Broomberg & Chanarin show new work on group show in Tuscany

Newly commissioned work by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin is included on the group exhibition, Forever Never Comes, at the Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma in Grosseto, Italy (26 August – 26 January). In exhibiting works by local and international artists – both established and emerging – the exhibition explores the symbolism and dialogue between the past and its heritage, as well as space, time and art. Conceptualised as part of a larger ongoing museum project, the curators intend for the exhibition to promote the multifaceted relationships and connections between history and contemporary art practice.

Tabita Rezaire at the Bury Art Museum in UK

Rezaire is one of a small group of artists on the Bury Art Museum’s summer exhibition, Foreigners, in Bury, United Kingdom (26 August – 18 November). The exhibition, curated by Tony Trehy, aims to illustrate how society is open and malleable to cultural exchange and the influence of globalisation. The exhibition comes at an important moment and time when borders are closing and cultural foreigners, divergent ideas and alternative modes of thinking are being treated as unwelcome in certain parts of the world.

Tabita Rezaire tackles digital commodification in Switzerland

Rezaire participates in an international group exhibition, Escaping the Digital Unease!, at the Kunsthaus Langenthal in Switzerland (31 August – 12 November). Since the beginning of the web 25 years ago, artists have built their own spaces and channels online. They have created artworks reacting to the commodification and restrictions of the digital medium in a critical way. The exhibition presents works from over 30 artists and collectives tackling these topics, raising awareness of the unease, and showing its causes or possibilities of an escape from it.

Broomberg & Chanarin at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin exhibit work on a group exhibition, The Face: A Search for Clues, at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden, Germany (19 August – 25 February). Looking at artworks that focus on the face and facial expressions in human communication, the exhibition deals with the assumptions, methods and reasons for the visual representation of individual faces.

David Koloane and Rose Shakinovsky on abstraction show at Iziko South African National Gallery

David Koloane and Rose Shakinovsky feature on the Iziko South African National Gallery’s Assessing Abstraction group exhibition in Cape Town (opens 13 August). The exhibition, curated by Hayden Proud, showcases artworks and seldom-seen examples from Iziko’s collections and the national gallery’s acquisitions of non-figurative painting and sculpture, from the very first purchases of non-figurative work made some 60 years ago until the present.

David Koloane and Sam Nhlengethwa at JAG

Works by David Koloane and Sam Nhlengethwa form part of the Weltkulturen Museum’s collection and traveling exhibition, A Labour of Love, on show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (opens 13 August). Co-curated by Gabi Ncgobo and Dr. Yvette Mutumba, with assistance from fine art students at the University of the Witwatersrand, the exhibition explores artworks from this collection whilst showcasing contemporary artistic productions from South African artists who examined these historic pieces from various angles. The majority of these historic works was created in the mid-1980s when outbreaks of violence between anti-apartheid organisations and the nationalist apartheid government led to a national state of emergency.

Broomberg & Chanarin on Yokohama Triennale

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin participate, alongside a small group of selected artists who will exhibit multiple works, in the Yokohama Triennale 2017 (4 August – 5 November). Under the title Islands, Constellations & Galapagos, the 2017 edition of the triennale embarks on a multi-faceted examination of the themes of connectivity and isolation.

Samson Kambalu and Tracey Rose in Sydney

Kambalu and Rose are included in The Public Body .02 (28 July – 2 October) at Art Space in Sydney, Australia. It is the second in a three-part series of exhibitions over three years exploring various facets of the notion of the public body. This edition highlights a range of practices embedded in feminist, queer and anti-racist subjectivities, and concerned with revisioning certain biased histories of representation. It brings together the work of over 40 artists and collectives from the 1970s to the present, integrating the archival and the contemporary to draw connections between works across decades.

ruby onyinyechi amanze at the Drawing Center in New York

Amanze has work on the New York Drawing Center’s group exhibition Where Do We Stand?: Two Years of Drawing with Open Sessions (3 August – 17 September). Every two years Open Sessions invites a large group of artists, chosen via open call, to consider their relationship to drawing as medium, process and metaphor. Working together over a two-year period, Open Sessions artists participate in ongoing studio visits and discussions, punctuated by small-group exhibitions at The Drawing Centre. The exhibition of work by the 36 artists in the 2016-17 programme encompasses video, sculpture, photography and installation, as well as traditional drawing forms.

