Exhibitions

David Antonio Cruz: One Day I’ll Turn the Corner and I’ll Be Ready For It is still on view at moniquemeloche in Chicago, United States until October 26, 2019

David Antonio Cruz explores the intersectionality of queerness and race through painting, sculpture, and performance. Focusing on queer, trans, and gender-fluid communities of color, Cruz examines the violence perpetrated against their members, conveying his subjects both as specific individuals and as monumental signifiers for large and urgent systemic concerns. Using a vast trove of images mined from the internet, including the personal social media accounts of his subjects, Cruz brings these individuals out of the shadows and into the light. He inserts these individuals’ likenesses into lush, sensuous compositions directly inspired by the aspirational aesthetic of luxury and fashion, creating a dissonance that critically elevates his black and brown subjects while also emphasizing the extreme injustice of their plights.

John Akomfrah: Ballasts of Memory is still on view at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, United Kingdom until October 27, 2019

Since the early 1980s, Akomfrah’s moving image works have offered some of the most rigorous and expansive reflections on the culture of the black diaspora, both in the UK and around the world. Akomfrah’s work initially came to prominence in the early 1980s as part of the Black Audio Film Collective, a group of seven artists founded in 1982 in response to the 1981 Brixton riots. In recent years, his multichannel video works have evolved into ambitious, multi-screen installations shown in galleries and museums around the world. This exhibition presents a selection of existing works alongside a related film programme. Ballasts of Memory includes the European premiere of Precarity, which tells the story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden, the African American cornetist and key figure in the development of jazz music.

Biennials

1st Young Congo Biennale will open at various venues in Kinshasa, Congo-DR from October 20 to November 21, 2019

The inaugural Young Congo Biennale will take place in the cosmopolitan city of Kinshasa and include projects from more than 40 artists, designers, architects, art historians, curators, art critics and other creators from five continents. Entitled Transition, the biennial “invites artists and thinkers to reflect on the general history of the DR Congo from the Berlin conference in 1885, when the country was privately owned by the Belgian King Leopold II, to the present day, and to reflect on its position and relations with the rest of the planet.” The Young Congo Biennale also wants to engage artists, designers, architects and participants working in the city to rethink a social and public space, in dialogue with its history and most immediate urban reality, and to be focused on the urbanity of the city province of Kinshasa by engaging artists and the population.

6th Biennale de Lubumbashi will open at various locations in Lubumbashi, Congo-DR from October 24 to November 24, 2019

The 6th edition of the Biennale de Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, entitled Future Genealogies, Tales from The Equatorial Line, probes the possibilities of repurposing the cartography of the world. Taking Lubumbashi as a point of departure, the Biennale proposes to local and international artists to explore the modalities of inventing new constellations of ideas, persons and communities. How can we imagine present and future stories that do justice to other latitudes, and yet recognize the interdependence of our globe? At a time when the urgency of climate change relentlessly binds our common fates, it is imperative to decompartmentalize the old genealogies while projecting new entangled futures. This edition is curated by Sandrine Colard, a specialist of modern and contemporary African and global arts, a writer, and an independent curator.

Art Fairs

FIAC – International Contemporary Art Fair will open at Grand Palais and other locations in Paris, France from October 17-20, 2019

For its 46th edition, FIAC, one of the world’s leading art fairs, will bring together 197 of the most prestigious modern art, contemporary art and design galleries from 29 countries in its iconic Parisian venue, the Grand Palais. The General Sector will feature 178 galleries deployed in five spaces: the Nave and the North-East gallery on the ground floor together with the Salon d’honneur, the Upper Galleries and the Salon Jean Perrin on the first floor. The Upper Galleries also host the ten exhibitors comprising the Lafayette Sector. The 2019 Lafayette selection includes ten dynamic young galleries chosen on the basis of the quality of their exhibition programme and a project proposed specifically for FIAC. They are representative of the vitality of the rising generation and their commitment to the emerging art scene.