he avoids pigeonholing himself into one vein of abstraction, forgoing a signature handwriting in favour of continuous experimentation. Yet his experimentation is exacting, his combinations of acrylic and oil expertly applied to linen canvases. In many works, Verhoef conveys a sense of movement through wide, swooping

brushstrokes, but he knows to stop at just the right moment, and when to restore order through rigid, geometric forms. A tension is at play in the surfaces, too; some are almost perfectly smooth – an effect achieved by painting onto the front and back of a layer of transparent binding agent that is later affixed to the canvas – while raw linen is left exposed on others. The mesmerising suite of works embodies what Arshile Gorky once said: abstraction enables the artist – and, I would argue, the viewer – ‘to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite’. Verhoef begins with sketches from lived experiences, but the final pieces reveal nothing of the sort. Instead, his process of creating the works, and the viewer’s deciphering, allow for what Gorky deemed an ‘emancipation of the mind’. Emily McDermott

Toon Verhoef, 2021 (installation view). Photo: Stefan Haehnel. Courtesy Goeben, Berlin

January & February 2022

Peeping Tom La Visita Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia 4–7 November Surrounded by three white gallery walls, a cleaning lady sits on a stool, controlling a revolving circular white platform from afar with a remote. After a few minutes, picking up a cloth and spray from her trolley, she walks over to said platform and wipes it clean before mounting it. As she proceeds to morph into a variety of elegant poses reminiscent of GraecoRoman sculptures, it rotates her slowly so she can be observed from all angles, almost like a work of art herself. This is the opening scene of La Visita, a new site-specific work created by Gabriela Carrizo, cofounder of Belgian dance company Peeping Tom, for Collezione Maramotti.

The performance follows a loose storyline in which a ‘visitor’ arrives in the space to discover a selection of artworks from Collezione Maramotti’s permanent collection. As the audience follows her between rooms, what initially seems like a simple gallery tour soon descends into a surreal and at times unnerving journey, in which the lines between the human performers – a mixture of Peeping Tom dancers and cleaning and security staff from the venue – and the artworks on display are blurred. Towards the beginning of the piece, for example, ‘the visitor’ enters a white cube space that’s home to Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani’s Caspar David Friedrich (1989):

La Visita, 2021, site-specific performance. Courtesy Peeping Tom and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia

ArtReview

a large black boatlike sculpture suspended from the ceiling and dripping dark, oillike liquid onto the floor (the final detail added especially for the performance). After observing it for a few moments, she also starts bizarrely leaking black fluid – perhaps an act of extreme empathy – which trickles down her leg, staining her previously spotless cream skirt. Other episodes in which ‘the visitor’ respectively deflates and inflates like a balloon and is entirely wrapped up in clingfilm by a gallery staffer don’t seem to correspond directly to specific artworks but are engaging and comical nonetheless. Their humorous nature also contrasts darker elements of

La Visita’s eccentric narrative: there’s a subplot in which one sharply dressed character, who appears to be the gallery director, systematically removes all the paintings – replicas of actual works – from the walls and gathers them together on a trolley. Many are smudged and blurred, as if they have been scrubbed away, and a chorus of groans and cries make it seem as if they are sentient and in pain. The director herself, who has paint splatters up her arm and face, is the obvious culprit. Back hunched, feet skipping and shuffling, she pushes the trolley animalistically around the gallery, gesturing upwards as if calling on some deity to aid her activities. She meets some resistance, however, from a security guard whom she discovers sensually kissing a copy of Francesco Hayez’s Meditation on the History of Italy (1850) that she wants to add to her bounty. After a strained tug of war that the

director wins, the guard descends into a heartbroken, depressive spiral, eventually brandishing a gun to shoot at a portrait that, in turn, starts bleeding from its forehead. This series of events, and the whole performance, concludes with the audience being shepherded by security guards downstairs into the foyer. There, through glass windows, the gallery director and guards can be seen burning a whole host of paintings in a firepit. While this seemingly alludes to themes of censorship and the systematic erasure of perceived ‘degenerate’ culture in totalitarian regimes, I am left thinking about individuals in positions of power in the arts, and the influence they have on what gets seen, what doesn’t and the impact this has on collective notions of culture. While presenting contemporary dance in gallery spaces is nothing new, La Visita feels

pioneering not only in the boldness of its theatricality and characterisation – most dance works I’ve seen in galleries have tended towards abstraction – but also in wholeheartedly embracing visual art as an inspiration for movement and as a performative companion. When I interviewed British choreographer Siobhan Davies about her work in galleries in 2019, she was very careful not to talk about dance ‘relating’ to visual art, suggesting that the term denotes a hierarchy between artforms. It’s an understandable sentiment: for years dance has been seen as a lesser cousin to other disciplines, not least music, and many choreographers have worked hard for it to be viewed on its own terms. Yet there’s no doubt about which artform is calling the shots in La Visita, which uses and abuses – and even eradicates – the artworks it features for its own ends. Emily May

La Visita, 2021, site-specific performance. Courtesy Peeping Tom and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia

January & February 2022

Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève 12 November – 20 February Devised as a documentary from the future, New York collective dis’s Everything But The World (2021) reflects on the brief existence of the human race. At the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, the 38-minute work is installed in a huge room, made chillier, in the installation, by the excessive whirring of fans overhead. To watch the video I swaddle myself, pathetically, in one of the heated blankets on the floor. Narrated by an incredulous radio host (played brilliantly by Leilah Weinraub), Everything But The World presents our demise as inevitable; our achievements laughable. “The humans weren’t a disaster,” says Weinraub with palpable disdain, “They were a whimper. A hardly audible sneeze.” If the film offers any hope at all, it is by stressing Earth’s ability to endure without us. The scabrous humour and almost bitter tone of Everything But The World recurs throughout this year’s Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement. Titled A Goodbye Letter, A Love Call, A Wake-Up Song, the 17th edition of the biennale is cocurated by dis with Andrea Bellini, the centre’s director. As always, the exhibition’s focus is on new commissions, from established artists including Simon Fujiwara, Hannah Black and Juliana Huxtable to emerging Swiss artists like Giulia Essyad and Sabrina Röthlisberger Belkacem. Many of the artists commissioned have already collaborated with each other, as well as with dis. Because of this, people and ideas recur from one work to the next. At its best, this intimate, relational quality lends the biennale an inner coherence that pushes back, reassuringly, against the exhibition’s often-planetary scope.