Shirin Neshat directs 'Aida' in Salzburg

Neshat directs Giuseppe Verdi’s third-last opera, Aida, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria (21 July – 30 August). Aida was commissioned by and first performed at Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House in 1871, and today holds a central place in the operatic canon. This new production is conducted by Riccardo Muti with Anna Netrebko in the title role, and features the Vienna Philharmonic and Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus.

‘Wozzeck’, directed by William Kentridge, premieres in Salzburg

Kentridge directs Alban Berg’s libretto Wozzeck, which premieres at the Salzburg Festival (21 July – 30 August). Written by Berg after Georg Büchner’s fragmentary play Woyzeck (1836), it took him five years to complete the score, and another three to get the work staged in Berlin in 1925. The tale of the tormented, homicidal, soldier Wozzeck is set by Kentridge at the time of ‘The Great War’ in Europe and is characterised by bleak landscapes, denuded of their trees and scarred by shell craters. This co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto is conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with sets by Sabine Theunissen, costumes by Greta Goiris, video composition and editing by Catherine Meyburgh.

Broomberg & Chanarin at the Yale University Art Gallery

Photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin form part of a large-scale group exhibition Before the Event / After the Fact: Contemporary Perspectives on War, at the Yale University Art Gallery (21 July – 31 December). Curated by Judy Ditner, the exhibition offers a wide-ranging examination of the representation of war in contemporary photographic and video art practice.

Kendell Geers participates in global poster campaign

Geers takes part in Time for Outrage! , a global poster campaign that gives acclaimed artists and members of the public a platform to voice what they are outraged about in the world today. The first edition runs from 18 July – 1 September 2017 on the prominent billboards of the Great Eastern Street Gallery Wall, London, with approximately 2.1 million passers-by per month. The project is a response to the eponymous book Indignez-Vous! (Time for Outrage!), in which author and French Resistance member Stéphane Hessel (1917-2013) tells the youth of today that their lives and liberties are worth fighting for. Remembering the ideals for which he risked his life, while never forgetting the evils against which he struggled, the writer and diplomat calls on all of us to take back the rights that have been jeopardised or taken away all together. The poster campaign will take place in various cities around the world, including London, Berlin, Athens, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City and New York City, culminating on 11 December 2018, international Human Rights Day. Other artists include Jake and Dinos Chapman, John Cooper Clarke, Laure Prouvost, Linder Sterling, Robert Montgomery and John Isaacs. The London campaign is initiated by Alteria Art in collaboration with Zarina Rossheart of Unlimited Productions, with support from Gaia Art Foundation, Village Underground, Ace Hotel London, Wren Artists and Portable Print Studio.

Yinka Shonibare MBE and Candice Breitz on new triennial in Cleveland

Shonibare and Breitz have been invited to participate in the inaugural FRONT International Cleveland Triennial exhibition (14 July – 30 September 2018) planned by cultural impresario Fred Bidwell, a collector, Cleveland Museum of Art trustee and co-founder of the Transformer Station in Ohio City. Organisers hope the event will draw as many as 300,000 viewers and establish Cleveland as a cultural destination along the likes of Kassel, Germany, where documenta is held.

Shonibare will create an installation in the Cleveland Public Library’s Brett Hall that will include 6,000 books covered in the artist’s signature batik cloth and embossed with the names of immigrants who have shaped American art and culture. Breitz will exhibit Love Story (2016), a seven-channel installation that interrogates the mechanics of identification and the conditions under which empathy is produced. The work evokes the global scale of the so-called ‘refugee crisis,’ evolving out of lengthy interviews conducted with the six participants in the countries where they are seeking or have been granted asylum.

