The two curators of the Frieze Masters section discuss how migration, material exchange and research are transforming the history of modernism
Terence Trouillot There is wide-ranging geographical representation through the artists presented in Spotlight, spanning South Asia, South America, Europe, North and West Africa and East Asia. What conceptual throughlines connect these artists? Did these shape the section’s development, or did they mostly emerge through the research and selection process?
Devika Singh My work has long been grounded in South Asia, while also following lines of exchange with Asia – including West Asia – Europe and North Africa. For Spotlight, I worked closely with galleries presenting H.A. Karunaratne’s vibrant early work, Piraji Sagara’s adventurous wood sculptures and Ganesh Haloi’s moving compositions, along with the quasi-sculptural work of Mahjoub Ben Bella and Mohamed Melehi’s controlled use of colour, to give a few examples.
More broadly, two interrelated axes run through Spotlight: post colonial emancipation and artistic circulation. The practices of several artists intersect with anti-colonial struggles and political upheaval. Maliheh Afnan is one example. Her family left Iran because of their Bahá’í faith and settled in Palestine. Born in Haifa, Afnan fled to Lebanon in 1949, later living in France for over 20 years before moving to London. Her art bears the traces of her complex trajectory, its opacity resisting any claim to authenticity.
We can also trace these circulations through the notion of ‘entangled modernisms’, by focusing on nodes of intersection. Eurocentric narratives long invisibilized artists, excluding them from dominant definitions of art in France and Britain. This is being revised, with exhibitions such as ‘Paris Noir’ last year at the Centre Pompidou showcasing Haitian artists Luce Turnier and Roland Dorcély, both part of Spotlight. For South Asia, Anwar Jalal Shemza offers another example: a racialized artist first exhibited in the UK in the late 1950s and ’60s, but deserving of far greater recognition.
Sofia Gotti Spotlight characteristically develops organically, emerging from the material we encounter in the applications pool, as well as the galleries we can invite to participate. Like Devika, art-historical research grounds my approach – in my case, art from South America and the Caribbean – which led me towards galleries representing artists, especially women, whose work I have been invested in for some time. I was also excited to learn about artists I was less familiar with, like the pioneering sculptor Aase Texmon Rygh and the painter Tilde Poli, who both explore expression and movement in geometric form.
One important throughline for me in this process has been – and always is – an interest in how artists draw from the ‘popular’, engaging with practices, including popular art and craft, that challenge aesthetic, and ultimately social, hierarchies.
In selecting the section’s galleries together, I found it particularly fruitful to think again about the ecologies of mutual support and exchange that exist not only between artists, but also galleries, institutions and scholars. For example, the elusive Manina [Marianne Tischler], who exhibited at the Hugo Gallery in New York, and Galerie Furstenberg in Paris. Today, there are galleries like kó in Lagos, which has widely exhibited the work of modernists like Adebisi Fabunmi, who was part of the Nigerian Osogbo School, and is committed to building artwork and research archives.
TT Devika, you mentioned the idea of ‘modern-isms’. In bringing these diverse histories together, how do you avoid flattening the distinctions between their specific political and cultural contexts? I’m thinking particularly about East Asia, and how those artists fit within the broader narrative. How have you approached those distinctions?
DS I mentioned modernisms, but the notion I’d like to emphasize is entanglement. The point is not parallel tracks, but tensions and connections. There are three East Asian artists in Spotlight who hold the attention as individual figures – Shikō Munakata, Fong Chung-Ray and Lang Jingshan – each living through political transformations in Japan, China and Taiwan. Simultaneously, a trans-Asian emphasis on materiality and artistic pedagogy emerges. Pioneering photographer Lang Jingshan’s take on the Chinese landscape, for instance, resonates with Nihar Ranjan Chowdhury’s paintings of nature in Bengal.