Despite embracing speculative fiction and absurdism, the biennale offers little respite from the spectre of our imminent demise. This is hardly surprising, given that most of the work was devised within the context of a global pandemic. Camille Henrot’s Saturday (2017) is a notable exception, considering human hubris and the lure of salvation through the complicating lens of loss. Shown on a vast led wall in a subterranean concourse of GenèveChampel train station, Ricardo Benassi’s similarly poetic Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (dddd) (2021) presents a daily succession of 365 short texts, composed by the artist during lockdown with the help of ai. The day I visited, the message read: ‘That chill you feel inside – that ice crystallized deep in your bones, it has nothing to do with the weather’. Here I felt caught out by the ai, oddly seen, by something like an end-of-times horoscope. The genre of the tv pilot is a thread running throughout the biennale, with many videos taking the form of a concise, standalone episode. A hyperactive mishmash of tv formats, including cookery and police interrogation, Will Benedict and Steffen Jørgensen’s The Restaurant, Season 2 (2021) is a fantastical study of digital excess, while Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey’s Byron & Shelley: Illuminati Detectives (2021) imagines the Romantic poets as unlikely protagonists in an extremely queer crime caper unfolding on the shores of Lake Geneva. With nods to Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995) and the aesthetics of corporate and mtv culture, Mandy Harris Williams’s Couture Critiques (2021)

is a smart and self-reflexive take on the figure of the public intellectual in contemporary life. As pilots, these are short and snappy statements of intent. Their success rests on their ability to promise a future for themselves. Other works here use digital technologies to fashion new worlds. Penumbra (2021), Black and Huxtable’s video made in collaboration with designers And Or Forever, reimagines a live performance of the same title from 2019. Through its digital translation, the performance – a wordy, funny trial of a pangolin, accused of (among other things) “the murder of everything” – acquires a startling uncanniness that emphasises the absurdity and cruelty not only of legalese, but of language itself. Similarly, in Essyad’s Bluebot: Awakening (2021) digital tools create the possibility for a new matriarchal culture. There is dread, then, but there is something insistently utopian too. Of course, since the biennale’s first edition, video art has become ubiquitous within largescale exhibition-making. What sets the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement apart is the opportunity it grants moving-image artists to create something entirely new and at scale. With dis as cocreators, the exhibition is by turns bleak, frustrating, tedious and lol funny, but always insistently contemporary. Favouring excess, the biennale turns a mirror to our ceaseless consumption, hubris and self-aggrandisement, imparting images that are often both uncomfortable and uncomfortably accurate. Rebecca O’Dwyer

Camille Henrot, Saturday (still), 2017, 3d video, colour, sound, 19 min 32 sec. © the artist/adagp. Courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris & London; König Galerie, Berlin, London & Seoul; and Metro Pictures, New York

ArtReview

Will Benedict & Steffen Jørgensen, The Restaurant, Season 2 (still), 2021, hd video, colour, sound, 40 min. Courtesy the artists and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève for bim 21

January & February 2022

Prospect.5 Various venues, New Orleans 23 October – 23 January In late August, Hurricane Ida swept the Mississippi River over its banks and into the low parishes of New Orleans, where it flattened homes, downed powerlines and killed 82 people. Time also reversed direction: on the same day 16 years earlier, Hurricane Katrina had made landfall, destroying much of the city. That catastrophe prompted the founding of the Prospect Triennial as a catalyst for New Orleans’s revitalisation. Yesterday we said tomorrow, the title of the triennial’s fifth and current edition, was inspired by a 2010 album by jazz musician Christian Scott – but after Ida scuttled the exhibition’s opening for a second time, following a year’s delay due to the covid-19 pandemic, it became an eerily prescient reminder that trauma is recursive.

As curators Naima Keith and Diana Nawi note in the exhibition catalogue, ‘We know we are not in the after.’ Weeks after the opening, site-specific works by ej Hill, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Cooking Sections were still unfinished, owing partly to power outages and supply-chain issues. Several of the completed satellite projects, meanwhile, feel mismatched with their context: Rodney McMillian’s films God is in The Whip and Preacher Man ii (both 2017–21), for instance, are dwarfed by Happyland Theater, the leaky hangar in which they are projected, while Dineo Seshee Bopape’s multichannel stop-motion video Master Harmoniser (2021) feels cramped in a tiny backroom at the New Orleans African American Museum.

Five artists from the first Prospect were invited to exhibit here again. Among them, Dave McKenzie is the only one who has engaged conceptually with the notion of return. An elegant white cube presentation at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans opens with photographs of his late father’s chain necklace and the niche in a New Orleans cemetery where he permanently interred it. By burying a part of himself in New Orleans, McKenzie has given himself a reason to keep coming back. Nearby, Karon Davis offers a different kind of memorial to her late husband, Noah Davis, with Pain Management (2021), a white plaster sculpture of a figure praying to a suspended moon, as full and bright as the one that appeared in the sky when he died

The Neighborhood Story Project (Rachel Breunlin and Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes), 2021 (installation view, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans). Photo: Jonathan Traviesa. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans

