In a year when AI has become an increasingly present part of our day-to-day lives, it’s no surprise that artists have been making use of technology to think about human experience. This year has seen successful solo and group shows highlighting the role that distinctive and intelligent curatorial visions play in shaping how we think about contemporary art. Below is a list of the exhibitions that made Frieze’s top 10 Shows for 2024, including works by Nolan Oswald Dennis, Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Gallery 1957.
Nolan Oswald Dennis / Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa
Interrogating the fields of geology and cosmology through sculpture and drawing, Nolan Oswald Dennis’s first museum solo exhibition in South Africa opened this October at Zeitz MOCAA. ‘UNDERSTUDIES’ continuously reshapes indexical and educational devices such as mutated earth globes made from gourds and lenses cocooned in rock formations. Through playful dissection, Dennis removes the objects’ didacticism and transforms them into sites of rehearsal and experimentation. ‘Xenolith (Letsema)’ (2024) is a site-specific column composed of tightly packed soil and is a collaboration between the artist and the many people who work at the museum. This way this installation pushes against the boundaries of who gets to produce art and how.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa / Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
A pair of photographs by Lindokuhle Sobekwa, titled ‘Luvo in the garden I’ and ‘Luvo in the garden II’ (both 2021), present a male figure engulfed by greenery. In one of the images, he has his back turned to the camera; in the other, he faces forward, looking at a flower held in his hand. These are subtle, beautiful photographs, capturing an intimate moment of connection with nature. Other works in the exhibition have an almost abstract quality. In ‘Ngqeleni’ (2021), for instance, tree roots push above ground on a sandy beach, forming a tangled mesh. Sobekwa is a master at capturing moments in which the world appears both familiar and strange: the flowers, trees, houses and roads which make up his daily surroundings are still a source of wonder to be relished.
‘Keeping Time’ / Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana
This monumental group show at Gallery 1957 skillfully unites the multifaceted practices of both Ghana-based artists and those from the African diaspora. ‘Keeping Time’ rejects a chronological reading of history and dispels the white Eurocentric structures that undergird artistic canons. A sequel to ‘In and Out of Time’ (2023), curated by Ekow Eshun, the current iteration marries the work of returning artists, such as Amoako Boafo and Modupeola Fadugba, with new additions like Alvaro Barrington and Ravelle Pillay. The exhibition is a testament to Gallery 1957’s extensive programme which, according to art critic Osman Can Yerebakan ‘plays a significant role in the country’s positioning as a locus for portraiture.’
More exhibitions featured on this list are Ei Arakawa-Nash’s exhibition at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan; Ian Cheng’s exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery in Seoul, South Korea; Rindon Johnson’s exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, China; the ‘Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies’ exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong; as well as ‘Foreshadows’ at Beirut Art Center in Lebanon, among others.