Grada Kilomba at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto

Kilomba performs Illusions for first time in her home country and exhibits The Desire Project in Live Uncertainty: An Exhibition After the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (1 July – 1 October) at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. The Desire Project (2015-2016) is a video installation divided into three parts: While I Speak, While I Write and While I Walk, videos whose only visual element is the written word and which indicates the emergence of a speaker who has been historically silenced by colonial narratives. Illusions (2016) employs video projections and the African tradition of storytelling. The reading introduces the myths of Narcissus and Echo as metaphors for a colonial past and politics of representation that only reflect themselves. The Serralves exhibition is conceived in relation to the museum’s unique architecture and landscape. It extends the Biennale’s reflection on the current conditions of life and the strategies offered by contemporary art to harbour or inhabit uncertainty.

mounir fatmi at Bellevue Arts Museum in US

fatmi participates in a group exhibition, Cut Up/Cut Out (30 June – 22 October), at the Bellevue Arts Museum in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, USA. Cut Up/Cut Out is an exhibition by international artists who explore the captivating methods of decorative piercing and cutting, using a wide range of media from paper and plastic to metal and rubber.

Hank Willis Thomas in two-person show at Baltimore Museum of Art

Thomas’ And I Can’t Run is on exhibition, alongside Kara Walker’s Salvation, at the Baltimore Museum of Art (28 June – 18 March). Through contrasts of light and dark, white and black, and obscurity and revelation, the work engages in a powerful metaphorical conversation about acts of horrific violence and racial inequality in the United States

Various artists at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea

Four Goodman Gallery artists – Kudzanai Chiurai, Gabrielle Goliath, Tracey Rose and Yinka Shonibare – are included on the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea’s group exhibition, AFRICA. Telling a world (27 June – 11 September). Curated by Adelina von Furstenberg, the exhibition investigates the diversity of contemporary African art practices, and poses questions surrounding the issues of racial, political, gender and religious identities that continue to inform the continent at large.

Yinka Shonibare on group show exploring royalty at the Kensington Palace

Shonibare’s Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina features on Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern World at Kensington Palace (22 June – 12 November). The work was commissioned especially for the exhibition, which is presented by Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art. It explores the lives of three German princesses whose marriage into the British royal family and wide-ranging interests placed them at the very heart of the Enlightenment underway in 18th-century Britain.

Kiluanji Kia Henda wins 2017 Frieze Artist Award

Kia Henda is the first African artist to receive the prestigious 2017 Frieze Artist Award, for which he will realise a new installation at Frieze London (4 – 8 October) as part of Frieze Projects, the fair’s celebrated non-profit programme curated by Raphael Gygax. Frieze Projects and the Frieze Artist Award are supported by the LUMA Foundation. Following an open call, artist applications were received from more than 82 countries. The Luanda-based artist – who works across photography, video and performance – won on the basis of his proposal for a two-part installation, Under the Silent Eye of Lenin. Taking the cult of Marxism-Leninism after independence in Angola as its starting point, the piece will draw parallels between witchcraft practices during Angola’s civil war and science fiction narratives used by Cold War superpowers. Kia Henda’s performative installation, which will change throughout the duration of the fair, looks at how fictional fantasy and its power of manipulation become a vital weapon in situations of extreme violence.

Kendell Geers on group show at CENTRALE, Brussels

Kendell Geers takes part in a group exhibition, BXL Universel, at CENTRALE for contemporary art in Brussels (14 June – 3 September). Through archive documents, films, photographs and other work by artists who live there, the show presents a subjective portrait of the bustling city that is the Belgian capital. On exhibition is one of Geers’ polymorphic installations, which captures the diversity and uniqueness of the city.

Yinka Shonibare on summer show in Switzerland

Shonibare’s Un Ballo in Maschera and The Crowning feature on the summer group exhibition, Un Bal Masque / A Masked Ball, at Le Chateau de Nyon (9 June – 26 November). The exhibition reimagines objects, artefacts and ceremonial occasions of 18th-century Europe by including works that offer a contemporary colouring to the garments, ornate subject matter and events of the period.

Geers, Broomberg & Chanarin on EMST show at documenta 14

Works by Kendell Geers, and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin feature on a group exhibition, ANTIDORON: Works from the EMST Collection at documenta 14, in Kassel, Germany (10 June – 17 September). Presented at the Fridericianum, the birthplace of documenta, the exhibition marks the first time that part of the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens is presented outside Greece. The exhibition explores issues of border crossings, diasporas, cultural exchange, as well as personal and collective memories.