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in 2015. Her work is beautifully paired with sculptures and cyanotypes by Kiki Smith that could have been made by the same hand. A series of collaged and stitched paintings on panel by Felipe Baeza, meanwhile, depict figures growing tree branches from the stumps of their severed limbs. Hung opposite the late Laura Aguilar’s self-portraits beneath gnarled oak trees, they are visions of bodies healing from violence and dislocation. Downstairs, a lyrical new film by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz meditates on various temporal dislocations. El cuervo, la yegua y la fosa (The raven, the mare and the grave, 2021) combines footage that the San Juan-based artist shot in Puerto Rico in 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, with interviews she conducted with an astrophysicist and with a Haitian poet translating Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–27) into Creole. “Próxima B, which is our closest star, has its own preferred now,” the scientist declares, as diffusions of milk and glitter

spread slowly like nebulae. Proust’s sense of time was similarly subjective and untranslatable. The film suggests that time is only real in our minds, perceivable by its elasticity. Time stretched on painfully for Welmon Sharlhorne, who completed the mesmerising pen-and-ink drawings on display across the street at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art while incarcerated at Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Ornate church facades in the Nordic Romantic style are embedded with clocks that seem to tick away towards his parole. A series of undated, untitled drawings, meanwhile, imagine the bus that carried Sharlhorne away from Hurricane Katrina’s wrath as a spaceship with bubble windows – a futuristic rendering of a difficult past. The haunting photographs from the third instalment of Dawoud Bey’s history series, In This Here Place (2019), also contend with historical trauma. In Bey’s pictures of slave cabins on Louisiana plantations, on view at the Historic

New Orleans Collection, shadows cut sharply across warped clapboards, evoking the Black bodies that were brutalised and imprisoned there. The shutter speed has captured the slight blur of leaves swaying in the Southern breeze, endowing these images with a quietly vibrating intensity. ‘Everything that exists is possible only on the basis of a whole series of absences, which precede and surround it,’ Mark Fisher wrote in The Ghosts of My Life (2014), referring to hauntology, the study of that which is both ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’. New Orleans is often described as haunted: not just by the ghosts of the enslaved people who built it, but by its own future, foreclosed by racism and climate change. In its best moments, Prospect.5 is humbled by the inescapability of this condition; rather than offer neat solutions, it proposes a sense of resolve. Diana Nawi writes, ‘The world is always ending, but it does not end.’ Like a river, art flows wherever it can. Evan Moffitt

January & February 2022

Noah Davis David Zwirner, London 8 October – 17 November Embedding his dreams on canvas and in the community, visionary American artist Noah Davis created a mighty legacy. He died in 2015, aged thirty-two. The artworks in this show hint at stillness and escapism in the everyday – yet still, this exhibition manages to bring to the fore Davis’s real-world mission, to bring art to working-class Black and Latino neighbourhoods in la – a rare prototype, for a healing kind of community. Davis’s largescale paintings startle, forcing the viewer a few steps back to take them in, made up of elaborate colours from which figures emerge. The figures – almost all of which are Black – range in age but are all immersed in the day-today: a boy is disciplined by his mother, figures are sat on balconies, are stood in doorways, are standing facing the viewer, or lying down, or just outside of their homes, sat on the street, in church or in nature. There is a whimsical quality to Davis’s painterly style; a mix of rich brushstrokes, layers and lines that drip down faintly. While the faces lack expression, the colours are full of depth and nuance – as if their emotions have leaked out into the misty pools of colour surrounding them – the background of Golden Boy (2010) is black upon first view but has an underlying green hue. Another Balcony (2009) depicts women – one sitting and one walking on a balcony, nearby another who is looking out from a dark window. All of Davis’s figures hint at a sense of introspection. Even in the few works with multiple figures, they remain isolated and glance into the distance,

as if contemplating ideas bigger than themselves – a stillness not often reserved for Black characters in popular culture. Davis hints at reimagining the past, present and future. Leni Riefenstahl (2010) – the eponymous German film director who produced propaganda for the Nazis – depicts a white woman walking through what looks like a dark tunnel, followed by a tall Black man wearing a loincloth and carrying a large box. Congo (2015) shows figures relaxing in lush green countryside. In 40 Acres and a Unicorn (2007) a boy dressed in white rides a white unicorn walking through darkness. The title refers to the promise made (and quickly broken) by the us government after the American Civil War, which would have given land and a mule for each family freed from slavery. Here, Davis confronts historical issues while inventing fantastical narratives too – the artworks offer a distraction and a way of processing the pain of the past. The installation on the third floor is an insight into the Underground Museum – a gallery and art space in Arlington Heights, la, that Davis set up with his wife, artist Karon Davis – a creative and community hub where his mission to bring high-quality artwork to working-class Black and Latino neighbourhoods continues to thrive. Shelves of books decorated with African masks, plants, crystals, personal photographs and trinkets stand opposite a sculpture by Karon Davis and an architectural model of the gallery, with miniature versions of previous exhibitions on show inside. At the other end of the room,

Noah Davis, 2021 (installation view, David Zwirner, London). © Estate of Noah Davis. Courtesy Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

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patterned rugs, African furniture (designed by Davis’s mother, Faith Childs-Davis), sage sticks and fabrics become an inviting watching space for blknws ® Original Programs (2018–19) – a two-channel film by Davis’s brother Kahlil Joseph. The screen is mounted on a wall covered with a black-and-white photograph of Black nuns. Stories about the Black community in the us – the increase in home-schooling among children and women securing careers in local government – are combined with clips of musicians, actors and people, singing, dancing, acting and playing sports, and of renowned thinkers such as Malcom X, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou discussing their ideas. Overwhelmingly uplifting, the film counteracts mainstream news cycles that too frequently draw on fear. These stories replenish and evoke sentiment and passion instead, focusing on a love for art, people and culture. Although from a middle-class background, Davis saw the intersections of race and class as important aspects of his mission; giving back and sharing the gift of art with those most excluded from the conversation. The Underground Museum echoes the widely discussed issues around inclusion today and his artworks represent eccentric yet relatable narratives that inspire alternative thinking. With the push for diversity and blm pledges in the uk, Davis’s legacy offers further hope and highlights the importance of Black-owned spaces for joy, healing and creativity. Rachel Willcocks

40 Acres and a Unicorn, 2007, acrylic and gouache on canvas, 78 × 67 cm. © Estate of Noah Davis. Courtesy Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

