April 2021
“Sandra Mujinga’s work critiques the violence of representation—what it means to be in the spotlight as opposed to moving in the dark.” – Eric Otieno Sumba
In the April issue of frieze, Eric Otieno Sumba profiles artist Sandra Mujinga on the occasion of solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute in New York and The Approach in London. After the opening of her Brooklyn Museum retrospective, artist Malik Gaines interviews Lorraine O’Grady. And Heather Phillipson answers our questionnaire.
Profile: Eric Otieno Sumba on Sandra Mujinga
“I’ve been thinking about whether I can at all appear as I wish to appear in this world. Or if there’s an impossibility to that.” Sandra Mujinga’s multimedia practice conjures spectres that haunt contemporary reality—from our dematerialized digital footprints to the ever-present ghosts of colonial history.
Interview: Malik Gaines and Lorraine O’Grady
“I make incisions into the skin of culture.” With a new collection of her writing published last autumn and a career retrospective on view at the Brooklyn Museum, Lorraine O’Grady speaks to writer and performer Malik Gaines about dismantling social hierarchies.
Also featuring
Natasha Stagg contributes 1500 words on how the cyberpunk aesthetic shapes Chris Dorland’s painting on the heels of a recent solo presentation at Lyles & King in New York. Jennifer Higgie looks closely at how mirrors changed the way women have made art – and represented themselves – from the ancient world to the Renaissance. Kristian Vistrup Madsen responds to an Allan Kaprow-inspired performance by Alex da Corte. Plus, a roundtable discussion between Gregg Bordowitz, Pamela Sneed, Sur Rodney Sur and Lynne Tillman links the exigencies of the AIDS pandemic to Covid-19.
Columns: The Garden
Charlie Gere connects London’s back-to-nature counterculture at the end of the 1960s to the rise of Thatcherism a decade later; Jennifer Kabat tracks how invasive weeds changed women’s lives in the early US; curator and artist Asad Raza writes about soil conservation projects and his personal practice; Julian Junyuan Feng falls for the rural idyll in the videos of Chinese mega-vlogger Li Ziqi; and Francesca Gavin defines the mushroom futurism of our changing world.
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