Neocolonialism, a History of Death and Richterian Melancholia: the Best Arts and Culture this February – ArtReview

ArtReview editors on what to look forward to in this months shows, screenings, videogames and books (and if all else fails, reboot your creativity with a stack of Marina Abramovi Method cards)

Made in XKunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, 4 February 29 May

While many western artists and curators wring their hands over decolonising art, its institutions and collections, those debates have, perhaps inadvertently, turned attention away from the bigger, still-unequal extractive relationships between the rich industrial north and the poor, raw-materials-producing south. Giving old colonial-era artefacts back to the global south has a hollow ring when youre still consuming commodities produced by postcolonial dollar-a-day labour. So Kunsthal Extra Citys timely exhibition brings together artists from both north and south including the DRCs plantation workers-turned-sculptors CATPC and Sammy Baloji, Indias Raqs Media Collective and UK-based Yelena Popova to tell tales about these basic materials, and their circulation, on which our our consumption and lifestyles rely copper, iron, cocoa, oil, gold and uranium (not forgetting verbena leaves, of course). Art might be indivisible from prosperity and leisure, so art that connects that consumption back to the sources of the wealth that enables it (and us) reminds us of the ethics and politics of our relative places in the global value-chain. J.J. Charlesworth

The Marina Abramovi Method: Instruction Cards to Reboot Your LifeLaurence King Publishing, released 17 February 2022

If youve had a tough couple of years during pandemics and lockdowns, you might be finding your creativity at low ebb. But with an internet awash with online meditation apps, life-hack gurus and those weird ASMR videos about stroking towels, its hard to know where to turn to rediscover your centredness and de-negativise your positivity. Search no further, however, since art-star Marina Abramovi the visionary who movingly sat still in a gallery for 750 straight hours while staring at the audience will tell you what to do. The great teacher has released her method, distilling her approach to generating optimum creativity into a pack of instructional cards, which, when randomly selected when youre in a funk, guide you to actions such as drink a glass of water as slowly as you can, count each grain of rice and lentil and, crucially, step on the ground first thing in the morning. Have your partner aim a loaded bow and arrow at your heart didnt make the cut, apparently. J.J. Charlesworth

Gabriel Giucci: CHURASCOGaleria Leme, So Paulo, 19 February 26 March

If Gerhard Richter in his figurative moments swapped the hazy grey of Germany for the sun and colour of Rio de Janeiro, the results might look something like Gabriel Giuccis work. The Brazilian artist will show over 60 of his diminutive (so this is where the Brazilian artist departs from the German) paintings, in which he depicts the landscape, animals and monuments of his home country, alongside portraits of politicians and scenes culled from recent press photography. Yet despite the bright palette theres Richterian melancholia to the paintings, perhaps understandable given theyre intended as a state-of-the-nation portrait: Brazils beaches are shown lifeless and empty; the rivers wide and depopulated. There is a painting of a political advisor who has been mired in a corruption scandal, sat slumped and dejected under house arrest; another showing the Brazilian flag, its motto Ordem e Progresso replaced by the Portuguese word for barbecue, misspelt. Oliver Basciano

Centenary of Semana de Arte ModernaVarious venues, So Paulo

For one week in February 1922 the municipal theatre in So Paulo saw an explosion of avant-garde activity: the Semana de Arte Moderna was designed by a group of artists, writers, architects and composers as a rebuke to the conservative cultural establishment. The festival has now gone down in history as when Brazilian Modernism became the dominant force in the country. Marking the centenary of this radical moment is a host of exhibitions and events across the citys institutions, not least at the theatre itself which will present all nine suites of Heitor Villa-Loboss Bachianas Brasileiras (1930-1945), in which the composer fused Brazilian folk tradition with the European classical tradition on an equal footing. Pinacoteca will stage an exhibition of modernist work from its collection, the centrepiece being Emiliano Di Cavalcantis strange, haunting Amigos (1921), a painting which debuted at the original festival, an example in its simple composition of how the artist sought to shrug off European influences. Di Cavalcanti was based in Rio de Janeiro, which alongside So Paulo, was Brazils avant-garde powerhouse. At SESC 24 de Maio, a group of curators from elsewhere in the country have come together to stage Raio-que-o-parta: Modern Fictions in Brazil: a huge, sprawling exhibition of work rarely seen beyond local institutions that demonstrates how the modernist revolution arrived in different states, from Rio Grande do Sul to the Amazon, at different times, in different guises. Oliver Basciano