January & February 2022

Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar Soul Chain Kraftwerk, Berlin 11–12 December Writing about the Italian-born, Amsterdambased artist and choreographer Michelle Rizzo’s performance reaching, at kw Institute in Berlin last October, I drew the conclusion that Rizzo’s techno-inspired choreography was the perfect post-covid-19 love letter to club culture, one that recast raving as a holistic, healing and collective activity. Yet while contemporary dance exhibitions drawing on the nightlife scene do feel timely as the global pandemic continues (especially for those of us currently facing the covidinduced tanzverbot, or dance ban, in Berlin), they are, in fact, not a result of the crisis. Rizzo’s rave explorations began before the phrases ‘lockdown’ and ‘social distancing’ became second nature, and world-renowned Israeli

choreographer Sharon Eyal has also been exploring the intersection of club and ‘high’ culture for many years. Working with Gai Behar – well known for having shaped Tel Aviv’s techno scene – and setting her idiosyncratic, raw, physically demanding choreography to pulsating beats by long-term collaborator Ori Lichtik, Eyal’s work has been performed in a multitude of spaces, from fashion runways to opera-house stages and even nightclubs themselves. The last is true of Soul Chain (created for dance company tanzmainz), which, last December, was adapted for a site-specific performance at Kraftwerk, a former East Berlin power-plant turned brutalist music and underground-culture venue. The work was

Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar, Soul Chain, 2019 performance by tanzmainz, Staatstheater Mainz. Photo: Andreas Etter

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presented as part of This Is Not A Love Show – a series of Eyal’s works, each of which explores themes relating to love, longing, discipline, devotion, closeness, confinement, ecstasy and loneliness – curated by the Light Art Space art foundation. Despite the amorous framing, there was nothing romantic about Soul Chain. Soon after the audience took their seats on three sides of an led striplight-lined dancefloor divided by two concrete pillars, the 17-strong cast started to incrementally (almost imperceptibly) enter the stage. Wearing nude-coloured leotards and knee-high socks, the dancers marched, or strutted, into view on the balls of their feet, the stabbing motions of their legs mirroring the pulsing industrial score.

Before long, the marching motif gave way to a range of other repetitive motions: dancers snaked around the space in long lines executing continuous deep lunges, relentlessly flexed and contracted their torsos in militant phalanxes, and grouped together in close contact, their bodies knitted tightly together in an orgylike ball of flesh. One group of performers even threw a dancer up and down into the air repeatedly, as if she was bouncing on a trampoline. To call a performance repetitive may, by many, be considered a criticism. However, this is far from the case with Soul Chain. Just as Andy Warhol posited that life is ‘a series of images that change as they repeat themselves’, Soul Chain’s relentless choreography allows the audience to see new things in gestures the more they are repeated, pushing the dancers, and the movements themselves, to their limits. It makes its audience hypersensitive to difference. At points when the cast were

dancing in unison, some individuals altered their motions to become slightly at odds with the rest of the group. Whether the turn of a head, a change of direction, a contracted stomach or the lift of a hand to the forehead, these slight adaptations immediately attracted the audience’s attention. Extreme repetition is indicative of Eyal’s choreographic style. Soul Chain featured motions that occur frequently in her other productions: incessant marching on the balls of the feet and a repetitive backwards kicking motion are also found in Half Life, created for Staatsballett Berlin in 2018. As such, Eyal’s oeuvre is a veritable Where’s Wally? of signature motifs, and it’s extremely rewarding for devoted fans of her work to be able to identify them. That Eyal and her dancers can evoke so much intensity from such a limited movement vocabulary is impressive. While a sensual tango track laid over the constant electronic sound

score contributed a romantic twist to Soul Chain, the work’s emotional core derived mainly from the dancers’ deep embodiment of the movement they performed, which could have incited as much passion if executed in complete silence. Indeed, their fierce and almost frightening facial expressions further contributed to the intensity of the work. Opening and closing their mouths at varying speeds as they writhed, grabbed and flung their bodies as if controlled by an external force, the performers at times looked on the verge of orgasm, at others as if they were wretched with torment. That their champing, grinding teeth alluded to the effects of illegal substances also can’t go unnoted. If Rizzo’s reaching positioned club culture as healing and holistic, Eyal’s Soul Chain spoke in darker, more ambivalent tones about how decadence can get out of hand, the thin line between pleasure and pain, and the agony and ecstasy of trying to realise unrealisable desires. Emily May

Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar, Soul Chain, 2019 performance by tanzmainz, Staatstheater Mainz. Photo: Andreas Etter

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Books How to Be a Revolutionary by C.A. Davids Verso, £10.99 (softcover) In How to Be a Revolutionary, her second novel, South African writer C.A. Davids doesn’t shy away from confronting big issues that constitute the human condition today. At its heart is the question of how the specific events and actions that comprise the lives of individuals might speak to, and indeed influence, a shared social consciousness. A question of agency, if you will. The novel’s scope is global (here defined by the places in which Davids has lived). Tracing the lives and reminiscences of three main characters, it spans the events and consequences of the late-era apartheid regime in Cape Town and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in China and Tiananmen Square, 1989, and the McCarthy era in the us. Within that, issues of racial and cultural difference and prejudice constitute an underlying theme. ‘When had I started to fear people like a Westerner?’ a Chinese character asks. ‘When I encountered prejudice, I felt I could ignore it or beat it back with brashness, as I’d done elsewhere, and as most black people did everywhere when confronted with micro aggressions,’ a South African muses. Each strand is narrated by someone who on some level rejects or is rejected (and in some way

criminalised) by their respective country, someone who feels atomised within their society, while at the same time yearning, whether consciously or subconsciously, to be part of a whole. The novel develops around an encounter between two fictional characters: Beth, a South African diplomat posted to Shanghai and fleeing a failed marriage in Cape Town; and Zhao, her mysterious upstairs neighbour, a former journalist. Connecting them is their shared love of the works of (real-life) American poet Langston Hughes, the leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance, who visited Shanghai in 1934 (and went on, based on his experiences there, to publish his virulently anticolonial poem ‘Roar, China!’, in 1938). Using chapters that alternate between the characters’ three points of view – the first-person narratives of Beth and Zhao, and a series of invented letters from Hughes to a South African protégé – Davids traces each one’s search for the truth of their lives and their attempts to navigate between the interests of the self and of a community. (‘How could anything be yours – say like a city into which you’d been fool enough to be born – intimately yours, and not belong to you at all,’ Beth wonders early on.) Much of

