The fall season brings a flurry of activity as arts institutions across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania bring out a diverse slate of new exhibitions. The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne platforms mixed-media works by the Aboriginal artist collective Tennant Creek Brio, while the Tokyo retrospective of Takesada Matsutani surveys the 70-year-long practice of the Japanese artist, bringing his work to new audiences. The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town and Sharjah Art Foundation showcase radical depictions of wartime in exhibitions featuring the films and art of Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Bouchra Khalili respectively.

STIR brings you its curated list of 10 must-see exhibitions in fall 2024, across photography, film, painting, digital art, textile art and a range of other mediums.

The Other Side of Now at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (August 22, 2024 - July 20, 2025)

At Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in South Africa, Vietnamese-American artist Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s work explores the effects of colonialism and war, turning the struggles of Moroccan, Vietnamese and Senegalese communities into a gateway for transnational solidarity and connection. The museum presents an exhibition of three of Nguyễn’s film works, set between 1954 and 1972: Because No One Living Will Listen (2023), on Moroccan soldiers who defected from the colonial French army, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming (2019), which explores the relationship between Vietnamese revolutionary fighters and colonial Senegalese soldiers and The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon (2022), whose protagonists are a family in one of Vietnam’s most bombed areas. Nguyễn turns relics of painful times into sculptural objects – singing bowls made from leftover artillery shells and tapestries made of Viet Minh propaganda pamphlets are part of the exhibition. His films draw on research and creative speculation, blurring past and present, fact and fiction in their portrayal of wartime.

Dream Screen at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (September 05 - December 29, 2024)

The 2024 edition of the Leeum Museum’s biennial group show—Art Spectrum —showcases emerging artists from Asia—who make work around the themes of horror and technology. Dream Screen explores the interplay between the subconscious and the new digital technology that mediates it. The exhibition design is inspired by the architecture of the famous ‘haunted’ Winchester House in California. It features works ranging from a photo series to a VR temple with AR offerings, films and interactive installations that evoke the eeriness and fragmentation of our screen-heavy everyday life. He Zike’s film Random Access (2023) mimics the workings of a computer’s memory in its non-linear narrative, drifting between the memory, reality and imagination of a taxi driver as the data centre driving the town’s economy breaks down and reboots. Other works like Eunsae Lee’s Forms of Perfect Love explore isolation, modern love and sexuality. Dream Screen sees artists turning screens into mirrors for the challenges and possibilities of contemporary life. 

Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations at Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (September 07 - December 01, 2024)

In Between Circles and Constellations, Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili continues her career-long project of finding and fostering models of community that extend beyond borders and nation-states. Her film installation, The Public Storyteller (2024) interlinks a protest performance by undocumented Arab workers in Paris with an age-old Moroccan communal storytelling practice – al halqa – creating a new, wider circle of solidarity. In her mixed-media pieces, spanning tapestries, silkscreens and photography, she centres ‘civic poets’ – members of international, stateless communities who bridge the personal and political in the stories they recount. Her practice aligns with her concept of ‘radical citizenship’ – a form of solidarity not limited by political or territorial allegiances – by creating forums for the communal sharing of memories, ideas and stories.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (September 13 - December 08, 2024)

In this new exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, over 50 artists, researchers and activists from across Germany are invited to think, perform, visualise and debate the concept of ‘normal’, to break it apart into something more pluralistic and welcoming. Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere is the first edition of the institution’s heimaten project. Heimaten translates to home or hometown and the project invites artists and visitors to rethink what ‘home’, the state, the people it draws its power from and their multiple understandings of heimaten can do to create a more inclusive and emancipatory society. Works such as the filmed version of Steven Cohen’s performance art piece Coq/Cock (2013) and Rebecca Pokua Korang’s textile and video installations push the boundaries of mediums, nationality and what counts as ‘acceptable sexuality’. From paintings, photography, textile art, performances and talks, this project seeks to reflect the diversity – in migrant status, sexuality, race, belief and class – of Germany.

Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue at MOMA, New York (September 15, 2024 - January 11, 2025)

MOMA marks what would have been American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank’s 100th birth anniversary with a solo exhibition showcasing his work across photography, film, literature and dialogues with other artists. This includes his seminal photobook The Americans (1958) and the film Life Dances On (1980), which lends the exhibition its name. Frank’s practice was characterised by constant movement and experimentation, ranging from captured moments of everyday life to portraits of important cultural figures. Visitors can also enjoy Frank’s documentary films and newly restored unreleased work in the complementary Scrapbook Footage exhibition. Frank’s ethos of experimentation is best summed up by the artist himself. In the exhibition note, he is quoted as saying, “I think of myself, standing in a world that is never standing still…I’m still in there fighting, alive because I believe in what I’m trying to do now.”

