LUBAINA HIMID How are you feeling in the run-up to your show, ‘Ah, Sugar’, at Cubitt, London?
MARLENE SMITH I am equal parts excited and terrified! The two emotions keep propelling me through the process of making.
LH I think that terror never truly goes away, no matter how small or large the project. I get frightened that the work is actually rubbish, that I’ve lost the ability to tell what to leave out and what to keep in. What are you working on at the moment in relation to ‘Ah, Sugar’?
MS For a while, I’ve been trying to make work with fondant icing that is as delicate as possible without breaking. I want to imprint it with some crochet pieces that belonged to my mum. It occurred to me that, if I got myself a mangle – an old housekeeping device used to squeeze the water out of wet laundry – it would help me to manipulate these slabs of icing. I want every piece to look uniform but also to be highly individual and to have a personality, to be a kind of embodiment of a woman. I’m placing a lot of demands on this material.
There are days when I think: ‘This is so brilliant, what a great idea!’ Then there are other days when I ask myself: ‘What the hell do you think you are doing with this stuff? You’re going to have all this work that’s made in icing sugar, which is not going to last forever, so who’s going to buy it? Should I be making more sculptural works? Should I do more drawing? Should I, should I, should I?’
Esta historia es de la edición Issue 243 - June - August 2024 de Frieze.
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Esta historia es de la edición Issue 243 - June - August 2024 de Frieze.
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I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'
Conversation: Ahead of a solo show at London’s Cubitt Gallery, Marlene Smith speaks to Lubaina Himid about her time in the BLK Art Group, friendship and collaboration
Tell It Slant
Built Environment: Giovanna Silva on photographing history through unexpected architectural interventions
Dean Sameshima
What does it mean to be alone? In Dean Sameshima’s recent body of work – 25 monochrome photographs of queer men in Berlin porn theatres with sumptuous black negative spaces and blinding white cinema screens – ‘alone’ is a complicated term.
Nicole Wermers
Nicole Wermers’s Reclining Female #6 (2024) looks out over Glasgow.
Greater Toronto Art 2024
Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada
Echoes of the Brother Countries
In recent years, the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) has been the subject of a reappraisal that, while not seeking to redeem the stiflingly authoritarian state, has attempted to present a more nuanced overview of its social and cultural realities.
Pierre Huyghe
A pale tetra fish swims around a vast obsidian tank, while another bobs on its side at the top of the water, perhaps ailing from debilitating swim bladder disease (Circadian Dilemma [El Día del Ojo], 2017).
Inward Yearnings
Essay: Rianna Jade Parker retraces the history of the Jamaican intuitives, a group of self-taught artists who ushered in a national form of artmaking mythologizing African traditions through religious divination and esteem-raising cultural work
The Promise of the Past
Built Environment: On the occasion of the ‘Tropical Modernism’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Derin Fadina examines the architectural movement’s exclusionary narratives
Where Is Everyone?
Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture