The 20 Artists Who Left their Mark in 2019
Another year has past, full of art events, fairs, and biennials worldwide. We began 2019 with Zona Maco, the Armory Show, Art Dubai, and the Sharjah Biennial, Art Basel Hong Kong, miart, and Art Basel up until the very much awaited Venice Art Biennale “May you live in interesting times” curated by Ralph Rugoff.
So in order to say farewell to 2019 and welcome in 2020 we have singled out the top 20 artists who have left their mark on the past year: identified during the main art events; artists who have expressed sociopolitical concerns; artists who have had solo shows worldwide; artists who have received important prizes and lastly, artists to commemorate who left us this year.
A key player of the art week in London was Kara Walker (b. 1969, USA) who presented one of the most ambitious Hyundai Commissions to date at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London. “Fons Americanus” is a 13-metre tall working fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London. Rather than a celebration of the British Empire, Walker’s fountain explores the interconnected histories of Africa, America and Europe. Based in New York, Kara Walker explores issues of race, sexuality and violence. She is best known for her use of black cut-paper silhouetted figures, referencing the history of slavery and the antebellum South in the US through provocative and elaborate installations.
John Akomfrah (b. 1957 Accra, Ghana. Lives and works in London, UK) is one of the artists who represented Ghana at the country’s first National participation in the Venice Biennale. The artist showcased his works together with Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, El Anatsui and Felicia Abban. His recent exhibition include New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK (2019); BALTIC, Gateshead, UK (2019); ICA Boston, MA, USA (2019). He is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul.
Also showcasing during art week in Miami Beach is Italian artist Lara Favaretto (b. 1973, Treviso, Italy. Lives and works in Turin, Italy), who put on a major solo show at The Bass, titled “Blindspot”. This year Lara also participated in the Venice Art Biennale with works both in the Arsenale and Giardini Central Pavilions. The practice of Favaretto is the outcome of profound conceptual research. Her works interact with space and with the setting and community around them, and they emerge in powerful, almost violent, actions while appearing with stunning aesthetic quality.
Earlier in April, Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Tamale, Ghana) was invited to Milan by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi to create a site-specific work on the two neoclassical tollgates at the Porta Venezia. His urban-scale installation consisting in hundreds of jute sacks covers the architecture of a key site in the city. Known as Milan’s Oriental Gateway, it was historically the boundary separating the urban fabric of the city from the countryside. Titled “A Friend” and curated by Massimiliano Gioni, this work was a reflection upon migration, globalisation and the circulation of goods and people across borders and between nations. Read our interview.
During Frieze Art Week, the Royal Academy of Arts, London featured a major solo show by Antony Gormley (b. London in 1950) an exploration of his 45-year career alongside major new installations created for the galleries. Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space.
My work’s singularity isn’t a manifestation of alienation and loneliness: the attitude of the work is alert, aware and awake. When placed against the sky the sculptures are often looking towards a horizon that we cannot see. I think of them as sentinels, aware of a wider picture, inviting a form of awareness to do with the future, the planet, space.
A special mention goes to artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani who were all awarded the Turner Prize 2019 at the ceremony hosted at the Turner Contemporary art space in Margate, England on December 3rd, 2019. The four, who never met before, decided to form a collective for the occasion as a claim of solidarity, “At this time of political crisis in Britain and much of the world, when there is already so much that divides and isolates people and communities, we feel strongly motivated to use the occasion of the Prize to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity—in art as in society.” – they stated to the jury chaired by Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain in London, sided by Alessio Antoniolli, Director of Gasworks, London, and the Triangle Network; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director of the Showroom Gallery, London; Victoria Pomery, Director of Turner Contemporary; and writer Charlie Porter.
Laure Provoust (b. 1978, Lille, France) represented France at the Venice Biennale this year. The artist presented the installation “Deep See Blue Surrounding You” curated by Martha Kirszenbaum. The anchor piece of this fluid and tentacular universe of a pavilion, is the artist’s new film following a group of 12 characters of different ages and backgrounds on a road trip from Croix, where she was born, to Venice. Laure describes her vision of this journey as “a trip to our unconscious. With the help of our brains in our tentacles, we dig tunnels to the past and the future towards Venice. Let’s follow the light.”
The protagonist of the Venice Biennale awards ceremony was Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, USA), who was recipient of The Golden Lion for best artist in the central exhibition with his video “The White Album” (2018). Over the course of his career Arthur Jafa has developed a dynamic practice across mediums such as film, sculpture and performance. Jafa gathers together network-based images, historical photographs, vernacular portraits, music videos, memes, and viral news footage to highlight the absurdity and necessity of images in the apprehension of race.