Tracey Rose shows new video work at documenta 14 in Kassel

Following her installation at documenta in Athens, the Durban-based artist is showing a new multi-part video work in Kassel, titled WhoreMoans: An Uncivil Memoir of a Rough Ride. On show until 17 September at Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost), the work comprises three parts: Cleopatra was a Black Bitch; MEGLADONN : MUDD (2017); and Lassooing with the Postcolonial Gauchos. The work was made with support from the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires.

Yinka Shonibare at York Art Gallery in the UK

Shonibare features on a group exhibition, Leisure Land Golf, curated by Doug Fishbone at the York Art Gallery (2 June – 3 September). The artist’s Football Cloud forms part of the exhibition’s fully playable crazy golf course, with each golf hole designed and made by a different contemporary artist. The show is inspired by the curatorial theme of the ‘Leisure Principle’, which refers to the idea of tourism and trade as a metaphor to explore current global economic debates through one of the key values of leisure – consumption, and how it shapes our identity. Visitors are invited to play a round of crazy golf and engage with important cultural topics including migration, global warming and globalisation.

Alfredo Jaar at Lenbachhaus in Munich

Work by Alfredo Jaar is included on After the Fact: Propaganda in the 21st Century (30 May – 17 September), a group exhibition at Lenbachhaus in Munich. The exhibition looks at the concept of propaganda in order to broaden its definition in light of the societal, political and technological developments of the 21st century. The artworks gathered in the exhibition engage in various ways with current forms of propaganda and with the porous borders between reality and fiction that are symptomatic of the digital age.

Alfredo Jaar's 'Shadows' in Lisbon

In Shadows, a museum show at Lisbon’s Carpintarias de São Lázaro (20 May-3 September), Jaar presents the engrossing interventionist work Shadows as a tribute to Swedish photographer Koen Wessing. The work comprises seven photographs and forms the second part of a trilogy (the first being The Sound of Silence, in 2006), which unpacks the power of denunciation that images have in relation to the inhumanity of dictatorial regimes.

Broomberg and Chanarin on PhotoEspaña 2017 festival

The 20th edition of PhotoEspaña 2017 International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts (31 May – 27 August) will feature work by Broomberg and Chanarin. The artists will exhibit their work at the Centro Centro at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and Museo del Romanticismo in Madrid. In addition to being included on the main exhibition, Broomberg and Chanarin will head up a group of creative initiatives in an editorial laboratory in Tabacalera, with the intention of seeking out new proposals for photography publishing.

Candice Breitz at Kunsthalle Erfurt

Breitz’s Soliloquy Trilogy features on Kunst.Ort.Kino at the Kunsthalle Erfurt in Germany (15 July – 17 September).

Large-scale survey show for Shirin Neshat at Kunsthalle Tübingen

The Kunsthalle Tübingen is devoting a major retrospective to Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat (1 July – 29 October). On exhibition are important artworks from all creative phases of the artist’s extensive oeuvre – from the famous superimposed text-based works of the 1990s, the early video installations exploring themes of life in exile and diaspora, to the new filmic productions of 2016 and 2017, including some being shown in Europe for the first time. The exhibition, funded by the German Federal Cultural Institution, will be accompanied by a catalogue as well as a wide range of events organised in cooperation with numerous partners.

David Goildblatt exhibits 'Ex-Offenders' series in UK prisons

David Goldblatt’s acclaimed body of work, Ex-Offenders, is being exhibited inside two British prisons: Manchester Maximum Security Prison (opens 18 May) and Birmingham Prison (opens 22 May). This is the first time that the series of photographs, which depicts ex-offenders revisiting the scenes of their crime, reaches a dedicated prisoner audience. Goldblatt worked with a group of inmates to become guides to the other inmates about the show. A specially produced catalog for prison inmates will be published by Steidl.

mounir fatmi at Museum De Wieger in Netherlands

fatmi features on Beautiful Stranger, a group exhibition at the Museum De Wieger in Deurne, Netherlands (21 May – 17 September). On view are a selection of paintings, photos and multimedia from the Nadour Collection, one of the most important collections of contemporary Arab and Iranian art.

