The Shed Arts Center in Manhattan. Photo: Courtesy Brett Beyer/The Shed

Galerias, institutions, artists, collectors and art connoisseurs gather between May 5th and 11th, 2021 around Frieze New York. the fair is the first to happen in person in the city since the beginning of the pandemic and continues with online exhibitions and activities, assuming a hybrid format. 

With a reduced schedule in this still atypical and pandemic year, the event is no longer happening on Randall Island and takes over the Shed, an arts center in the Manhattan region. The space has activities until the 9th of May, while the viewing room and talks online continue until next Tuesday (11).

Far from the usual 190 exhibitors, Frieze will present just under 60 houses. More than 50 of these answer a common question: “How are the arts responsible for interrupting, complicating or changing narratives of visual representation in the public sphere?”. The provocation is part of one of the central points of this year's program, the tribute to Vision & Justice Project and its founder, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. Through programming (online and offline) and a set of activities linked to galleries and important artists - such as Carrie Mae Weems and Hank Willis Thomas -, the fair aims to honor and increase the scope of the project, which analyzes the role of art in understanding of the relationship between race and citizenship in the United States. 

With entry restrictions in the country, several exhibitors and international visitors will not be able to attend the event in person. “It will be more like a local fair,” gallery owner Tanya Bonakdar told The New York Times, referring to the majority participation of American institutions and galleries. However, the edition has the participation of Brazilian houses. Mendes Wood DM and Nara Roesler, who are based in the USA, participate in the fair in person, supported by the project Latitude – Platform for Brazilian Art Galleries Abroad. In the viewing room, there are Marília Razuk and Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, also linked to the project, and the galleries Almeida & Dale, Kogan Amaro and Luisa Strina.

Learn more about the participating Brazilian galleries

Bringing together Brazilian and foreign artists, the DM Mendes Wood takes to Frieze New York a special selection of works by Solange Pessoa, Sonia Gomes, Rubem Valentim, Paulo Monteiro, Marina Perez Simão, Giangiacomo Rossetti, Maaike Schoorel, Wallace Pato, Paulo Nazareth, Matthew LutzKinoy, Paloma Bosquê, Lynda Benglis, Sofia Borges and Neil Beloufa.

In turn, the Nara Roesler Gallery is intended to reflect on the plurality and freedom that must exist in the narratives that build our own image. The House proposes a dialogue of different practices in the portrait of the “I” from the point of view of three Brazilian artists: Cristina Canale, Carlito Carvalhosa and Amelia Toledo. The selection of works provides the opportunity to understand how the various forms of self-portrait end up coinciding.

In partnership, the galleries Almeida & Dale e Marilia Razuk present Poetics for Postponing the End of the World, curated by Regina Teixeira de Barros. Dialogue with different generations of artists, the set of works highlights a production that responds to extremely personal interactions with the world around them. “Reflection and synthesis – the silence that emanates – are some of the aspects shared by these artists who, through various languages, offer the world possibilities of resistance”, says the curator. On the galleries page in the viewing room, the works of Anna Maria Maiolino, José Leonilson, Eleonore Koch and Johanna Calle dialogue with those of emerging young people on the Brazilian scene, such as Maria Laet, Vanderlei Lopes and Mariana Serri.

Seeking to highlight the constructive and productivist efforts on the basis of contemporary Latin American art, the Luisa Strina Gallery participates in the viewing room with a selection of works that assume decolonial resistance while flirting with modernist influences. Fruits, in some cases, of the global context of the pandemic and, in others, of a previous reflection on the adversities of the moment in which we live, the works of Marcius Galan, Clarissa Tossin, Pedro Reyes, Laura Lima, Alexandre da Cunha and Federico Herrero put into focus the hesitant balance of the processes that constitute them. The works of Marcellvs L. and Alfredo Jaar add a lyrical and ambiguous content to the set; the luminosity contained in them reveals its opposite: the fragility of certainties in today's world.

Addressing issues of colonialism, violence, religion and censorship, the Forts D'Aloia & Gabriel seeks to portray the zeitgeist in Unnamable (Unnamable). The online exhibition features photos, paintings, sculptures and audiovisual productions by Mauro Restiffe, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, Yuli Yamagata, Ivens Machado, Ernesto Neto, Erika Verzutti, Adriana Varejão, Cristiano Lenhardt, Márcia Falcão, Tamar Guimarães, Kasper Akhoj, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burka. The gallery also participates in the Vision & Justice Tribute with a conversation around the artist, activist, academic and politician Abdias do Nascimento. The webinar, co-organized with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, will focus on the photographic archive of the Teatro Experimental do Negro, founded in 1944. Curators Keyna Eleison and Victor Gorgulho will be accompanied by Elisa Larkin Nascimento, Nascimento's wife and president of Ipeafro (Instituto of Afro-Brazilian Research and Studies). 

In its virtual stand, the Kogan Amaro Gallery presents the works of Rafaella Braga. Beginning with graffiti, the artist is now dedicated to painting, especially large-scale canvases. Her practice has the body as raw material, investigating the body outlined by its vulnerabilities and secrets, and revolves around the interaction between reality and fantasy, identity and time, offering a dreamlike alternative to reality.

Access the viewing room and learn more about Frieze New York 2021 by clicking here.

*In order to ensure everyone's safety, it will be necessary to present proof of a negative result to Covid-19, of a recent test, or proof of vaccination for face-to-face visits to the fair. 

 


Sign up for our newsletter

Leave a comment

Please write a comment
Please write your name