We’d like to also mention artist Otobong Nkanga (b. 1974, Kano, Nigeria. Lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium) who, together with artist Emeka Ogboh, was awarded the Sharjah Biennial 14 Prize for the project “Aging Ruins Dreaming Only to Recall the Hard Chisel from the Past” (2019). Otobong also participated at the Venice Biennale within the Arsenale and Giardini central pavilions’ exhibition.
“None of us exist in a static state”, the artist has said. “Identities are constantly evolving. African identities are multiple. When I look at, for example, Nigerian, Senegalese, Kenyan, French, or Indian cultures, you cannot talk about a specific identity without talking about the colonial impacts and the impact of this exchange – of trade and goods and culture”.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s powerful works are composed of collage and photo-transfers, she examines the intimacy of home, in both her native Nigeria and Los Angeles, where she currently resides using her very own unique visual language which nods to the past whilst looking forward. Represented by Victoria Miro, the artist (b. in Enugu, 1983 and lives in Los Angeles) creates densely layered figurative compositions that, precise in style, nonetheless conjure the complexity of contemporary experience. Akunyili Crosby was born in Nigeria, where she lived until the age of sixteen. In 1999 she moved to the United States, where she has remained since that time. Her cultural identity combines strong attachments to the country of her birth and to her adopted home, a hybrid identity that is reflected in her work. Recent exhibitions include May You Live In Interesting Times, La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Ralph Rugoff; There I Belong. Hammershøi by Elmgreen & Dragset, SMK, Copenhagen, 2019; I am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA, until 5 July 2020.
Within the central pavilion at the Giardini Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s “Can’t help myself”, an industrial robot turns and flexes restlessly, programmed to ensure that a thick, deep red liquid stays within a predetermined area, the robot is placed within a transparent ‘cage’, like a captured create and put on display. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu forge their artistic route walking straight on a tightrope without losing balance of the paradoxical concepts they pursue; the dichotomies between constants and contrasts, reality and ideals, clashes and harmonies. They express bluntly the communicative essence of a different art, far different from the typical contemporary din; oriented toward self-examination rather than mere provocation.
For the occasion of her solo show at Palazzo Pitti, Florence and her exhibition at Pace Gallery, New York, earlier this spring, we interviewed artist Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954). She is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side, New York City, and the Hudson Valley, New York State.
A special mention goes also to composer and artist Ryoji Ikeda (b. 1966, Japan) whose practice approaches monumental minimalism, often interweaving sparse acoustic compositions with visuals that take the form of vast fields of digitally rendered information. These integrate to form the artist’s own expansive language, which relies on an algorithmic way of working where mathematics is utilised as a means to capture and reflect the natural world around us. He participated at the Venice Biennale this year.
This year Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) was invited by the Tate Modern to showcase his work in the exhibition “In real life,” which opened in July and has averaged some 2,500 visitors per day. The show will open at the Guggenheim Bilbao in February. Olafur Eliasson’s installations, paintings, photography, films, and public projects have served as tools for exploring the cognitive and cultural conditions that inform our perception. Ranging from immersive environments of color, light, and movement to installations that recontextualize natural phenomena, his work defies the notion of art as an autonomous object and instead positions itself as part of an exchange with the actively engaged visitor and her individualized experience. Described by the artist as “devices for the experience of reality,” his works and projects prompt a greater sense of awareness about the way we engage with and interpret the world.
We’d like to also mention Iranian artist Nairy Baghramian (b. 1971, Isfahan, Iran) for her participation at the Venice Biennale. In the Central Pavilion, she showcased “Maintainers” (2019), a collage of interdependent sculptural elements in tightly assembled groupings. Solid and obstinate, the collage of forms animates a dynamic tension between material support and attack – without the cork and lacquered braces, the work could potentially collapse.
Lastly, we mustn’t forget Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960 Padua, Italy) whose “Comedian” piece showcased at Art Basel Miami Beach will probably keep on making appearances throughout our Christmas holidays on social media. Living and working in New York City, Maurizio Cattelan is both one of the most popular and controversial artists on the contemporary art scene. His playful and provocative use of materials, objects, and gestures set in challenging contexts forces commentary and engagement. This year he put on a major solo show at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, United Kingdom and is the face of Arte Generali, a new art insurance scheme announced by Generali Group this November in Milan with a launch campaign by Oliviero Toscani.