NTU collective on 89plus exhibition in Zurich

Work by NTU – the art collective founded by Nolan Oswald Dennis, Tabita Rezaire and Bogosi Sekhukhuni – is included on a group exhibition, 89plus: Americans 2017, at the LUMA Westbau in Zurich (19 May – 3 September). Curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist for their ongoing 89plus project, it showcases new productions by 19 key artists and groups from around the globe. Stemming from the concept of algorithmic citizenship introduced by artist James Bridle’s Citizen Ex project, this group exhibition gives centre stage to the work of artists from countries as varied as Ghana, Kuwait, China, Lebanon, Austria and South Africa, all the while reflecting the influence of US-based ‘computerised processes’ over information, aspirations and concerns.

Yinka Shonibare MBE on the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017

Shonibare’s The British Library installation forms part of the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th La Biennale di Venezia. Presented by the International Curators Forum (ICF) and University of the Arts London (UAL), the exhibition takes place at the Palazzo Pisani S. Marina (13 May – 26 November). The Diaspora Pavilion is conceived as a challenge to the prevalence of national pavilions within the structure of an international biennial. By bringing together a group of 19 UK-based, ethnically diverse artists, the pavilion speaks eloquently of the infinite complexities of the very idea of nationality, whilst highlighting the continued relevance that diaspora as a lived reality holds today.

Candice Breitz represents South Africa at 57th Venice Biennale

Candice Breitz has been selected to represent South Africa at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Candice Breitz and Mohau Modisakeng will present a major exhibition in the South African pavilion during the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event, which runs from 13 May to 26 November 2017 in Venice, Italy.

The exhibition staged in the South African pavilion will invite viewers to explore the role of artists in visualising and articulating notions of selfhood within the context of global capitalism. It will ask: What is it to be visible in everyday life, yet invisible and disregarded at the level of cultural, political or economic representation? Placing new works by Breitz and Modisakeng in dialogue, the exhibition will reflect on experiences of exclusion, displacement, transience, migration and xenophobia, and explore the complex socio-political forces that shape the performance of subjectivity under such conditions.

“We are truly thrilled that Breitz and Modisakeng will be representing South Africa. Breitz’s photographs and multi-channel video installations offer nuanced studies of the structure of identity under global capitalism,” says Lucy MacGarry, curator of the pavilion with Musha Neluheni.  

Thabiso Sekgala at the Walther Collection

Sekgala features on the Walther Collection’s group exhibition, Recent Histories – New African Photography (7 May – 29 October). Forming part of the collection’s ongoing projects showcasing contemporary photography and video art from Africa, the show focuses on how African photographers are engaging with revolutionary and current photographic practices to respond to ideas and understandings of African diaspora.

Various artists on Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Africa show

Five Goodman Gallery artists – Kudzanai Chiurai, David Goldblatt, William Kentridge, David Koloane and Sue Williamson – are included in Fondation Louis Vuitton’s exhibition Art/Afrique, Le nouvel atelier (26 April – 28 August). They are featured in the section Being There, which focuses on work by 15 artists from South Africa.

William Kentridge at Cincinnati Art Museum

On loan from the LUMA Foundation, Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance will make its American premiere at the Cincinnati Art Museum (26 April – 5 November). The artist’s film installation involves seven screen projections, creating an immersive panorama, and showcases a procession of travelers crossing over a charcoal-drawn animated landscape.

Sue Williamson at MAC VAL in Paris

Williamson’s new video work, What is this thing called Freedom?, from her ongoing No more fairy tales series is featured in Tous, des sang-mêlés, a group exhibition of approximately 60 artists at MAC VAL (Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne) in Paris (22 April – 3 September). Curated by Julie Crenn and Frank Lamy, the exhibition’s title is taken from the 1950 book Nous sommes des sang-meles: manuel d’histoire de la civilisation francaise (We are mixed-bloods: A history of French civilization) by the French historian Lucien Febvre.

Various artists at Parc de la Villette

Four Goodman Gallery artists – Samson Kambalu, William Kentridge, Kiluanji Kia Henda and Tracey Rose – feature on the Parc de la Villette’s group show, Afriques Capitales: Le Mois de la Photo du Grand Paris 2017 (29 March – 3 September). Focusing on various capital cities around Africa, the multimedia exhibition presents viewers with the opportunity to experience the ambiance of an African metropolis.