Jan. 31, 2023
Berlin Art Link is widening its horizons and launching a whole new format, highlighting not only Berlin’s most worthwhile art exhibitions, but presentations and events happening all over the world. Every month, a new Worldwide Hit List will be bringing to the limelight artists, galleries, museums and new projects touching on a variety of topics, employing multiple media and featuring diverse subjects. Below are some of the stand-outs that we’ve selected for the month of February.
Dhaka Art Summit
Summit: Feb. 3–11, 2023
dhakaartsummit.org
Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka 1208, Bangladesh, click here for map
Hosted biennially and returning this February 3rd through 11th, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture that showcases Bangladeshi and South Asian works, particularly of younger and under-represented artists. Founded in 2012 and directed since then by Diana Campbell, the Summit continues to bring together international key curators, artists and thinkers through a rich schedule of exhibitions, education and public programmes.
This year’s edition is called ‘Bonna,’ the Bengali word for “flood” and a common female name too. A semiotic conflation that, on the occasion of the Summit, will be used to investigate environmental crises and climate change—so as to channel awareness and resources into some of the world’s most climatically impacted areas—and the limits of gendered vocabularies. The aim, explain the organisers, is to look at cases of mistranslation and new-meaning-generation ensued by travelling words and concepts, whilst opening up new channels for transcultural empathy.
DAS 2023 includes over 120 artists, architects and writers, 60% of whom are Bangladeshi, and over 50% of whom will be presenting new work at the show. The Summit will be complemented by a series of intersecting exhibitions such as ‘Very Small Feelings,’ co-produced by Samdani Art Foundation and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, and envisioned as a collaboration between two major South Asian institutions.
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Zineb Sedira: ‘Dreams Have No Titles’
Exhibition: Feb. 24–July 30, 2023
smb.museum.de
Invalidenstraße 50-51, 10557 Berlin, click here for map
Franco-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira is known for her interdisciplinary work that mixes film, sculpture, photography and performance, and weaves together parts of her own biography with cinematographic co-productions and activist films within the context of France, Algeria and Italy. For her latest project, ‘Dreams Have No Titles,’ Sedira has conceived the exhibition space as a movie set where the decors of several films provide the backdrop of a live shoot in which fiction and documentary, the personal and the collective blend each other’s boundaries. Through her work, the artist means to highlight an important turning point in the history of avant-garde film production, and at the same time provide the audience with a cautionary tale about the potential failure and unfulfilled promise of emancipatory dreams.
The upcoming show at Hamburger Bahnhof marks the international debut of the artist’s project, designed and presented at the French Pavilion during the 59th Venice Biennale. Sedira’s work arrives in Germany for the first time and offers an occasion to everyone who missed it in Venice to go see it. Curated by Yasmina Reggad, and Hamburger Bahnhof’s directors Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the exhibition opens on February 24th and is on view through July 30th, 2023.
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Dana Schutz: ‘Between Us’
Exhibition: Feb. 9–June 11, 2023
louisiana.dk
Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark, click here for map
American artist Dana Schutz is one of the great figurative painters working today and a skilled storyteller whose work, often presented on complex and large compositions, is concerned with people and their interrelations. Hence the title of her latest exhibition, ‘Between Us.’ The universe within which Schutz operates is disturbing yet fascinating, and its subjects a compelling mix of grotesque, absurd and comic. Her canvases distinguish themselves for their narrative power, a strong sense of colour and and a visceral tension. Throughout the last two decades, Schutz’s art has shifted from more chaotic and claustrophobic scenes, mostly linked to youth and single figures, towards increasingly complex motifs populated by numerous actors.
On the occasion of the ‘Between Us’ exhibition, the artist will present several large paintings where groups of people seem to be striving for survival: some fight to reach the top of a mountain, others struggle to survive on a boat on high seas, or venture out on rafts in an attempt to reach the sun. These scenes clearly draw on Biblical tales and mythology, and provide a new take on modern human endeavours. Besides paintings, the exhibition will feature drawings and graphics as well as sculpture, and provide an encompassing overview of Schutz’s career up until now.
