Christie’s picks some prestigious Art exhibitions and events in 2021 — Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and the Middle East
1. Degas
Sao Paulo Museum of Art (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo – MASP)
On since December 4, 2020
Italian art dealer Pietro Maria Bardi had the onerous task of collecting the best art in Brazil in the 1950s. Over the years this collection grew and it included the works of European artists, kept in the Sao Paulo Museum of Art. The collection included 76 works of French Impressionist Edgar Degas. For the first time in 14 years, the MASP’s latest exhibition is showing all 76 works of Degas together. The show also includes a series of photos of Degas’s works in the collection shot by the photographer Sofia Borges. The unnatural angles and hyper-zoomed focuses of the images offer a fresh perspective on what some refer to as ‘the first modern sculptures’.
2.Opening of GES-2
GES-2, Moscow
Opening date to be announced
Russian billionaire, Leonid Mikhelson is opening GES-2, a second home for the Venice-based V-A-C Foundation (non-profit organization), located a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. For the launch, V-A-C has invited the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson to take over the entire space for six months. He will debut a body of work called Santa Barbara, named after a 1980s soap opera set in California that proved a smash hit in Russia a decade later. Architect Renzo Piano has spent five years transforming a disused 20,000-square-metre power station into V-A-C’s new artistic hub, with gallery spaces and a 420-seat, glass-fronted playhouse as well as a library, learning centre, residency block and restaurant.
3.Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
Opening date to be announced
The South African performance artist Tracey Rose will be having The Zeitz MOCAA exhibition, which will be the artist’s largest retrospective to date, featuring works that span the period 1996-2019 and encompassing film, sculpture, photography, performance, print and paint.
4.Age of You: a kaleidoscopic exploration of the extreme self
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
From 29 January
Shumon Basar and Douglas Coupland are back with a follow-up, The Extreme Self, and the accompanying exhibition Age of You, in which they promote the theory that humans are the most valuable commodity in the digital world. The exhibition features 70 artists and musicians, including the 2019 Turner Prize nominee Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who have something to say about our age of anxiety.
5.Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging — 16 Women Artists from around the World
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
from 22nd April
Sixteen women artists are celebrated in this exhibition, which started working in the post-war decades of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s — a time when men led the art-world charge. But they all stuck immovably to their chosen paths, and now each of these pioneering females has a successful career spanning more than 50 years.
There will be works on show by the Beirut-born poet, writer and painter Etel Adnan, the Cuban-American sculptor Carmen Herrera and the South Korean video artist Kim Soun-Gui, and the English artist Phyllida Barlow.
6.Isamu Noguchi: Ways of Discovery
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
From 24 April
The Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi was always troubled by his identity and had questions about his double nationality. His art reflects this turmoil. Caught between two cultures, it reflects the harmonious proportions and natural materials found in Japanese art, with a sense of abstraction and modernity deeply influenced by Brancusi, with whom he apprenticed in Paris.
7.Camille Henrot: Is Today Tomorrow
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Melbourne
From 18 June
The French multidisciplinary artist Camille Henrot (famous for her 13-minute video Grosse Fatigue (2013) will showcase her installation, The Pale Fox – an assemblage of more than 500 books, photos, drawings and objects bought from eBay, which examines the human desire to understand our world — or what the artist describes as ‘cataloguing psychosis.’
8.Daniel Arsham
UCCA Dune, Qinhuangdao, China
From 10 July
UCCA Dune resembles a string of igloos dug into the beach, and its first solo show is dedicated to the American sculptor Daniel Arsham. Arsham has created an entirely new body of work made from the moulds of some of history’s greatest sculptures including Michelangelo’s sculpture of Lorenzo de’ Medici — before decaying them with his signature crystal-growth forms. His Bronze Eroded Venus de Milo will also be unveiled as a public artwork in nearby Aranya.
9.Opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum
GIZA, Cairo
Opening mid-2021
Delayed by coronavirus, finally The Grand Egyptian Museum is set to open. This vast project has cost $1 billion and taken eight years to complete. Situated on the edge of Cairo on the Giza Plateau and near to the Pyramids, GEM is set to be the largest archaeological museum in the world.
Inside, the grand staircase is lined with 87 statues of gods and kings. The museum contains some 100,000 artefacts, more than 4,000 of which were once preserved in the famous tomb of King Tutankhamen.
10.Opening of M+
West Kowloon, Hong Kong
Opening mid-2021
From 2011, developers began work on an ambitious masterplan for West Kowloon, transforming a 40-hectare site of reclaimed land on Hong Kong’s waterfront into a multibillion-dollar arts and performance hub. Called the M +, it will be a key attraction in Hong Kong. Designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, also responsible for Tate Modern in London, the museum houses exhibition areas, a skylit gallery and roof terrace, artists’ studios and performance spaces.
11.Doug Aitken: New Era
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney
From 24 September
The Californian multimedia artist Doug Aitken is famous for his video installations. Now the artist has arrived in Sydney with a series of immersive installations. Among them is the mesmerising NEW ERA, 2018, which charts the history of the mobile phone and features the American engineer Martin Cooper, the first man ever to make a call on one.
12.Maurizio Cattelan: The Last Judgment
UCCA, Beijing
From 20 November
The most talked about artwork of 2019 was a banana duct-taped to the wall of Perrotin gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. In November 2021, UCCA Beijing is mounting Cattelan’s first solo show in China