it in some ways governed by the Truth and Reconciliation slogans: silence is complicity; speaking is healing. And as the novel progresses, by measuring and assessing the damage that both silence and speaking can do. Into this mix Davids adds the consequences of violence and action too: both Beth and Zhao are traumatised, haunted indeed, by the death of someone close to them, ultimately at the hands of the state, however indirect its touch may have been. Just as much as their actions in the present are a continual response to their experiences of the past. There are times when Davids’s particular form of interweaving and collaging can feel a little too constructed, when the difference between the specific experiences of conflict in different countries and different contexts (her descriptions of Beth’s South Africa have a more vivid, detailed and immediate impact than those of Zhao’s China) seem somewhat lost. And yet her attempt to embody a politics that over time can seem increasingly abstract, and to unearth what is shared in fundamental twentieth-century struggles for existence, have resonances that extend to the issues of atomisation and cohesion that continue to haunt society today. Mark Rappolt

Portrait in Four Movements by Chloe Aridjis Juxta Press, £12 (softcover) This short biographical text on the life of Mexican painter and poet Nahui Olin (1894– 1978) begins like something of a folktale: it opens with a bang, the eruption of a volcano in the middle of a cornfield in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and with Dr Atl, fellow artist and amateur volcanologist, who sought to apprehend this cosmic force through detailed description and depictions. The volcano then becomes a metaphor for the explosive and unpredictable character of Olin, and her relationship with the man who became known as ‘the satyr of volcanoes’. During a passionate and destructive affair that lasted five years, Dr Atl attempted to capture her volatile energy, not least through multiple portraits (one of

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which is elegantly inserted at the end of this volume, like an endnote) – but all in vain. Moving in a not-totally-linear fashion, Aridjis goes on to paint a picture of Olin as an emblem of sexual freedom, whose creative and erotic drives became legendary. The daughter of a general in exile, the artist (born María del Carmen Mondragón) grew up in France and Spain, meeting the likes of Matisse and Picasso before returning to Mexico. That’s where she first met Dr Atl, who rebaptised her Nahui Olin in reference to the Four-Movement Sun in the Aztec calendar (a creative and destructive force) and introduced her to the avant-garde scene of Mexico’s Belle Époque (she notably posed for Diego Rivera, Antonio Garduño and a visiting

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Edward Weston). After the death of one of her later lovers (a ship’s captain), in 1929, Olin’s life started to unravel, and she slowly fell into oblivion, dying poor and alone. Aridjis’s novels show a taste for the spectral and uncanny, often featuring characters adrift in cities haunted by the ghosts of history, made manifest here in the choice and depiction of her subject. Yet if the novelist tells a good story, this historical and literary portrait falls a bit flat: in pursuing her fascination for the mythical aspects of Olin’s story (as immortalised by the many men of her life), Aridjis leaves aside any engagement (however tentative) with her poems and paintings, which might have offered this portrait greater depth and volume. Louise Darblay

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Self-Portrait by Carla Lonzi, translated by Allison Grimaldi Donohue Divided Publishing, £13.99 (softcover)

What is art criticism? Does anyone really care? Criticism is about creating discussion and fostering community; at least that’s what critics and those invested in criticism like to tell themselves. But after around ten years of working as an art critic, Carla Lonzi started to feel the opposite: that the role of the critic involved a ‘codified alienation towards the artistic fact’, that criticism was an accomplice to a class system, corralling art into a rarefied sphere in which creativity and life are seen as separate things. Self-Portrait – originally published in 1969 and translated here for the first time – is the Italian writer’s extended dissection of and farewell to criticism. Her only subsequent writing about art occurred in her diary; energy was instead poured into activism and feminist writings, and cofounding the influential collective Rivolta Femminile. The premise of Self-Portrait is simple enough: to cut together a disparate set of interviews with 14 artists into a new, longer, meandering conversation. The result is at first deeply disorienting, as if you’ve dropped into a room where everyone is talking past each other – only one of the interviewees, Carla Accardi, is a woman; the rest are men who seem more than happy to pontificate. Drawn from interviews recorded between 1965 and 1969,

the book is a handy portrait of a time: artists like Jannis Kounellis and Lucio Fontana speak at length about their approach to artmaking while offering all manner of asides – talking about nature, unions or hippies, or Fontana insisting that his concept of Spatialism was much more important than Pop. At times the book is insightful, at others turgid, but that’s the point. All the formatting and cleaning up of artist statements was what stripped criticism of its potential. Here the half-baked thoughts and dead ends that form part of most interviews but are usually edited out for the sake of ‘clarity’ are the focus. Art comes closer to life. While some of the language used by Lonzi’s interviewees is dated, peppered with casual racism and misogyny and offhand art-historical generalisations, the art system described and the stratifications embedded within it are, depressingly, much the same as today’s. And the critic still performs an unresolved role, pinging between amplifier, translator or obfuscator. Lonzi’s tussle with criticism is useful in the sense that it helps shed light on what has become a perpetual ‘crisis’ of criticism. This isn’t because contemporary criticism is limp, or fading, or ignored; ultimately it’s critics themselves who are always

on the point of breaking. Criticism is a personal crisis. Sometimes it doesn’t work; usually it’s too many thoughts jammed into too few words that can only ever cover the tip of the iceberg. Or as Lonzi puts it, the critic ‘trespasses onto things that humanity has toiled at much more and much more deeply, and says his piece and then he returns to his smallminded things’. Self-Portrait has been likened to Lee Lozano’s Dropout Piece (begun c. 1970), but it’s worth also recognising it as part of a line of literary goodbyes to art criticism, alongside books like Amy Fung’s Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being (2019) – which comes to many of the same conclusions – and William J. Gass’s 2015 essay ‘A Body of Work’, written as he left criticism for the work of nursing. But no one else has exited so comprehensively or so stylishly as Lonzi. Self-Portrait is as personal as it is meandering, unresolved and open. More importantly it offers potential for the critic as both editor and conduit – shaping a mode of writing that mirrors the multivalence of an artwork, teetering wildly on the precipice between insight and invisibility, complicity and collapse. This, Lonzi suggests, is where criticism, and the critic, are found. Chris Fite-Wassilak

