Starting from January 1, 2022, curator-duo Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath will spearhead Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum for Contemporary Art. The decision to appoint the pair was made by the board of trustees of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). Bardaouil and Fellrath launched the multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented in New York and Munich in 2009, and have worked as associate curators for Gropius Bau in Berlin since 2017. They are currently co-curating with Yasmina Reggad the 59th Venice Biennale’s France Pavilion, which will feature artist Zineb Sedira, and are curating the 2022 edition of the Lyon Biennale. Over the past 12 years, they have worked with over 70 international institutions, including Paris’s Centre Pompidou, Istanbul’s Arter, and Tate Liverpool, among others, and have taught at universities such as the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts.

On September 8, Frieze announced the Hai Duong-born, Berlin-based artist Sung Tieu as the winner of the Frieze Artist Award 2021. Tieu will receive support to complete a film commission titled Moving Target Shadow Detection (2021). The proposed work revolves around the emergence of the Havana Syndrome among diplomats at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba between 2016 and 2017. Some have speculated that the mysterious disease’s symptoms—including nausea, memory loss, brain injuries, and unusual sounds and pressure sensations in patient’s heads—are the results of a covert sonic-weapon attack. Through the perspective of a mosquito, the film, comprising “nano-drone camera footage,” investigates the structure of the hotel in Havana and presents hypotheses for the attack. The premiere of Tieu’s film at London’s No. 9 Cork Street on October 15 will be followed by a discussion between the artist and Chris Rawcliffe, artistic director of the arts agency Forma.

On September 15, the exhibition for Deutsche Bank’s Artists of the Year opened at Berlin’s PalaisPopulaire, featuring the joint winners of the 2021 award: Taiwanese animator Zhang Xu Zhan, Rio de Janeiro-based multidisciplinary artist Maxwell Alexandre, and German painter Conny Maier. Zhang Xu is presenting the latest episode from his series of stop-motion animations Animal Story (2019– ), which features mythological creatures formed from joss paper. Alexandre’s paintings of the Brazilian Forbes Under 30 issue from 2019 explores issues of race and representation. Probing social conflicts, the paintings by Maier feature figures with half-open mouths and twisted body parts. Launched in 2010, the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year program aims to promote artists who work predominantly with paper and photography through exhibitions, publications, and the acquisition of their works for the Deutsche Bank Collection.

Titled “Free/State” and curated by Sebastian Goldspink, the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art announced 25 participating artists for its upcoming edition, which opens on March 4, 2022. Among those named are trailblazing figures Tracey Moffatt, Angela and Hossein Valamanesh, and Julie Rrap, who will be featured among artists from every territory in Australia, including Tasmania-based Loren Kronemyer, Sydney-based Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist-curator Dennis Golding, and Abdul-Rahman Abdullah from West Australia. “Free/State is a biennial for the times; wild, frenetic and unbound. Humorous and filled with pathos, contradictory and unified—a celebration of artists exploring urgent ideas through a personal lens,” the curator promised.

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