“What do we do in a time of hypervisibility, when visibility itself is working against us?” —Hoda Afshar
The November/December issue of frieze magazine marks photography’s bicentennial with a roundtable discussion on the enduring power, and challenges, of the medium. Plus, Susana Plotts-Pineda speaks with Doris Salcedo, as the artist’s major new exhibition opens at White Cube, New York.
Roundtable: Picture Perfect
“We should be careful what we wish for when we worry about the lack of acceptance for photography in the art world.” Nadine Henrich, Taous Dahmani, David Campany and Hoda Ashfar consider the shapeshifting medium’s singular place in visual culture.
Interview: Doris Salcedo
“One way of operating within the art world is to break away from indifference.” Doris Salcedo on her devotion to preserving memory and pinpointing beauty in sites of destruction.
Also featuring: In the features, Laura McLean-Ferris profiles artist Diane Severin Nguyen ahead of her show at Haus der Kunst München. From Instagram Stories-as-script to a central voice becoming a chorus, the internet’s historian Mindy Seu traces her fascination with reworking the lecture through performance in “1,500 Words”. And, following a slate of recent novels about artists, a thematic essay by Lou Stoppard imagines an exhibition adorned with fictional artworks.
Columns: Otherworldly
Mariana Fernández explores how Portia Zvavahera paints the spiritual outlines of her phantasmagorical world, ahead of the artist’s mid-career survey at WIELS in Brussels. Shiv Kotecha reflects on two decades of filmmaker Ana Vaz’s elemental and embodied practice, as Luxembourg’s Mudam presents her first major institutional show. Elizabeth Wiet considers what the puzzle piece motif in the work of Hyun-Mi Yoo reveals about earthly regeneration and cosmic interconnectedness. Wendy Vogel analyses the ghosts, zombies and feng shui haunting global finance in the work of Wong Kit Yi, on view in transcendental dual installations at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. Senior editor Terence Trouillot speaks with Morgan Bassichis about the comedian’s quasi-necromancy and new performance ‘In Concert with Amy Winehouse’ at Joe’s Pub, New York.
Plus, Mira Dayal responds to Howardena Pindell’s “portable grid” work, Untitled (1968-70), and for the back of the magazine, associate editor Angel Lambo pens a postcard from Hastings. Finally, frieze’s ‘Seating Chart’ imagines what inviting the art world’s most influential names to dinner might look like.