Hello Future by Farah Al Qasimi Capricious, $65 (hardcover) Blankets covered in floral patterns burst across a floor on which are plates laden with oranges, a ripe papaya the colour of sunset, bananas, a pomegranate, seeds spilling out, chocolates and tinned fruit served in a frosted glass. If there was ever a book that ought to be judged by its cover, it would be Emirati photographer Farah Al Qasimi’s Hello Future, which opens onto a kaleidoscopic wonderland of jelly cakes, perfume bottles, Gatorade, artificial flowers, shoppingmall atriums dazzling with lights and mirrors, birds, baroque-inspired furniture, paradisethemed wallpaper and more. Part photobook and part monograph, it’s a critique of contemporary consumerist culture that revels in its aesthetic. The photograph Lunch (2018) appears on the front of the book’s dustjacket. But this is no

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ordinary dustjacket: every object pictured can be peeled off as a sticker and rearranged on the book’s mirrorlike silver hardcover, like a personalised still life. ‘There’s something really comforting about not having to assign so much heaviness to a moment,’ Al Qasimi says to fellow artist Meriem Bennani in a discussion published here that addresses such topics as Islamic calligraphy, comics, Arabic language, SpongeBob SquarePants, classical music and growing up between Emirati and us cultures, equating this experience with her style of photography that she describes as ‘seasickness’, a ‘constant back-and-forth motion and cultural anxiety’. But not all is bubble-gum coloured in this wonderland; sobering moments occur in details

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in which figures are only partly visible (faces obscured by smoke from a hookah, a girl halfconcealed by drapery), or in more quiet scenes (two men touch noses in greeting, hooded falcons perch in a clinic at Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, a foggy landscape from which emerges a border wall). Or in blue monotone images that punctuate the main section of photographs, beginning with a storefront bearing the titular ‘Hello Future’ and closing with a still from The Legend of Snow White (1994) that reads ‘end’. These behave like hypnic jerks – each image date- and time-stamped – should you become too absorbed in the book. Images of mirrors bookend Hello Future on the inside flaps: one to suck you into the book’s manic maximalism, and another to spit you out. Fi Churchman

The Nutmeg’s Curse – Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh John Murray, £20 (hardcover) What measures might mitigate the fastworsening climate emergency are widely known, even if, despite the urgency of the situation, not adequately acted upon. Amitav Ghosh – the Indian novelist whose 2016 book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, was a polemic on the failure of humans in understanding and acknowledging the scale and violence of climate change – knows this, and consequently his new book does not seek to reiterate such solutions. Instead, he traces why so much of humanity began to treat the Earth as an object to be exploited and profited from. In doing so he implicates Europe’s colonial ambitions from the seventeenth century onwards. Ghosh argues that the dissociation of human beings from the natural world, and the dismissal of Indigenous, tribal understanding in which landscape and local nature meant much more than usable resources, was a metaphysics that emerged in Europe as colonial empires were making inroads into the Americas and eastwards. Ghosh employs the gruesome history of the Banda Islands, administered from Indonesia, as a point of departure to critique the colonial mindset of ‘official modernity’ and how it continues to determine geopolitics today. During the 1620s, thousands of inhabitants of these spice islands were massacred by the Dutch East India Company, to secure its

monopoly over the highly lucrative trade in nutmeg, a spice that then grew only in the forests on the islands. Naturally, the race to secure steady supplies of nutmeg and clove, which only grew on the neighbouring islands, was one that first the Dutch, then the English, fought fiercely to win. ‘The spice race was the space race of its time,’ Ghosh writes. Ghosh chooses to focus on the Americas and Europe while examining how the climate emergency today is both an extension and a result of imperialistic policies going back some 500 years. Some of the English mercenaries who eliminated the Bandanese were part of expeditions that also killed thousands of Amerindians. With trade, commerce and expansion of territory, genocidal policies and the terraforming of every landscape into ‘neo-Europes’ went global. The settlers, beginning with the Bandanese and carrying it everywhere they went, pursued a policy that was not just genocide, but a greater violence that can only be called ‘omnicide’ – the desire to destroy everything, Ghosh writes. In the process, Indigenous knowledge and value systems were violently suppressed, the songs, stories and intuitive awareness people had to connect with the land (as opposed to a resource called ‘land’) were erased and First Peoples were rendered mute by the settler colonialists. This, Ghosh argues, ‘enabled the metaphysical leap

whereby the Earth and everything in it could be reduced to inertness’. The Nutmeg’s Curse draws on layers of modern geopolitical developments – from mass migrations and political breakdowns to environmental degradation and the current pandemic – to understand just how entrenched the colonial mindset remains in developed societies. While the bulk of his reportage and references keep the narrative arc of the book mostly in the Global North, Ghosh acknowledges that ‘the most voracious agents of extractivist capitalism today are probably those who came late to settler colonialism, like the elites of many Asian and African countries’. The book often returns to episodes from Indigenous history, taking cues from shamans, scientists and what is being called ‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge’ to suggest that viewing the world only through a prism of mechanistic politics without including nonhuman voices that are ‘all our relatives’ can no longer pass muster. Identifying that a vast majority of human beings live today like the colonialists once did, taking and taking from the Earth as if a future was absolutely guaranteed, Ghosh urges an urgent restoration of nonhuman actors – the land, the animals, the spirits – and adoption of vitalist politics when we tell ourselves stories about the Earth and our relationship with it. Deepa Bhasthi

Marcel Duchamp by Robert Lebel, translated by George Heard Hamilton Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £100 / $125 (hardcover) A century ago, Duchamp was just finishing a decade of work that would change the course of art. From Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), via Fountain (1917), to The Large Glass (finished in 1923), Duchamp patiently worked through questions about art’s relation to aesthetics, philosophy and its own institutions with which it would take the ‘artworld’ 50 years to come to terms. Duchamp died in 1968. The publication of Robert Lebel’s Marcel Duchamp, in 1959, in French and English translation, marked the beginning of Duchamp’s postwar canonisation. This facsimile edition is a lavish remaking of the original in faithful detail, and collectors will covet it. (Penniless art students may want to borrow from the library, assuming there are copies enough to make it to art colleges.)

