Trevor Paglen’s ongoing photographic series 'Unknowns' and an artist proof of his public sculpture ‘Trinity Cube,’ the original of which is installed in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, are featured in the group exhibition ‘Survival in the 21st Century’ at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, which explores the foundations of life in the age of polycrisis. In this video, Paglen talks about the processes behind both works and how his practice, in general, aims to address the tensions between knowing and unknowing, or seeing and lacking an interpretive framework to understand what we are looking at.

With both of these ambitious and technically difficult-to-realize projects, Paglen wants to explore humanity’s interventions on the planet, pushing us to think about how we affect our environment in a more expanded sense. Developed by Georg Diez and Nicolaus Schafhausen in close cooperation with Deichtorhallen, ‘Survival in the 21st Century’ presents works by 37 artists and artist groups. The exhibition is currently open until November 5, 2024.

Video by Mona, produced by Monica Salazar, filmed by Sean Hanley and edited by Peter Cairns.

‘Hallen 05’ took place from September 7–15, 2024 at Wilhelm Hallen on the occasion of Berlin Art Week, with presentations from the Berlinische Galerie, Kestner Gesellschaft, Art Collection Telekom, Mehdi Chouakri and Sprüth Magers, among others.

The fifth and largest edition of this annual art festival included a performance by Casey Spooner and the ‘CVNTEMPORARY Mini Kiki Ball’ vouging competition⁠, along with showcases of artworks by Yalda Afsah, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Dorothy Iannone and many more. See some of the program highlights in our video created as part of a media partnership with ‘Hallen 05.’

Video by Mona, produced by Anna Russ, filmed and edited by Frank Zerban.

For the Dutch Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, the Congolese artist collective Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) presents an exhibition titled ›The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred‹. In collaboration with artist Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi, this exhibition showcases CATPC’s efforts to reclaim depleted plantation lands and restore the Sacred Forest in Lusanga, DRC, along with their broader mission of spiritual, ethical and economic reckoning.

The exhibition takes place from April 20 to November 24, 2024 at the Rietveld Pavilion in Venice and simultaneously at the White Cube in Lusanga⁠—the museum previously established by Martens and CATPC. At both locations, a series of sculptures and films are on view, along with a video livestream that virtually connects the two venues. For these parallel presentations, CATPC crafted new artworks using earth from the last remaining patches of forest surrounding the plantation, and subsequently cast in raw materials extracted from the plantation.

A key part of the exhibition is the temporary return of ‘Balot,’ a 1931 sculpture of Belgian Colonial Officer Maximilien Balot, originally created to protect the Lusanga community from the plantation regime. Loaned from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, ‘Balot’ is displayed in Lusanga for the duration of the show. This temporary return empowers CATPC’s movement to buy back confiscated land, regenerate the sacred forest and promote peaceful coexistence between humans and nature.

Video by Mona, commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, produced & directed by Anna Russ, filmed & edited by Peter Cairns.

‘The Ephemeral Lake,’ Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s latest art project presented at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, combines landscape painting with 3D painting, virtual worldbuilding and ambisonic sound in an extraordinary spatial installation, featuring musical contributions from experimental sound artist Okyung Lee. Examining the natural phenomenon of the ephemeral lake, the exhibiton draws inspiration from Caspar David Friedrich and is presented as part of the celebration of the Romantic painter’s 250th birth anniversary.

‘The Ephemeral Lake’ is on view until October 27th, 2024. Watch the video for an overview of the show as well as behind-the-scenes insights into the artist’s practice.

Video by Mona, produced & directed by Monica Salazar, filmed & edited by Peter Cairns.

See some of the highlights from the opening days of ‘Hallen 4’—including performances by Göksu Kunak and Nik Nowak⁠—in this video produced by MONA for Berlin Art Link as part of our media partnership with the fourth edition of the art festival. Presented on the occasion of Berlin Art Week, ‘Hallen 4’ is open until September 17, 2023, every day from 11am–8pm.

On view across 9,000m² of the former iron foundry are showcases by Berlin galleries alexander levy, Esther Schipper, ChertLüdde, NOME, carlier|gebauer, HUA International and Capitain Petzel, among others, as well as a group exhibition curated by angels.sc3 and presentations of artworks from collections of Art’Us Collectors Collective, Art Collection Telekom and HK Art Collection. In addition, Berlinische Galerie shows a program of video works by Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau.

