Frieze, Issue 252

Insightful, intelligent and exquisitely designed, Frieze is the leading magazine in contemporary art and culture. Frieze profiles emerging artists and highlights new currents in art practice as well as offering a fresh perspective on more established artists. Including exhibition reviews, interviews, city reports and worldwide listings, the magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in visual culture.

In this issue:

‘Ambiguity is, in many ways, art’s most subversive if overlooked quality’

—David Campany

The summer issue of frieze magazine is dedicated to the artists and writers working and living across the Mediterranean. David Campany contributes an essay on the historical and contemporary photographic representations of the region. Plus, Taous Dahmani, Oriane Durand, Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva and Wilson Tarbox each share a personal postcard from Marseille

Thematic Essay: Mythic Shores

‘It’s the way a sea connects disparate places that gives it an unstable and disruptive power. It can sweep you away.’ David Campany writes an insightful essay on the Mediterranean’s conflicted iconography and how it reflects 21st-century values through a selection of striking photographs.

Dossier: C’est Marseille, bébé

‘Marseille itself feels like a city of fugitive trajectories – a port of arrival and escape, where layered histories, migrations and reinventions convene.’ Four curators and writers pen love letters to Marseille, celebrating the cultural and political spirit of France’s second city.

Also featuring

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie profiles Lawrence Abu Hamdan, whose latest works examine the weaponization of noise and the politics of listening. SculptureCenter’s deputy director, Kyle Dancewicz, interviews Claudia Pagès Rabal about her interdisciplinary practice and how enduring connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb challenge political narratives and ideas of national identity. In ‘1,500 Words’, Kaya Genç traces the ways in which contemporary artists have created pockets of resistance in the heart of Istanbul.

Columns: Remapping

Shiv Kotecha looks at Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s vast counter-archive of Palestinian life; Saim Demircan examines how Renato Leotta’s Sicilia magazine excavates forgotten histories related to the island’s natural landscape; Mariana Fernández outlines Nour Jaouda’s textile practice which deconstructs notions of home and belonging; and Rafram Chaddad pens an essay on multicultural Mediterranean cuisine. Plus, senior editor Marko Gluhaich interviews Bouchra Khalili about The Mapping Journey Project (2008–11), which reimagines the map of the Mediterranean by way of migratory routes.

Finally, Jurriaan Benschop responds to Charline von Heyl’s collage work Athens (2024). Plus, Kaya Genç contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and assistant editor Ivana Cholakova pens a postcard from Monaco.