“A powerful way to think about the present is to see it as the culmination of all that has come before it.” –Skye Arundhati Thomas
In the November issue of frieze, Skye Arundhati Thomas profiles the artist Otobong Nkanga; John Kelsey examines the late style of the film director Jean-Luc Godard; and Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme answer our questionnaire.
Profile: Skye Arundhati Thomas on Otobong Nkanga
“Material is archive, memory and also monument.” Otobong Nkanga’s excavation of material histories has taken her from Nigeria to Namibia and back. Her work—currently on view in solo exhibitions at Gropius Bau, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art—pulls tragedy from landscape.
Essay: Jean-Luc Godard at 90
“In Jean-Luc Godard’s late films, we witness a mutation of the medium from within its own processes, as a living history tries to reveal itself amongst the fresh ruins of cinema.” John Kelsey rewatches the filmmaker’s most recent works—Film Socialisme (2010), Goodbye to Language (2014) and The Image Book (2018)—which define the iconic auteur’s cranky late style.
Also featuring:
A conversation between Simone White and photographer Dawoud Bey; 1,500 words by Shiv Kotecha on thinking through Bollywood’s class consciousness from the vantage of the Indian diaspora; nine artists—including Korakrit Arunanondchai, Lubaina Himid and Christodoulos Panayiotou—nominate a colleague whose work has been on their mind; and Philipp Ekardt responds to Isa Genzken’s Schauspieler III, 3 (2015)
Columns: Camouflage
Maryse Condé recalls her first encounter with Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952); Denise Ferreira da Silva on vulnerability, precarity and the necessity of opacity; Stephanie Syjuco on Ruth Asawa’s time in the Rohwer War Relocation Centre; Heba Y. Amin and Anthony Downey examine how pilotless aerial drones have reshaped the psychogeography of the Middle East; and a specially commissioned comic by Julien Ceccaldi, who has also designed our cover.
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