From America to Asia: Top Exhibitions to see in 2021-2022

Regina de Con Cossío

Museums around the world were deeply affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the exhibitions were cancellend or posposed, but hope still remains and exhibition programs are kind of a possibility for seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. If these exhibitions are scheduled, we might think in the oportunity of visiting a museum. Here is  a selected list of some of the most anticipated exhibitions that will take place from the second half of the year.

Opening M+ Museum
2021
Hong Kong

Designed by famous architectural practice Herzog & de Meuron, the M+ Museum will be one of the largest modern and contemporary art museums of the world with about 17,000 square meters of exhibition space around thirty-three galleries, three cinemas, a mediateque, a learning hub, and a roof garden. The opening that was originally scheduled for 2019, however, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was posponed from the second half of 2021.

The M+ Collection is an interdisciplinary collection of visual culture that brings together design and architecture, moving image, and visual art works from Hong Kong, mainland China, elsewhere in Asia, and beyond.

 

Georgia O’Keeffe
Sep 8 – Dec 6
Centre Pompidou

The Centre Pompidou presents the first retrospective in France of one of the most important artists of the 20th Century: Georgia O’Keefee (1887-1986). The exhibition will offer a comprehensive review of her career throug hundreds of paintings, drawings, and photographs. From the curatorial pespective, the exhibition unfolds Georgia O’Keeffe’s artistic trajectory chronologically, from the early “cosmic” fevers inspired by the immensity of the Texas plains in 1910, to the metropolises and rural landscapes of New York state in the 1920s-1930s, to New Mexico, where she settled for good after the Second World War.

This exhibition was organized by the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Beyeler.

 

Barbara Kruger. Thinking of you. I Mean me, I mean you
Art Institute of Chicago
Sept 19 – Jan 24, 2022

THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU. encompasses the full breadth of Barbara Kruger‘s career—from early and rarely seen “pasteups” (works that use an analog technique for physically arranging a page’s contents with manual “cut and paste”) to digital productions of the last two decades. The presentation includes works on vinyl, site-specific installations, animations, and multichannel video installations.

The exhibition is not, however, a retrospective. Challenging notions of career building and a strict chronology, Kruger has reenvisioned the retrospective itself by rethinking, remaking, and replaying her work over the decades for the constantly moving present.

 

Anicka Yi
Turbine Hall. Tate Modern
Oct 12 – January 16, 2022

After being posposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Hyundai Commission for the Turbine Hall conceived for 2021 will take place this year with South-Korean artist Anicka Yi as the original plan. The entire space will be transforme by Yi with a proposal that has not been revealed yet.

Anicka Yi explores the links between art and science. She is known for the way her works activate different senses and for experimenting with unorthodox materials that have ranged from tempura batter to kombucha leather. Her work draws from the research of philosophers who are concerned with emerging forms of life and intelligence, while also addressing present day questions around migration, class and gender

Colección Jumex: Ambient Temperature
October 7 – February 13, 2022
Curated by artist Sofía Táboas, Ambient Temperature presents 35 works from the Colección Jumex to create a journey from the suffocating heat of the desert to the air-conditioned, impersonal spaces of contemporary life. Filling the third floor of the museum with videos, photographs, installations, and sculptures by renowned international artists including Francis Alÿs, Tacita Dean, Mark Dion, Olafur Eliasson, Gabriel Kuri, Alicja Kwade, Ann Veronica Janssens, and Salla Tykkä. Ambient Temperature considers heat poetically—how it travels through the body, affecting experiences and emotions, against the backdrop of global climate change. Differences in temperatures represented by the works generate transitional spaces, intermediate states, and moments of discrepancy.
Maurizio Cattelan: Last Judgment
November 20 – to February 20, 2022
Curated by Francesco Bonami, Last Judgment will be first exhibition in China by Maurizio Cattelan, one of the most controversial and popular contemporary artist from Europe. The show will be an overview of his mind and artistic practice through more than 30 pieces from the last 30 years. Starting from a small picture from 1989 (Lessico familiare) and continuing through a series of exploratory self-portraits, Cattelan takes viewers on an imaginative journey through history, in which near-mythical figures like JFK, Pope John Paul II, or even Hitler are transformed into normal and at times pathetic human beings.
National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne)
December 10 – June  2022
Queer shines a light on the NGV Collection to examine and reveal the queer stories works of art can tell. This exhibition of works from the NGV Collection spans historical eras and diverse media including painting, drawing, photography, decorative arts, fashion, video, sculpture, and design and explores queerness as an expression of sexuality and gender, a political movement, a sensibility, and as an attitude that defies fixed definition. The exhibition will include works by Nan Goldin, José López, Zanele Muholi, among other artists.
Shooting Down Babylon
December 15 – July 3, 2022

Zeitz MOCAA presents the largest comprehensive retrospective of the revolutionary work of Tracey Rose (b. 1974, South Africa). A radical voice in the international and South African art world since the mid 90s, Rose’s cutting and uncompromising vision will be foregrounded in a large-scale exhibition including work spanning from 1996 to 2019. The title of the exhibition derives from an iconic installation Shooting Down Babylon (The Art of War)(2016), which reflects on varied exorcist and cleansing rituals from non-Western communities. The work points to several themes that stem from post-colonial entanglements such as repatriation, recompense and reckoning and epitomises the wide-ranging medium and concerns that are prevalent in Rose’s practice.

The exhibition will encompass film, sculpture, photography, performance, print, painting and multi-layered participatory elements, with the body and performativity being central to every aspect. For Rose, the body, often her own body, is a site for protest, outrage, resistance and pertinent discourse. It is a channel for the demonstration of exasperation, aggravation, disruption and paradox.

 

Where are you in the world? Enjoy what yo get to see, and share your comments withs us!