Worldwide Exhibition Openings in October

Oct. 1, 2024

Every month, Berlin Art Link shines a spotlight on international exhibitions and events with our Worldwide Hit List. We want to highlight 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 October.

Lahore Biennale

Group Show: ‘Of Mountains and Seas’
Biennale: Oct. 5-Nov. 8, 2024
lahorebiennale.org
Various Venues, Lahore, Pakistan

Curated by John Tain under the title ‘Of Mountains and Seas,’ the third Lahore Biennale showcases contemporary art from around the world centered on the themes of ecology and sustainable future, explored from the perspectives of Pakistan and the Global South. Site-specific works and immersive installations by over 60 artists—inlcuding Bani Abidi, Imran Qureshi, Tomás Saraceno, Haegue Yang, Trevor Yeung and Zheng Bo—draw attention to issues caused by environmental degradation, along with illuminating vernacular and indigenous heritage as transformative resources for future sustainability. Featured works, many of them new commissions, will be presented across a dozen venues, including the Lahore Fort in the Walled City, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The biennial highlights the city’s rich culture, architecture and gardens, symbolizing its historical ties to Asia and Europe through trade routes and migration, while also addressing the relevance of indigenous knowledge as an alternative to modern extractivism.

Zheng Bo: ‘Phoenix,’ 2024, still from video // Courtesy of the artist

Fondazione Prada

Meriem Bennani: ‘For My Best Family’
Exhibition: Oct. 31, 2024-Feb. 24, 2025
fondazioneprada.org
L.go Isarco, 2, 20139 Milan, Italy, click here for map

Commissioned by Fondazione Prada, Meriem Bennani’s ‘For My Best Family’ centers on an animated film, directed by the artist in collaboration with Orian Barki, that is entitled ‘For Aicha.’ Revolving around a 35-year-old Moroccan jackal and filmmaker (the work is populated by anthropomorphic animals), the film explores the influence of queerness on the protagonist’s mother, blending elements of fiction and documentary conversations held between Bennani and her own mother. This combination of humor and honesty is also integral to the other works on display, such as the multisensory environment of ‘Sole crushing,’ a large mechanical installation that animates hundreds of flip-flops into a ballet-symphony-riot and musical composition.

Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs: ‘For Aicha,’ 2024, film stills // Courtesy of the artists

Whitechapel Gallery

Lygia Clark: ‘The I and the You’
Sonia Boyce: ‘An Awkward Relation’
Exhibition: Oct. 2, 2024-Jan. 12, 2025
whitechapelgallery.org
77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX, UK, click here for map

The most renowned work of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is called ‘Bichos’—a name for which scholars have settled on “critters” as the most suitable English translation. The term gives you the sense that these low-to-the-earth sculptures are to be imagined as if they had the jittery legs of a cockroach, and the idea that these metal objects could at any second come into motion is the radical aspect of their foldable nature, as well as their challenge to the sculptural tradition. Beside an extensive retrospective of Clark’s wide-ranging and often participatory oeuvre entitled ‘I and the You,’ the Whitechapel Gallery in London is presenting an exhibition by the British artist Sonia Boyce as a dialogue with Clark’s work, centering on themes of interaction, participation and improvisation. In particular, the works on display include an exploration of hair as a material and cultural signifier.

Sonia Boyce: ‘Exquisite Tension,’ 2006, single-channel HD colour video with sound and archive colour photographic print, Video duration: 4 minutes // © Sonia Boyce, All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024, courtesy of the artist, APALAZZOGALLERY and Hauser & Wirth Gallery

Kiasma

Pauline Curnier Jardin
Exhibition: Oct. 11, 2024-Feb. 23, 2025
kiasma.fi
Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland, click here for map

French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin’s exhibition transforms Kiasma’s exhibition space into a grotesque theme park. The films on view in the circus tent-like structure, created alongside set designer Rachel García, deal with gender norms, power and violence, showing scenes that are both comical and vulgar. Examining historical events, the carnality associated with the Catholic Faith and the experience industry with its emphasis on romance, Curnier Jardin’s films highlight the female body as an object of power, and the ways in which women subvert and wield that power.

