Weekly
May 21, 2022 • View in browser
This week, Frieze New York is back, Whitney Museum workers protest low wages, over 100 artists sign a petition demanding justice for slain Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a statue of Margaret Thatcher in the UK got egged, and test your art history chops with Worlde offshoot “Artle."
That's in addition to insightful reviews of Michelle Segre’s subversive works in yarn, an exhibition commemorating the Japanese American incarceration, a documentary on Hollywood's complicity in colonizing Hawaiʻi, and a lot more.
Also, check out our Frieze New York Bingo card and photo essay with impressions from the fair.
— Hakim Bishara, interim editor-in-chief
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Your Frieze Art Fair Bingo Card Is Here
It’s art fair season and we’re here to comfort and entertain you during this difficult time of the year with a new, biting edition of our Bingo card series.
Notes and Pictures From Frieze New York
Hakim Bishara: "I won't bother you with talk about how obscenely decadent and out of touch the Frieze art fair is. And yet..."
A Spirit of Confident Feminism at Salon Zürcher
Billy Anania hihglights a small New York art fair celebrating its 26th edition with the works of 11 women artists.
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NEWS THIS WEEK
Gather ’round, friends, as we ponder today’s Artle! Gerrit van Honthorst, “The Concert” (1623), National Gallery of Art, Patrons’ Permanent Fund and Florian Carr Fund (image via National Gallery of Art)
The National Gallery of Art launches Artle, a new artwork guessing game inspired by the super-popular Wordle.
The United Kingdom and Greece have agreed to formal talks regarding the return of the Parthenon marbles.
A controversial new statue of Margaret Thatcher is egged just over an hour after its installation.
Whitney workers crash a gala to protest the museum's "lowball" wage offers.
Yale researchers find that locking eyes fires up brain cells.
Over 100 artists sign an open letter condemning Israel’s murder of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
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REMEMBERING AND REIMAGINING
Michelle Segre, “Eight Body Chorus” (2021), 144 x 166 x 54 inches (courtesy the artist and Derek Eller Gallery, NY. Photos by Adam Reich)
Yarn Against the Patriarchy
John Yau on Michelle Segre: Night Chorus at Derek Eller Gallery.
There is something central about her rejection of the celebrated model of timelessness that Richard Serra and Jeff Koons espouse. Her use of impermanent materials, such as foodstuffs, in her work underscores that we exist in a zone of constantly shifting contingencies. Her art is truer to the actual world we live in than to the ideal one proposed and refined by the art world and its institutions.
Libby Black Processes the World Around Her By Recreating It
Maria Porges on Libby Black: Returning to This Moment at Gallery 16 in San Francisco.
Memories Remade With Charcoal and Ash
mónica teresa ortiz on Dan Jian: The Waves Not Yet High at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts.
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A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration Is Now Open at the Mississippi Museum of Art
This exhibition features newly commissioned works by 12 acclaimed Black contemporary artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Theaster Gates, and more. Learn more.
IN DIALOGUE WITH THE SOUTHWEST
Top: Light Ship “Naima” installed in the remote New Mexico landscape (courtesy Wendy Shuey), bottom: Debbie Long, “Naima (interior)” (2012-2015), RV, light, glass (courtesy the artist)
Debbie Long Turns RVs Into Vessels of Light
Molly Boyle shines a light on artist Debbie Long's ingenious RV installations.
Sitting in a dimly lit RV, feeling minutes pass around me in the muted outside world, I can’t help but think of lockdown, quarantine, and social distancing, people alone in their own quarters. All around me, inside “Willa,” the world recedes into precise but ever-shifting measures of light, space, and color. Stepping outside, I’m newly grateful for the suddenly gigantic, impossibly bright sky.
A Desert Biennial, Somewhere Between Settlers and Searchers
Renée Reizman on High Desert Test Sites throughout the Morongo Basin.
Opera Lafayette Reimagines André Grétry’s Silvain in New Mexico
David Saiz dives into Opera Lafayette's reimaged commentary on the sociohistorical and economic land rights issues in the American Southwest.
RACISM & GHOSTS OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN THE PACIFIC
An installation shot of Kay Sekimachi's "Ogawa II" at the Noguchi Museum (photo by Nicholas Knight and courtesy Noguchi Museum)
Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration Through Abstraction
An exhibition at the Noguchi Museum marks the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which forced Japanese Americans into detention camps.
“Instead of monumentalizing and documenting the events of the incarceration and its aftermath,” curator Genji Amino said in an interview with Hyperallergic, “these artists turned to difficult questions of opacity and transparency, silence and testament, contingency and precarity, that arose precisely out of the ways in which the ideas of monument and document were inadequate to describe how these submerged histories failed to register for public memory.”
Films to Watch on the 50th Anniversary of Okinawa’s Return to Japanese Rule
Dan Schindel spotlights how Japan Society observes the semicentennial of Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese control with a new programming series.
How Hollywood Has Helped Colonize Hawaiʻi
Aaron Hunt looks at how Anthony Banua-Simon’s documentary contrasts decades of Hollywood images of Hawaiʻi with its current reality.
MOVING THROUGH TIME
From Freshwater (2022), dir. dream hampton (all images courtesy MOCAD)
Filmmaker dream hampton Culls Memories From Detroit’s Flooded Basements
Bedatri D. Choudhury speaks with dream hampton about her experimental short film Freshwater.
Although climate change forms the basis of the film, it is not an urgent catastrophic narrative about the end of the world. It follows hampton as she travels in and out of flooded basements in Detroit homes, going back and forth through her memories of the city. It tells the story of a city, a world, and childhoods and lives that are slowly being subsumed by the water.
The Tsugua Diaries is More than an Arthouse Summer Hangout Movie
Dan Schindel reviews Miguel Gomes and Maureen Fazendeiro's latest film.
When a Contemporary Art Gallery Exhibits a Renaissance Artist
Olivia McEwan questions whether a contemporary art gallery convincingly retrofit a historic Renaissance artist within a current context.
MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC
Irene and Peter with Peter’s sculpture in front of the GTE building, Santa Monica, California, 1973 (photo courtesy the estate of Irene and Peter Stern)
The Love and Art of Irene and Peter Stern
John Seed explores the Sterns’ shared creativity and mutual devotion reflected in Lyrical Modernism at Hollis Taggart Gallery.
Walter Murch Sought to “Paint the Air” Between His Eye and His Subject
Carl Little examines how Walter Murch’s almost tangible, enigmatic artworks come together in a new monograph.
Required Reading
This week: Why does the internet hate Amber Heard? Will Congress recognize the Palestinian Nakba? And other urgent questions.
IN OUR STORE
"Afromuses Couple" (Woman) Tea Towel x Chris Ofili
The Hyperallergic Store carries home goods from an array of acclaimed contemporary artists, such as this gorgeous 100% linen tea towel based on Chris Ofili's watercolor series Afro Muses.
Shop our homeware!
