Announcing the Frieze Projects Programme for Frieze London 2019 including Live Performance, Frieze Artist Award Commission and Frieze Talks

This year’s Frieze Projects programme for Frieze London 2019 is led by world-class curators including Diana Campbell Betancourt (Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka and Chief Curator, Dhaka Art Summit) and Lydia Yee (Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, London). Featuring new commissions and research-driven projects, the 2019 programme for LIVE, the Frieze Artist Award and Frieze Talks will look at interdisciplinary artistic practices and their political potential . The 2019 programme builds on a rich history of artist projects at Frieze London, working with artists early in their careers and showcasing innovative practice and ideas to a global audience.

Frieze London takes place in The Regent’s Park from 4 to 6 October 2019, with two Preview Days on 2 and 3 October, and is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank for the 16th consecutive year.

Live Programme: Performance Beyond the Gallery Booths

‘Choreography is a helpful way to describe the world right now... One must move in order to know.’ –William Forsythe.

Looking into forces and instructions present across time that dictate how we move and what we feel, the fair’s program for time-based works is again curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt (Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka/Dhaka Art Summit). The practice of the radical innovator in choreography and dance, William Forsythe is the entry point for LIVE 2019. In addition to his ground-breaking work in the field of classical ballet, Forsythe has worked for more than 20 years on installations, film works, and discrete, interactive sculptures, which he calls ‘choreographic objects’. Campbell Betancourt said: ‘Forsythe recently likened the political environment of today with the 19th-century choreography of the Giselle variation of Act 1 (one of the most difficult works to perform in classical ballet): we are directed to perform in the face of unthinkable pain without uttering a word.

To be part of a movement, we have to be moved, as the feminist theorist Sara Ahmed writes in Living a Feminist Life (2017). This year’s LIVE programme aims to inspire a physical form of thinking where solutions can be found and felt within the body. Exploring the expanded field of dance and choreography in the context of the fair, interventions by artists from wide ranging contexts from Argentina to Cambodia will reveal narratives of control present in architecture, language, colonialism, and protest illuminated through movement.’

The first announced artists and galleries for LIVE 2019 are:

• Carlos Amorales (presented by Nils Staerk)

• Cecilia Bengolea (presented by Almine Rech, with support from FLUXUS)

• Shezad Dawood (presented by Jhaveri Contemporary with support from Bagri Foundation; featuring costume design by Priya Ahluwalia and sound score by patten)

• William Forsythe (presented by Gagosian)

• Yasmin Jahan Nupur (presented by Exhibit 320, co-commissioned with Dhaka Art Summit and Peabody Essex Museum)

• Khvay Samnang (presented by Tomio Koyama with support from Delfina Foundation, choreographers and dancers by Mot Pharan with Sot Sovanndy)

Further artists and projects will be released in September 2019.

Frieze Artist Award: Major New Commission

London- and Delhi-based Himali Singh Soin is the winner of the Frieze Artist Award at Frieze London 2019. Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, the Award is a major opportunity for an emerging international artist to present an ambitious work at Frieze Art Fair. For the first time, the Frieze Artist Award will focus on the medium of film and is supported by Forma and Channel 4 Random Acts, who also selected the winning artist in collaboration with Frieze. Soin responded to a brief set by Random Acts that asked for proposals to consider the ‘state of the nation’. Singh Soin will debut her new commission at Frieze London 2019. Channel 4 Random Acts will also broadcast the film on Channel 4 and online this autumn.

Diana Campbell Betancourt said: ‘Beyond her visual arts practice, Himali Singh Soin is a poet and explorer and this award will allow this emerging artist to deepen her engagement with moving image as storytelling. This year, we’re thrilled to be working with both Forma and Channel 4 Random Acts, two of Europe’s leading creative producers, enabling ambitious film projects to reach new audiences. With this significant new commission, Himali will also explore intriguing and urgent questions about environment, history and myth.’

Himali Singh Soin works across text, performance and moving image, using the natural environment as a metaphor for speculative cosmologies, revealing entanglements between human and non-human life. Singh Soin’s winning proposal builds on her ongoing research project into remote areas of the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Entitled ‘we are opposite like that’, the series creates fictional myths for places that lack indigenous communities and legends of their own. Soin tells their stories from the non-human perspective of a melting fossil – ice – that has witnessed historic changes throughout time.

The new Artist Award commission will extend Singh Soin’s ice metaphor to Britain. Singh Soin will use the Victorians’ fear of an imminent glacial epoch – a belief that Arctic ice would subsume the country – as a starting point to think about the alien other. Has Britain always feared the encroachment of the outside world? Could its past fears of fading into foggy oblivion, of falling from greatness to insignificance, be influencing its current reality? In these ways, Soin’s new commission will reimagine ice as an agent of decolonisation, a blank canvas for histories, desires and possible futures, and as a canary in a coal mine for an imminent climate catastrophe.

Singh Soin’s winning proposal was selected by the 2019 expert panel comprising Catharine Bray (Editor, Random Acts), Diana Campbell Betancourt (Curator, Frieze Artist Award/Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka/Chief Curator, Dhaka Art Summit) and Chris Rawcliffe (Artistic Director, Forma).

Chris Rawcliffe, Artistic Director, Forma said: ‘Forma is thrilled to be a partner in the 2019 Frieze Artist Award. As an organisation that prides itself on developing artists’ careers through ambitious touring projects we couldn’t be happier to be supporting the production of Himali Singh Soin’s new film. We look forward to working closely with Himali, our partners and Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt to develop opportunities to present her work to audiences across the UK and beyond.’

Random Acts Editor Catherine Bray said ‘Our annual collaboration with Frieze always represents a highlight in Random Acts’ year, and I’m delighted that we’re able to support Himali Singh Soin with this award. Himali’s pitch in response to our ‘state of the nation’ brief incorporated timely thinking on ideas of encroachment, fear and colonisation.’

Singh Soin will perform at Serpentine Galleries (London) on 12 July 2019, as part of Jakob Kudsk Steensen: The Deep Listener in the COS x Serpentine Park Nights series 2019.

Frieze Talks: 100 Years After the Bauhaus

Frieze Talks will be co-programmed for by Lydia Yee (Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery) and Matthew McLean (Senior Editor, Frieze Studios) for the second consecutive year. 100 years after the founding of the Bauhaus, Frieze Talks 2019 will take inspiration from the school’s pioneering approach to interdisciplinarity and its questioning of art’s relationship to a wider social world. The full programme of speakers will be announced in September.