Video by produced by Anna Russ, filmed and edited by Frank Zerban

During Gallery Weekend 2023 ‘Yahon Chang: Floating Poetry, Meandering Mindscape,’ curated by Manu Park, took place at St Elisabeth Church. Chang, a leading Taiwanese calligrapher, began in the middle of the huge, blank canvas that was stretched out across the church floor. The artist moved conscientiously across it, with movements swift and graceful. Each footstep was considered. As the artist navigated his way across the canvas Chang exchanged brushes, making thick dashes of ink at certain moments and trailing thinner lines at others. The performance was accompanied by Adele Bitter on violoncello and Holger Groschopp on piano, who played compositions by Isang Yun.

“বন্যা/Bonna” or the Bengali word for “flood” forms the context of the 6th Edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), a biennial, international, and non-commercial showcase of art and architecture focusing on South Asia. Far from just meaning natural disaster, Bonna holds positive connotations to ecological cycles and to water as a metaphor for life. It is also a common girl’s name in Bangladesh, and this year, it is with her voice that the summit spoke to the world. Bonna asks us to consider the consciousness-shaping power of language, and the consequences of transcultural mistranslation. What happens when old vocabularies are applied to unfamiliar contexts? Why are words for weather gendered? And most importantly, how do you tell a story of ecological crisis while facilitating empathy and hope?

The sculptural work of the celebrated artist Simone Leigh explores ideas about history, race, gender, labor and monuments. For ‘Sovereignty,’ the exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale of Art, she has created a new body of work: sculptures in bronze, ceramic and raffia placed inside and outside the pavilion that highlight the often unseen and unacknowledged labor and resilience of Black women.

Leigh employs a strategy that she calls “the creolization of form,” combining disparate cultural languages linked through histories of colonization. With this series of works, she brings together references to 19th-century West African art, early Black American material culture and the colonial history of international expositions. The architecture of the pavilion itself has been "creolized" with the installation of a thatched roof, thus transforming the neoclassical building into a structure resembling a 1930s West African palace.

The exhibition’s title addresses notions of self-governance and independence⁠—both individual and collective. Leigh’s ‘Sovereignty’ is about authoring one’s own history and filling the gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities. With a singular visual language derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, using materials and processes associated with African and Afrodiasporic artistic traditions, she articulates a powerful and expansive view of the Black femme experience.

In this video, the pavilion’s co-commissioners Jill Medvedow (Ellen Matilda Poss Director, ICA/Boston) and Eva Respini (U.S. Pavilion Curator) speak about Leigh’s historic exhibition, which can be viewed from April 23rd to November 27th, 2022 at the Giardini della Biennale in Venice.

For more detailed information on the artist and the show, visit the 2022 U.S. Pavilion’s dedicated website.

Video by MONA productions. Produced by Monica Salazar and Kris Wilton (ICA/Boston). Filmed and edited by Peter Cairns. © The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

This video was commissioned by Henie Onstad for their Art Channel ahead of their presentation of Elmgreen & Dragset’s work ‘Aids Is Good, Business for Some’ (2011/2022) across Norway via 736 Clear Channel digital advertising platforms. Elmgreen & Dragset will also show their series ‘Stigma’ in the exhibition ‘Every Moment Counts–Aids and Its Feelings’ on view at Henie Onstad from February 18, 2022.

Watch the video with the Berlin-based artist duo in their Neukölln studio, where they talk about their collaborative practice as well as their particular interest in the AIDS epidemic and its continued relevance today.

Video by MONA productions. Produced by Anna Russ, Filmed by Frank Zerban, Interview by Alison Hugill, Edited by Peter Cairns, Music by Frank Zerban

Italian artist Guglielmo Castelli takes us through his exhibition at Galerie Rolando Anselmi in Berlin. The show presents his large-scale paintings alongside tapestries made in collaboration with Giovanni Bonotto. Drawing from his background in theatrical scenography, Castelli’s artistic interest revolves around the relationship between the body and the space. In his work, scenographic tensions emerge from intricate palimpsests of characters and decor.

Video by MONA productions. Produced by Esenija Bannan, filmed and edited by Greg Bannan.