Based in Toronto and New York, Xiaoyu Weng is the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator and head of modern and contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and an adviser for Kadist. She previously served as associate curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in 2019 curated the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
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XINYI CHENG (LAFAYETTE ANTICIPATIONS, PARIS; CURATED BY CHRISTINA LI)
Cheng’s deeply moving survey “Seen Through Others” was imbued with moments of intimacy, desire, and humor. Often drawn from real-life encounters, the characters, animals, and scenes in her soft-hued oil paintings’ compositions evoke complex emotions and a sense of connection. Cheng’s wit sparks through her titles (Where do the noses go?, 2021, for example, depicts a kissing couple, noses awkwardly bumping into each other). Her snapshot-like portrayals of urban youths and their everyday life offer a glimpse into contemporary coexistence.
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“MUTATIONS/CREATIONS 5: RÉSEAUX-MONDES” (CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS; CURATED BY MARIE-ANGE BRAYER AND OLIVIER ZEITOUN)
“Réseaux-Mondes”—loosely translated as “Worlds of Networks”—was the fifth and latest iteration of “Mutations/Creations,” a long-term research project and interdisciplinary platform launched in 2017 by the Centre Pompidou and the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music. Much the same way that the Pompidou’s legendary 1985 exhibition “Les Immatériaux” juxtaposed Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha, 1974, with the most innovative computer technology of the time, “Réseaux-Mondes” integrated the interpretation and display of materials from various fields to critically investigate the place of networks in our societies. Jill Magid’s Legoland, 2000, and Simon Denny’s Centralization vs Decentralization hardware display: Fujitsu/Bitcoin/GoL 1978, 2018, were just two of the works that gained new dimensions when viewed through the lens of cybernetics histories, technological progress, and issues such as surveillance, atomization, and dematerialization.
3
SHIGEKO KUBOTA (MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK; CURATED BY ERICA PAPERNIK-SHIMIZU)
A concentrated survey of Kubota’s video sculptures, the exhibition “Liquid Reality” provided a window into the artist’s lesser-known, radical practice in the 1970s and ’80s as a pioneer of the then-nascent technology of video. Highlights included the dazzling Niagara Falls I, 1985, a work that combines CRT monitors, a sprinkler system, and mirror surfaces to honor the awe and power of the great waterfall. The exhibition reclaimed the significance of this body of work, which has been overshadowed both by those of her male contemporaries and by her own performance Vagina Painting, 1965—a piece that, while widely hailed as a milestone of both Fluxus and feminist art history, Kubota made only reluctantly, at the urging of George Maciunas and Nam June Paik.
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“NO MASTER TERRITORIES: FEMINIST WORLDMAKING AND THE MOVING IMAGE” (HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT, BERLIN; CURATED BY ERIKA BALSOM AND HILA PELEG)
“No Master Territories” assembled a plurality of marginalized and underappreciated practices in the realms of nonfiction documentary and artist’s film to explore representations of gendered experience and the solidarity among feminist movements across time and place. The exhibition design was ingenious: Several films were installed in curved cubicles, and visitors wore wireless headphones that seamlessly paired with the signals as they moved around. The screenings were supplemented by archival materials and ephemera related to the films.
5
GALA PORRAS-KIM (AMANT, NEW YORK; CURATED BY RUTH ESTÉVEZ AND ADAM KLEINMAN)
In her solo debut in New York, Porras-Kim deepened her inquiries into the afterlives of cultural artifacts, questioning the way we preserve and circulate objects of cultural significance. Her highly conceptual and contextualized drawings and sculptures meticulously imitate—resurrect, even—findings from archaeological sites. Also included in this show was a selection of letters in which the artist exercises a new kind of institutional critique by writing to museums to ask them to reconsider the ways in which they make decisions regarding conservation and restoration.
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“GARDEN OF TEN SEASONS” (SAVVY CONTEMPORARY, BERLIN; CURATED BY COSMIN COSTINAS, SHEELASHA RAJBHANDARI, AND HIT MAN GURUNG)
An adaptation and evolution from the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (whose date is based on the Nepali Bikram Sambat calendar system), this exhibition unfolded the questions of decolonization through a localized entry point. The three curators advocated a pluralism of worldviews by featuring artists such as Antonio Pichillá, Ashmina Ranjit, and Citra Sasmita, whose works foreground a multiplicity of aesthetic traditions and cosmologies. Liberating practices such as craft, folklore, healing, and ritual from the discrimination of Eurocentric canons, which often cast them as ethnographic artifacts, the curatorial framework provided a new contemporaneity and actively contested homogenized ways of making meaning.
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STAN DOUGLAS (CANADIAN PAVILION AT THE 59TH VENICE BIENNALE; CURATED BY REID SHIER)
Douglas’s two-part solo presentation of the Canadian pavilion explored cultures of resistance while testing the limits of universalism and community-building. In the space of the pavilion architecture at the Giardini, the artist staged potential scenes from four vital movements that all happened in 2011: the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the riots in both London and Vancouver. Some may have missed the second venue, however. At Magazzini del Sale No. 5, a sixteenth-century salt factory, the monumental projection of Douglas’s two-channel video installation ISDN, 2022, pitted four rappers, two each in London and Cairo, singing about systemic social violence. Like the photographs, the video mixes documentary and manipulation: While their freestyle verses appear to flow as a call-and-response, their order is in fact perpetually remixed by an algorithm.
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SHAHZIA SIKANDER (RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN MUSEUM, PROVIDENCE; CURATED BY JAN HOWARD)
“Extraordinary Realities” surveyed a large body of manuscript paintings and works on paper created during the early years of Sikander’s career, when her whimsical depiction of subjects, vivid imagination, and bold use of color and composition first formed the unique vocabulary that continues to permeate the artist’s practice today. Intimately scaled, these works, ever more relevant to contemporary discussions, contemplate the identity and perception of Muslim culture; racialized narratives; and issues of gender and sexuality that traverse time, geography, and tradition.
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“EVIDENCE” (MERCER UNION, TORONTO; CURATED BY AMY ZION)
“Evidence” featured works created by artists Brian Belott, Petrit Halilaj, Ulrike Müller, Oscar Murillo, and Alanis Obomsawin in close collaborations with children through their ways of looking at the world. An anchor piece, Abenaki filmmaker Obomsawin’s 1971 debut film, Christmas at Moose Factory (1971), sheds light on a past that colonizers try very hard to hide. Obomsawin composed her narrative from drawings and illustrations produced by young Cree children who were forcibly separated from their families and kept at a residential school in northern Ontario. Their vibrant and imaginative depictions of life offer a sharp contrast to the grim realities of the residential school.
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GREATER TORONTO ART 2021 (MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, TORONTO; CURATED BY DAISY DESROSIERS, RUI MATEUS AMARAL, AND NOVEMBER PAYNTER)
A considered survey of fresh practices coming from the greater Toronto area, GTA21 gave voice to local artists like Alexa Hatanaka, Azza El Siddique, and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, whose global perspectives explore a renewed sense of internationalism and solidarity. Situated in a city of layered histories that intersect with the colonial past, Indigenous trauma, new-settler culture, and international migration, this recently established triennial asks crucial questions of how to reinvent and reimagine what a global city might be.
