Hans Ulrich Obrist, Koyo Kouoh, Pilar Corrias and More on the Art to Look Forward to in 2024
By Keshav AnandLooking at the year ahead, Something Curated highlights the art exhibitions and events not to miss in 2024 — compiled with help from Hans Ulrich Obrist, Frieze London’s Eva Langret, Zeitz MOCAA Director Koyo Kouoh, and gallerists Pilar Corrias and Amrita Jhaveri.
Eva Langret, Director of Frieze London
Langret tells Something Curated: “I am very much looking forward to John Akomfrah’s British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, an initiative that Frieze is supporting this year. Last year, the British Pavilion in Venice was such a landmark moment, with Sonia Boyce’s memorable Feeling Her Way, and I am full of anticipation for John Akomfrah’s commission. Akomfrah is a pioneering artist who has spent decades at the forefront of conversations on moving image, the legacy of colonialism and diasporic identities. His new commission in April promises to be a highlight of the year.”
Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director & Chief Curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA)
“I am looking forward to When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, at Kunstmuseum Basel,” Kouoh says. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the 2019 Netflix miniseries When They See Us by African-American director Ava DuVernay, which focuses on how Black youth are seen as potential criminals and thus as a threat. Replacing “they” with “we” in the title indicates the crucial perspectival shift: the works on show bring into focus the artists’ lived realities as the subject of their own art.
Amrita Jhaveri, Director of Jhaveri Contemporary
On the upcoming projects she’s excited for, Jhaveri tells SC: “That’s easy. It’s Matthew Krishanu’s show at Camden Art Centre in April and Monika Correa at Venice.” Krishanu’s atmospheric compositions depict scenes from the artist’s life, including his childhood years in Bangladesh growing up with his brother and their parents. Seemingly familiar narratives are alluded to but destabilised, and the viewer’s own projections are called upon to fulfil the interpretive loop.
Correa, who will be showing previously unseen pieces at Venice, began working with fibre in the 1960s. It was in 1962 when she was in Boston that Correa learned the fundamentals of weaving from Finnish-American Modernist textile designer Marianna Strengell. On returning to India, Correa commissioned a carpenter to build a customised loom and has been experimenting with this practice ever since.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine Galleries
Obrist explains to SC: “Gaming and worldbuilding were an important dimension in art in 2022. At Serpentine, Third World: The Bottom Dimension by Gabriel Massan and featuring the exciting new generation of Brazilian artists, was one of the most popular projects we’ve ever staged, partly because audiences are engaging with the intersections between art and technology and their impact on society. Massan was also included in the exhibition I curated for Centre Pompidou Metz and the Julia Stoschek’s Collection in Dusseldorf on worldbuilding. WORLDBUILDING examines the relationship between gaming and time-based media art with a journey through various ways in which artists have interacted with video games and made them into an art form.
In 2023, 3 billion people played video games, making a niche pastime into the biggest mass phenomenon of our time. Many people spend hours every day in a parallel world and live a multitude of different lives. Video games are maybe becoming to the twenty-first century what movies were to the twentieth century and novels to the nineteenth century. Worldbuilding is an evolutive notion of what an exhibition can be. Like many games themselves, the exhibition started as one version of itself, and through feedback and research it grows and changes into an altered and expanded version. Worldbuilding will continue to be an important topic for us in 2024 and the exhibition will continue its journey after Metz. Gabriel Massan’s game will travel to Pinacoteca Sao Paulo following its Serpentine presentation.
Next year will be the year of AI at Serpentine and we are excited to present Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s first show at Serpentine North in the autumn. By experimenting with machine learning models and training data (the two key elements of present-day AI), the exhibition will consider the capabilities AI can bring to creative practice. We always felt Holly and Mat were so far ahead of everybody else! They really think about what it does to the whole ecosystem: the artistic, the technical, the social, the economic aspects of these technologies.