52 Walker
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L: ‘Impossible Failures’
Exhibition: Feb. 3–Apr. 1, 2023
52walker.com
52 Walker Street, New York NY 10013, click here for map
This February, 52 Walker gallery is hosting its sixth exhibition, ‘Impossible Failures,’ which brings together for the first time projects by American artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L. While Matta-Clark was known for his large-scale architectural interventions and site-specific artworks, as well as for pioneering socially engaged food art, Pope.L is a visual artist and educator. His multidisciplinary practice draws on contemporary culture and uses binaries, contraries and preconceived notions to create artworks in various formats, such as writing, painting, performance, installation, video and sculpture. Focusing on their shared interest in the problematics of architecture, language, institutions, scale and value, ‘Impossible Failures’ features a selection of drawings as well as films by both artists. Pope.L will also debut a new site-specific installation.
Palais de Tokyo
Miriam Cahn: ‘Ma pensée sérielle’
Group Show: ‘Exposed’
Exhibition: Feb. 17–May 14, 2023
palaisdetokyo.com
13 Av. du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France, click here for map
Recognised as one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, Swiss painter Miriam Cahn makes challenging art that encompasses drawing, photography, films and writing, as well as portraits, landscape and history painting. Her work refuses linearity and aims at rereading history, at times confronting the audience and raising questions and debates. The exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo is the first major retrospective devoted to Cahn’s work in a French institution, and it includes more than 200 of her works from 1980 through to the present day.
‘Exposed’ is the name of the second exhibition opening at Palais de Tokyo this February, focused on the effects that epidemics, in particular AIDS, have had on art and artists throughout history. Inspired by Elisabeth Lebovici’s book ‘What AIDS Did to Me – Art and Activism at the End of the 20th Century,’ the exhibition looks at subjectivities fragmented by historical events and the divisive societal parameters of gender, class, race in an attempt to piece them back together through the cathartic, therapeutic and informative effects of art. ‘Pausing’ by Jimmy Robert is the second chapter of ‘Exposed’ and takes place at the Centre National de la Danse, offering a programme of shows, performances and talks.
Hayward Gallery
Mike Nelson: ‘Extinction Beckons’
Exhibition: Feb. 22–May 7, 2023
haywardgallery.co.uk
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London, UK, click here for map
Opening on February 22nd at Hayward Gallery, London, is the first major survey of work by contemporary British artist Mike Nelson, featuring his psychologically-charged and captivating installations. Constructed with materials scavenged from salvage yards, junk shops, auctions and flea markets, the immersive installations have a life-like yet eerie quality. They weave references to science fiction, failed political movements, dark histories and countercultures, hinting at alternative ways of living and thinking, histories, cultures, and lost belief systems that resist inclusion in an increasingly homogenised and globalised world. Nelson’s exhibition features sculptural works and large-scale installations, many of which are shown at the gallery for the first time since their original presentations. Working with cultural debris and objects obtained from the fringes of society and civilisation, Nelson keeps challenging viewers through his enigmatic and dream-like art.
MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada
Athena Papadopoulos: ‘The New Alphabet’
Exhibition: Feb. 24–Apr. 30, 2023
moca.papadopoulos.ca
Sterling Rd #100, Toronto, ON M6R 2B7, Canada, click here for map
MOCA Toronto is hosting the first institutional solo exhibition in Canada of Greek-Canadian artist Athena Papadopoulos, and for the occasion the artist has produced two distinct sculptural bodies of work, inspired by the isolating experience of the pandemic and her own fear that her artworks may never be seen. ‘Bones for Time,’ one part of her two-fold project, uses disused hospital and wool blankets to reproduce the artist’s body. While ‘Trees with No Sound’ features Papadopoulos’ unwanted furniture, clothing, and stuffed objects, transforming relics into sculptural bodies. Her work plays with stereotypical feminine apprehensions, juxtaposing material excess with personal imagery and drawings, resulting in characters situated at the intersection of glamour and the grotesque that question notions of contemporary femininity.