Pauline Curnier Jardin: ‘Fat to Ashes,’ 2021, exhibition view, Hamburger Banhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin // Courtesy of Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, photo by Mathias Völzke

Lafayette Anticipations

Martine Syms: ‘Total’
Exhibition: Oct. 16, 2024-Feb. 9. 2025
lafayetteanticipations.com
9 Rue du Plâtre, 75004 Paris, France, click here for map

In ‘Total,’ her first survey exhibition in France, Martine Syms presents a comprehensive work of art that explores the theater of everyday life and the roles individuals play within it. Conflating the spaces of the museum, the store and the artist’s personal studio, Syms bridges public and private, seen and unseen, interior and exterior. Featuring early works alongside newly created pieces and editions available for sale, ‘Total’ reflects the artist’s enduring interest in how images influence reality, shape relationships and contribute to the construction of the self. Drawing on personal references, historical archives, representations of Blackness, feminist history and spiritual themes, ‘Total’ transforms into a form of expanded cinema and creates a social space where rituals of identity are invented, performed and observed.

Martine Syms: ‘Aphrodite’s Beasts,’ 2021, installation view Fridericianum Kassel // Courtesy of the artist

Museo Tamayo

Paulo Nazareth: ‘Luzia’
Exhibition: Oct. 3, 2024-Feb. 9. 2025
museotamayo.org
Av. P.º de la Reforma 51, Polanco, Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11580 Mexico City, Mexico, click here for map

The Museo Tamayo in Mexico City is opening a new retrospective of Paulo Nazareth, spanning decades of his work across a diverse range of media. Nazareth, who identifies as a member of the People of Luzia, engages in an act of historiographical speculation in search of the enigmatic figure called Luzia: a fossil, an ancestor, a saint, a city, an Afro-indigenous people and territory. By mobilizing the body’s memory as guided by a spiral temporality, Nazareth seeks to center his artistic practice in acts of radical movement, such as crossing borders on foot, thereby interrogating the complex terrain of Latin American identity.

Paulo Nazareth // Courtesy of the artist

The Third Line

Vian Sora: ‘House of Pearls’
Exhibition: Oct. 31-Dec. 5, 2024
thethirdline.com
Unit H 78, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE, click here for map

In ‘House of Pearls,’ Vian Sora⁠—an Iraqi-born artist who sought refuge in Dubai following the US invasion of Iraq⁠—captures the vulnerability and courage of displaced individuals, portraying personal and collective traumas and ongoing struggles across nations, cultures and time. The artist takes pearls as a metaphor for achieving stability and the needed structural integrity for life to regenerate. With this exhibition of new paintings and works on paper⁠, she explores the violent natural states from which pearls grow, and examines connectivity as an essential element to humanity’s collective consciousness. Through a painterly process of adding up to 50 layers of color and texture, Sora depicts imagined landscapes and ocean scenes marked with distorted Arabic calligraphy.

Vian Sora: ‘Olivine,’ 2024, oil on canvas with mixed media, diptych 152.4 x 304.8cm // Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai

Kunsten

Esben Weile Kjaer: ‘Solar System’
Exhibition: Oct. 10, 2024-Mar. 16, 2025
kunsten.dk
Kong Christians Alle 50, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark, click here for map

‘Solar System’ is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the work of the up-and-coming Danish contemporary artist, Esben Weile Kjær. The exhibition set viewers up for reflection on the collapse of societies and social ideologies in both the past and the future, with a series of new works that come together as a dystopian total installation. Described as a mix of “archaeology, futurism and raw glam,” Kjaer’s latest show expresses the collapse of the world we know today as a result of wars and climate crisis, and suggests the possibility of something new and beautiful emerging.