AI will also be explored in our Future Arts Ecosystems report, the 4th edition coming out in March and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. In addition, LA-based artist and technologist Refik Anadol was interviewed for it and we will present his new work in February at the gallery. The exhibition will feature years-long research utilising ground-breaking data visualisations and machine learning methods to encourage us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, collective experiences, public art, decentralised networks, and the creative potential of AI. These shows will surely prompt interesting conversations and build new connections between artists and society.
Connections between art and society also play a big role in Barbara Kruger’s work whose exhibition we will show at Serpentine this Winter. Barbara Kruger is one of the most transformative artists of our time. For her exhibition Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., at Serpentine, the artist connects to the South Gallery’s architecture visually and sonically, and draws the viewer into the space, reflecting on context, histories, cultures, and hierarchies.
The future is invented with fragments from the past, and in her recent work, which is seen here for the first time outside the US, Kruger reanimates some of her previous works through puzzles, aerosols, and other distortions. Summarising her practice, Kruger told me in a recent interview that her art “is about how we are to one another.” For more than half a century, she has created a commentary on living in our times. Barbara’s show will be followed by exciting exhibitions by Yinka Shonibare, Judy Chicago and Lauren Halsey at Serpentine.”
Pilar Corrias, Director of Pilar Corrias
Corrias tells us: “2023 has been a momentous year for the gallery, with the opening of our new Mayfair space on Conduit Street. But we’re already focused on the next chapter, and looking forward to welcoming our newest artists, Tomashi Jackson and Lina Iris Viktor to the new space, both of whom will present highly ambitious solo exhibitions in the spring and summer. Following her show with us, Lina will open a major solo exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, where she will present new marble sculptures and gold paintings made in response to the collection.
But, before then, I’ll be heading to Seoul, where Philippe Parreno is presenting the largest solo exhibition in the history of Leeum Museum of Art. Those who have followed Philippe’s career will know he is always full of surprises, and no doubt it’s going to be a breathtaking show, full of beauty and innovation. In February Manuel Mathieu will also have a big solo show at De La Warr Pavilion here in the UK. And, as ever, I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends in Venice in April, where two of our artists, Koo Jeong A and Shahzia Sikander, will be presenting work.”
Something Curated’s Picks
A self-described visual activist, Zanele Muholi uses the camera to explore issues of gender identity, representation, and race. Often photographing their own body or members of their LGBTQ+ community in South Africa, Muholi calls attention to the trauma and violence enacted on queer people while celebrating their beauty and resilience. Opening on 18 January 2024, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s major new exhibition, Zanele Muholi: Eye Me, brings together photographs from 2002 to the present alongside the artist’s latest explorations in painting and sculpture.
From 15 March to 9 June 2024, the Yokohama Triennale returns to Japan for its eighth instalment with the exhibition Wild Grass: Our Lives. Under the guidance of Chinese curators Liu Ding and Carole Yinghua Lu, who jointly serve as artistic directors, the exhibition derives its name from the Chinese author Lu Xun’s anthology, Wild Grass. Rooted in the essence of Lu’s literary work, the showcase delves into diverse themes amidst the backdrop of the uncertainties and paradoxes of post-pandemic globalisation. The first round of participants unveiled include 68 artists and collectives, 21 of which have been commissioned to make new works.
This summer, the Barbican will present a major new exhibition by internationally renowned, Mexico-based artist Francis Alÿs, his largest institutional solo exhibition in the UK for almost 15 years. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, it will stage the UK premiere of his critically acclaimed series Children’s Games (1999-present), newly expanded since the Belgian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Standing as a testament to the universality of play and ingenuity even in politically charged environments, this archive of games grows in significance with each new film.
Feature image: Lungiswa Gqunta, Ntabamanzi, 2022; Installation view at Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2022. Photo by Rob Harris. Courtesy of the artist and Henry Moore Foundation. Gqunta will be participating in the eighth Yokohama Triennale.