Photography
fromThe Nation
2 days agoAlejandro Cartagena's Mexico in Flux
Photographs capture the transformation of landscapes and suburban growth, reflecting themes of isolation and environmental change.
Upon entry, Kent's "IF" (1965) lures the eye upward. The serigraph-a silkscreen print in fine art parlance-hangs high on the wall with a subtle vulnerability. Two orange letters hover toward the composition's top edge, as if pushing to transcend the picture plane. A feeling of possibility emerges through the conjunction and its visual form.
Bathed in natural light and nestled within the leafy calm of Pinecrest, this 6,000-square-foot Miami residence designed by Marcela Cure offers a counterpoint to the city's louder design cliches. Rather than leaning into high-gloss exuberance or overt tropical motifs, Cure composed an interior rooted in softness where material nuance, tactile restraint, and quiet warmth redefine what a Miami home can feel like.
We were supposed to be Frieze's special guests. And we feel like we're being censored, racially profiled and discriminated against. Having worked with the fair for five years, she says she will not continue beyond this weekend.
Now, he celebrates his first major presentation in Latin America, in congruence with Mexico City Art Week 2026 and ZSONAMACO, showcasing on an ideal stage inside one of the city's most architecturally layered interiors. Titled The Resident, the site-responsive installation, created during a residency at the Diez Company house, transforms the historic showroom into an immersive tableau where more than 50 works negotiate the boundaries between collectible design, contemporary art, and spatial theater.
This is the site of the Florida state historical marker commemorating Arthur Lee McDuffie, a Black insurance broker and former US Marine whose 1979 beating death at the hands of Miami police ignited one of the most consequential uprisings in the city's history. A plaque unveiled in February 2024 at the site of his attack finally acknowledged the violence that fractured McDuffie's skull and the community-wide outrage that followed.
"The new venue has allowed us to develop the experience of the fair-it lends itself to being more of a destination," Brett W. Schultz, the co-founder and director of Material, tells The Art Newspaper. The fair features over 70 exhibitors this year, with an especially strong contingent of Mexico City galleries that, like Material, have been around for a little over a decade.
The Brooklyn-based artist is formally trained as a painter and self-taught as a ceramicist, and she fuses the two modes of working into a complementary practice. Hier begins by sculpting a wide range of forms, and after several rounds of firing with both handmade and commercially available glazes, she adds a painting. The pairings arise intuitively, sometimes through free association, trial and error, or by homing in on a color.
If, like me, you'd rather be in Puerto Rico slathering mashed banana on your semi-nude body than braving the forthcoming cold front in New York City, just know you're not alone. "TROPICALIZE ME!" (2025), pictured above, was performed by Matthieu Laurette at the 3rd Gran Bienal Tropical in December, where the artist took home one of five "Golden Coconuts" along with Poncili Creación, Ángela María Domínguez, Miguel González, and Aldo Álvarez Tostado.
OSCAR MURILLO (b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia) has developed a multifaceted and challenging practice that spans painting, collaborative projects, video, sound and installation. Through each body of work, the artist probes ideas of collectivity and shared culture, demonstrating a commitment to the power of material presence alongside complex meditations on contemporary society. A focus on the social dimension that sits on the border between performance and events is also central to Murillo's practice.
Artist Ayelet Gal-On does not just paint; she builds, layering oil, acrylic and plaster on canvas. Gal-On's signature subjects for "Taken by the Wind, Swept by the Light," her upcoming solo exhibition at Gallery 9 in Los Altos, are white dresses that appear to hang on a line, defying the stillness of the canvas. "I love the process of playing with color," says the artist.
Regina Silveira has spent the better part of three decades considering the relationship between media and meaning, particularly as it relates to Latin America. First presented in 1997, "To Be Continued..." features 100 black-and-white reproductions of photos, newspaper clippings, propaganda, advertisements, and more. Silveira nests each image into an oversized puzzle piece, which cuts off faces and scenes to leave fragments of pop culture icons, flora and fauna, and even the occasional mugshot spliced next to one another.
With most of us, 90 minutes of reminiscing wouldn't make for scintillating theater. Gert Boyle, as played by Wendy Westerwelle, is the exception to that rule. The late Gert came to fame when she took the reins of Columbia Sportswear after her husband's death in 1970 and also became the "One Tough Mother," with gray hair and glasses, of its comedic '80s and '90s ad campaigns. In one, she put her son, Tim, through a carwash to test the durability of a coat.
Taking over the colourful Casa Gilardi, Luis Barragán's last commissioned residence, built for the advertising executive Francisco Gilardi in the mid-1970s, the German artist Gregor Hildebrandt transforms the house's stylish rooms with an ever-expanding exhibition of his enigmatic works across various media. Known for transforming outmoded analogue recording media-including audio cassettes, VHS tapes and vinyl records-into paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations, the Berlin-based artist's conceptual works explore themes of memory, nostalgia and the physical representation of intangible sound and sight.
In her manifesto, Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa presents what she calls a new mestiza consciousness, which advocates for ambiguity and moves "toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes." Groundbreaking when it was published in 1987, this theory pushed queer, feminist, and cultural scholars to consider how identity is both fluid and informed by several overlapping factors. It also helped to lay the groundwork for branches of study like ecofeminism,