ChimPom: Happy SpringMori Art Museum, Tokyo, 18 February 29 May

If February is looking a little dreary for you, ChimPom will sort that right out. The Japanese collectives first retrospective, titled Happy Spring, will bring together a mixture of past major works ones that humorously tackle themes ranging across cities and consumerism to gluttony and poverty, Japanese society, the atomic bomb, earthquakes, images of stardom, the mass media, borders, and the nature of publicness within the context of modern Japanese culture. Alongside works like Gold Experience (2012), a giant trash bag that pokes fun at the concept of public acceptability, and Dont Follow the Wind (2015-) an inaccessible exhibition in the Fukushima exclusion zone, Happy Spring will show new site-specific projects including a childrens nursery that addresses childcare issues faced by ChimPoms generation. All of which is arranged by theme (rather than chronologically) and presented via an exhibition design rich in creative ingenuity that hints at shedding new light on the ever-surprising world of ChimPom. Fi Churchman

Andrew Doig, This Mortal Coil: A History of DeathBloomsbury, published 3 February 2022

Ever wondered how or when you might kick the bucket? It might not be the central preoccupation of Andrew Doigs new book, but This Mortal Coil the very one that Shakespeares Hamlet considers shuffling off looks at the ways in which causes of death have altered over time, from environmental triggers (plagues and famine) to genetics (heart disease and stroke), who suffers from them and what these reveal about how our ancestors lived and died. On the bright side, Doig also tracks the various ways in which diseases have been controlled (the discovery of vitamin C, and the setting up of the 1592 Bills of Mortality during the second plague in London, for example), the impact of social healthcare and the development of medical knowledge. Fi Churchman

Homeland: Films by Australian First Nations directorsBarbican Cinema, London, 223 February

This new curated season screening at the Barbicans cinema features an eclectic selection of films by Indigenous Australian film directors spanning the last two decades, that speak to the diversity and sheer originality of the scene. The selection casts far and wide across genres, drawing on history and mythology, from Rachel Perkinss 1998 Radiance, portraying the relationship between three sisters, reluctantly reunited after the death of their mother, and The Drovers Wife (2021), a feminist revenge western directed by and starring Leah Purcell, to We Dont Need a Map (2017), a documentary by Warwick Thornton (who directed, among others, the critically-acclaimed drama Samson and Delilah, 2009) on the Southern Cross constellation, an important symbol for Indigenous Australian people that has over the past century been appropriated by various movements, including racist nationalists. Other remarkable if uncategorisable highlights include beDevil (1993), Tracey Moffats first and only feature film (and the first to be directed by an Aboriginal woman) that functions as a haunting triptych of ghost stories rendered by the artist in a striking, supernatural style, and an epic retelling of episodes from Indigenous Australian history through dance and music by Bangarra Dance Theatre director Stephen Page (Spear, 2015). Louise Darblay

Max Hooper Schneider: Keep On Rotting in The Free WorldMO.CO., Montpellier, 12 February 24 April

Max Hooper Schneiders sculptures and installations read like dioramas of a posthuman future. Its not all doom-and-gloom though, for if what is left of humans are the decaying remnants of our consumer society, other life-forms mollusks, insects, plants, bacteria, etc persist. Both unsettling and mesmerising, these futuristic experimental ecosystems take the form of self-contained gardens or aquariums, the contents of which seem to be informed by the artists background in marine biology. For his first institutional solo in Europe at Montpelliers contemporary art museum titled after a death metal song the American is presenting a selection of his recent projects plus a series of new works developed during his residency involving the collaboration of scientists, artists and artisans; a tentative warding off, perhaps, of our inevitable demise. Louise Darblay

Freud and ChinaFreud Museum London, 12 February 26 June

The art historian Craig Clunas curates a show that explores Sigmund Freuds relationship material and intellectual with China. The exhibition at Londons Freud Museum pivots around Freuds collection of antiquities (smuggled out of Vienna when threatened by Nazi confiscation) from a screen of pierced jade and wood to a lacquered figurine of a Daoist sage and the ways in which his (mis)understanding of the Chinese language and the culture of the Orient (despite never actually travelling to China) impacted his writings on the interpretation of dreams. In turn, Freud and China also explores the history and impact of psychoanalysis in Chinese art and culture. En Liang Khong

Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin, Elden RingBandai Namco Entertainment, released 25 February 2022

The lovechild of director Hidetaka Miyazaki (creator of the famed and fiendishly difficult Dark Souls and Bloodborne games) and the novelist George R.R. Martin, Elden Ring promises all the grand themes of a Wagnerian fantasy. Leaked footage offers a glimpse at cursed jewellery, ravaged lands, and dilapidated fortresses bathing in the light of a giant glowing tree set across a vast open-world map. Say no to that gallery dinner, fire up the Playstation, and hunker down for what promises to be a demonic sword-and-sorcery epic. En Liang Khong

Follow this link:

Neocolonialism, a History of Death and Richterian Melancholia: the Best Arts and Culture this February - ArtReview