But this ‘first take’ on Duchamp, long before he was an art-school-seminar mainstay, is genuinely impressive. Lebel, art historian, supporter of the Surrealists and other cultural radicals, offers a rhapsodic but fluid account of Duchamp’s life and works, with George Heard Hamilton’s translation managing to keep Lebel’s elaborate Francophone syntax readable to the uninitiated, even when Lebel is hauling the reader through the thickets of Duchamp’s more esoteric ruminations. Unlike posthumous academic analyses of Duchamp, Lebel’s account emphasises the ethical nature of Duchamp’s strategies of evasion and negation. The supposedly arbitrary choice of the readymade Lebel interprets as Duchamp’s desire to ‘depreciate our… notion of value in

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order to exalt the strictly private and sovereign choice which is accountable to no one’. Individual sovereignty is not arbitrary, but unbeholden to the values of others. Duchamp refused to be professionalised by the ‘art system’, even if this meant abandoning his ‘career’. Rejecting the repetitive status of a cog in a machine underpins the machinelike, sexualised binaries of Duchamp’s cryptic works, his play with gender (his alter ego Rrose Sélavy) and his constant sabotaging of desire and visual pleasure by language and cognition. At a moment when an overinstitutionalised artworld is desperate to rediscover a sense of its positive purpose and fulfilment, it’s fascinating to revisit Duchamp’s foundational, profoundly political act of negation. J.J. Charlesworth

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ArtReview

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow Allen Lane, £30 (hardcover)

In 1683 an impoverished French noble, the Baron de Lahontan, arrived in Canada with the French army. Over the next decade he interacted with the Indigenous Wendat peoples, who loved a good debate about society, religion and law. Lahontan, it seems, was regularly roasted by Kandiaronk – a particularly eloquent Wendat orator – who took the position of rational sceptic to Lahontan’s Jesuit worldview. ‘Don’t you see that, without punishment, murder and misery would be the norm,’ Lahontan would argue. ‘I find it hard to see how you lot could be more miserable than you already are,’ Kandiaronk would retort. This and other observations that the Indigenous peoples of North America made about seventeenth-century Europe’s emphases on religion, money and obedience to kings is what the late anthropologist and activist David Graeber and the archaeologist and activist David Wengrow call ‘the indigenous critique of Europe’: one of the many understudied factors that impacted events in that small corner of the world in which, our Eurocentric curricula teach us, all History happened. As figures like Lahontan published their ‘dialogues with savages of good sense’ from the New World, debates about freedom and critical thought were stimulated in the salons of Amsterdam and Paris. These were not concepts evidently desirable or necessary in the eyes of most Europeans at the time, when Catholicism and Protestantism alike emphasised obedience as integral to both personal salvation and social order. That is not to say that encountering unimpressed Native Americans got Europeans thinking their way to the Enlightenment, but it is exemplary of the kind of long overdue – and factually supported – connections Graeber and Wengrow bring to light. With wry humour, flowing prose and a range of evidence, the authors cut through the unscientific claims of the Big-Books-onHumanity-by-Big-Men genre (poking particularly at Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker). The authors are by no means small men in their fields. Graeber was, until his death last year at just fifty-nine, a remarkable economic anthropologist and an intellectual leader of the Occupy Wall Street movement, while Wengrow is a widely published professor of comparative archaeology at ucl and actively involved in union organising. But Graeber and Wengrow’s approach, tone and perspective are miles away from the aforementioned ‘Big Men’. The authors analyse without any hint

of Western exceptionalism, give credit generously to scholarship (mostly by women) wrongly ignored and prioritise understanding how people made and remade their everyday lives, rather than which empires, kings and states did what. The undue aggrandisement of questions related to the latter has all too often explicitly or implicitly contained a project of finding some sort of grand narrative or overall trajectory of ‘development’. This keeps circling back to, the book points out, either a Rousseauian approach to the history of humanity (that we ‘ran headlong into our chains’ from an Edenic life in the wild to accidentally developing civilisation) or the Hobbesian view (that things like states are necessary evils that create functioning societies out of the brutes we really are). Generalisations deriving from unsupported assumptions – using outdated midcentury British anthropological scholarship that swims close to eugenicist notions of racial difference as cognitive difference – are still discernible within these two stories, as the authors point out. If there is a core message to this book, it is that the linearity of both is the antithesis of the actual social and political experimentation that contemporary archaeological evidence suggests earlier humans undertook for 30,000 years. Why, then, do we assume that we – scrolling on our phones as a handful of people with inherited wealth buy guns off each other – are more capable of critical inquiry, free will, imagination or cognitive skill than our ancient ancestors? These are biases we have only really acquired in the last 200 years. Tellingly, Graeber and Wengrow emphasise that this also happens to be the 200 years during which, under the aegis of imperial conquest and colonialism, the notion of a linear line of human ‘development’ (conveniently reaching its zenith in the white European male) was all the rage. Combine this with colonial adventurers digging up treasures in Africa and Asia to then publish broad generalisations based on what they found, and you get a whole lot of assumptions that serve imperialism well. But truth? Not so much. In examples ranging from North America to the Fertile Crescent, the authors trace how ‘primitive’ peoples often knew full well how to cultivate crops or build bigger settlements, yet sometimes chose to forage or fish instead (shockingly, they wanted more time for leisure and less time producing surplus value for some guy). A more far-ranging and interesting line of inquiry than the when, why or how of