Kapwani Kiwanga: ‘Remediation’
Exhibition: Feb. 24–July 23, 2023
moca.kiwanga.ca
Sterling Rd #100, Toronto, ON M6R 2B7, Canada, click here for map
Opening on the same day, on February 24th, is Kapwani Kiwanga’s first major survey exhibition in Canada. The Canadian-French artist’s work is dedicated to the intermingling of installation, sculpture and performance as well as video and sound pieces used to explore the relationship between historical narratives, systems of power and the use of material within these contexts. For her exhibition, Kiwanga will present five new commissions that will expand her research into botany, including a site-specific version of her ongoing sisal installations on the museum’s Ground Floor, as well as flooring and window interventions. These are presented alongside key existing artworks.
Kunsthalle Basel
Iris Touliatou: ‘Gift’
Exhibition: Feb. 10–May 7, 2023
kunstahallebasel.ch
Steinenberg 7, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, click here for map
Kunsthalle Basel is hosting Greek artist Iris Touliatou’s site-specific exhibition, which is her first solo show in Switzerland and largest to date. Called ‘Gift,’ the experimental project explores both meanings of the word—“present” in English and “poison” in German—and weaves together the life of the institution with that of the artist. Touliatou’s conceptual practice engages with the political, environmental and affective, and employs a wide range of different media. Through sculpture, photography, sound, scent and text, her work often uses found objects and creates immersive projects to comment on time, love, transience, mortality, economies and states of being.
The Modern – Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
‘I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen’
Exhibition: Feb 12–Apr. 30, 2023
themodern.org
3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107, click here for map
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen,’ a thematic group exhibition that examines the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. The exhibition explores the virtual’s pervasive effects on life and mainstream culture through more than sixty works by fifty artists over the past five decades. It features a broad range of media such as paintings, sculpture, video games, digital art, augmented reality and video. ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen’ is organised into nine key themes: liminal space, connectivity, surveillance, the repository, digital abstraction, the posthuman body, automation and the loneliness epidemic, ecology and turning a mirror on ourselves. The exhibition is curated by Alison Hearst, who has devoted more than 25,000 square feet of gallery space to the many works presented by national and international artists, as well as several living in Texas including Liss LaFleur and Kristin Lucas. Several new and never-before-seen works will see their debut too and delve, along with the others, into the ever-changing relationship between art and digital technology.
Kurimanzutto
Nairy Baghramian: ‘modèle vivant’
Exhibition: Feb. 11–Mar. 11, 2023
kurimanzutto.com
Cda. Gobernador Rafael Rebollar 94, San Miguel Chapultepec 11850, Mexico City, click here for map
“Modéle vivant” refers to the activity of drawing, painting or sculpting the human figure from a live model. A practice evoked by Nairy Baghramian’s current exhibition, which rediscovers the ever-shifting relationship between the body and the artist, and the infinite points of view that art can bring forth. Baghramian is presenting her abstract sculptures at gallery Kurimanzutto, where they will be interacting with a dozen of figural works by other four contemporary artists resident in Mexico, such as Geles Cabrera, Elizabeth Catlett, Helen Escobedo and Ángela Gurría. A leitmotif running in all their works is that the sculpted bodies often assume atypical positions: recumbent, enfolded, upright, prone, fragmented, pieced back together; many appear to recline, sit or stand. They all, however, touch the ground as a way to establish a point of contact with the surrounding environment. The Iranian-German artist’s exhibition opens alongside Zonamaco, the largest contemporary art fair taking place in Latin America showcasing national and international, as well as established and emerging artists.