Floating Sea Palace at The Power Plant, Toronto (September 21, 2024 - March 02, 2025)

The sale of her family’s Cantonese restaurant saw visual artist Lap-See Lam set out to 3D-scan Chinese restaurants around Sweden, preserving the multicultural history they represent. One of the most fantastical – a three-story dragon-shaped ship restaurant named ‘Sea Palace’ – would become the inspiration for her 2024 film, Floating Sea Palace, exhibited this fall in Toronto. In the film, framed by bamboo scaffolding, Lam combines 3D scanning and animation technology with traditional Cantonese opera and shadow puppetry to create an aesthetic that merges the worlds of Stockholm and Shanghai. This merging is reflected in the mythical protagonist of the film – Lo Ting,  half-human, half-fish – who the film follows across timelines and seascapes. Lam marries Lo Ting’s journey with that of the original ‘Sea Palace’ to offer perspectives on the migrant experience – as being caught between worlds, histories and traditions.

Tennant Creek Brio: Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis at ACCA, Melbourne (September 21 - November 17, 2024)

The first major survey of works by the Tennant Creek Brio artist collective from Warumungu Country in Australia is a provocative showcase of First Nations art juxtaposed with found industrial materials. Painted poker machines and classroom chalkboards explore the struggles of life in their desert town, known for its high rates of alcoholism, violence and poverty. Meanwhile, painted mining maps with text like “This is aboriginal land / Not your land” offer critiques of extractive capitalism and colonialism. Key members, including Fabian Brown Japaljarri, Lindsay Nelson Jakamarra and Rupert Betheras, work in collaboration with artists like Eleanor Jawurlngali Dixon to create artworks spanning painting, sculpture, video installation, and live performance. The creolised, multilingual title of the exhibition mirrors the collage-like methodology of the group, showcasing a range of voices, practices, traditions and art forms.

Takesada Matsutani, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo (October 03 - December 17, 2024)

The Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is hosting a comprehensive retrospective of the works of Japanese artist Takesada Matsutani, one of the most important members of the postwar artist collective, The Gutai Group. The Osaka-based group’s name translates to ‘concrete’, referring to their deep engagement with materiality and their use of experimental materials. Matsutani is renowned for his use of vinyl glue and graphite, his artwork finding itself between 2D and 3D forms with smooth surfaces of canvas and paper interrupted by drips, tears and drops. His focus on tactility is easily apparent in each piece. The exhibition spans his entire oeuvre, with artworks, documents and footage tracing works made using vinyl adhesive in the 60s, to his period of printmaking in the 70s, later experiments with graphite and large-scale installations.

The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975 - 1998 at Barbican Art Gallery, London (October 05, 2024 - January 05, 2025)

The Barbican’s new group exhibition, created in collaboration with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, features over 30 Indian artists, chronicling two moments in Indian history – the 1975 Emergency and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. The late 20th century in India was marked by great changes – social and political shifts, economic uncertainty and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition revolves around four themes: communal violence, gender and sexuality, urbanisation and indigenous practices. The works range from the intimate and everyday, like Gieve Patel’s painting of Lamington road in Mumbai and Sunil Gupta’s photo series about the lives of Indian gay men, to Nalini Malani’s video installation charting the social and psychological impact of the Pokhran nuclear tests.

Cao Fei: The future is not a dream at Fundación Malba, Malba (November 22, 2024 - February 24, 2025)

In this exhibition, Fundación Malba showcases artwork by Chinese artist Cao Fei from a career spanning over two decades. It highlights her digital art, including entire constructed cityscapes made in virtual environments like Second Life and the metaverse. Objects spill from virtual spaces and immersive videos into large multimedia installations like Asia One (2018), which showcases a film and objects from a fictional warehouse, depicting the struggle between humans and machines. The exhibition is divided into four themes — Manufacturing and Globalization, Past and Present of the Virtual World, Memories of Socialism and Science Fiction, and Urbanization and Dystopia, and features sculpture, video and large-scale installations. Cao Fei engages with the unrelenting pace of modernity and technological evolution while embracing its tools to create visions of the future that are as prophetic as they are surreal.

(Text by STIR intern Srishti Ojha)