January & February 2022

‘civilisation’ (as narrowly understood in terms of proximity to European social formations) is, the book asks, when did we get stuck? When did we lose the flexibility and freedoms that once characterised our social arrangements? From the Indigenous Amazonians of centuries past, who shifted seasonally between an authoritarian, hunting-oriented society and a democratic, horticultural settlement; to the European Middle Ages, where folk festivals crowned ‘Kings for a Day’; to the first-century Mexican city of Teotihuacan, which gave up monumentbuilding for social housing; to the powerful women’s councils of Ancient Minoa, the authors present compelling examples of our age-old capacity to step outside the boundaries of our given social structures and reflect. Graeber and Wengrow do not put forth any ‘golden age’, stressing the sheer variety and hybridity of early human societies, both hierarchical and nonhierarchical. The problem, they suggest, is that we have calcified into a line of thinking that mistakes one set of rules that we currently happen to live by as the culmination of past experiments with social, economic and political organisation. The three fundamental freedoms archaeology shows were self-evident to earlier humans – to move away, to disobey and to rearrange social ties – are now difficult to imagine. Convinced we will end up back in caves if people stop buying and selling imaginary numbers in New York and Hong Kong, we are obedient, isolated and immobile to a degree that would have baffled our ancestors. The desire for mutual aid, justice and autonomy is not new, but humanity’s current acquiescence to power – while thinking ourselves somehow ‘freer’ than ages past – certainly is. As the authors pithily put it: we have substituted our ancestors’ play kings and real autonomy for play autonomy and real kings. Graeber, both as a scholar and an engaged citizen, leaves behind big shoes to fill. In the foreword, Wengrow shares the bittersweet news that the two had planned no fewer than three sequels. The volume’s multitudinous sources gesture to findings the authors had clearly only just begun to articulate. If he continues, seeing Wengrow cowriting sections with Indigenous, African, Asian and South American scholars, rather than going the rest of it alone, would be most welcome. For unlearning imperialism’s myth of hierarchy as a necessary ingredient for ‘civilisation’, and ‘civilisation’ as that which has the most sophisticated methods of destruction, is now a matter of planetary urgency. Sarah Jilani

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on the cover Noémie Goudal, Station vi, 2015, c-print, 168 × 214 cm. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Edel Assanti, London

Words on the spine and pages 19, 41 and 71 are from John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, 1951

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As the days finally begin to lengthen, and the seasons to turn, what better way to encourage the launch of spring (in the Northern hemisphere) than by cooking up a batch of piping-hot crispy golden snacks? I’m talking spring rolls, in case it wasn’t obvious. It’s not that anyone, ever, really needs an excuse – we’ll get back to that – to chomp down on one of these crunchy, deep-fried delicacies, but for this month, and for the purposes of this column, there is one: the upcoming Lunar New Year. The spring roll (as the name, a literal translation of the Cantonese and Mandarin, suggests) originated as a seasonal food. It’s first mentioned in a Jin Empire text (written around 1,700 years ago) that describes the ‘spring plate’ as the gathering of fresh ingredients into one dish to be shared with family and friends. By the Tang dynasty, the seasonal produce was accompanied by thin wheat pancakes. Then, some centuries later, someone dropped one of the stuffed pancakes into a vat of hot oil, therein surfacing the delicacy in its best incarnation. Eventually the dish of folk traditions was adopted as Lunar New Year fare, with the roll one of a collection of golden snacks consumed for their association

Aftertaste

Spring Rolls by Fi Churchman

with wealth and hoi jauwo (‘opening the oil pot’) – a practice observed in order to ensure that the rest of the year would be as rich (the metaphor arising from the resulting bounty and its flavoursome fat) as the pot from which the rolls emerge. All of it founded, of course, on the premise that it is fortuitous to ingest that which you desire.

ArtReview

For Chinese families celebrating Lunar New Year, hopes and wishes manifest not only in the appearance of a food, but also via linguistic associations: a whole steamed fish for ‘surplus’, clams because they open up like new horizons, extralong noodles to promote longevity, black moss in soup for prosperity, tangerines and oranges for luck and wealth, and glutinous rice dumplings to celebrate family reunions and comings together. And an abundance of these good fortunes is what it’s all about! More happiness – prawns! More babies – pumpkin seeds! More money – dumplings! This kind of associative thinking is taken to an extreme in Hong Kong director Fruit Chan’s horror flick Dumplings (2004) – in which an ageing former actor, Mrs Li, desperate to hold onto her beauty, enlists the help of Aunt Mei, a cook who makes delicate dumplings from the stillborn and aborted foetuses of destitute women. A regular diet of these dumplings ensures that Mrs Li comes, literally, to embody youth. Chaos, naturally, ensues. The film tackled Hong Kong’s growing social and economic issues of the time, portraying the rich profiting off the poor, and an older generation literally eating its young, by taking a dig at the darker aspects of a ‘you are what you eat’ tradition of consuming symbolic foods. Around the time that Dumplings was released, specialties such as shark’s fin soup – served at banquet tables for its ‘rejuvenating’ qualities – were at the height of fashion, supposedly benefiting the consumer but at a devastating cost to ocean ecosystems. Like the film, it’s a cautionary tale served up as an amuse-bouche. For everything ‘more!’ something else is less. Spring rolls are now neither necessarily seasonal in respect to ingredients, nor restricted to being scoffed at a particular time of the year, and making a homemade batch (as with any kind of dish) allows a degree of control over the kind of produce you use and where you source it. The core of mine includes pork, shrimp, dried shiitake, bean sprouts and napa cabbage. Will this latest batch bring me a lot of gold this Lunar New Year? Most likely not, if precedent is anything to go by. Some things you can’t control. Will I still eat as many as I can, then? Some habits are hard to break.

EXHIBITION: ARIUM.XYZ/SPACES/EROTIKA DROP: KNOWNORIGIN.IO/CLITSPLASH clitsplash.xyz