Did you reach out for your phone as you rolled out of bed this morning? What's the first app you looked at? In this week's issue, 'no filter' becomes a processual and experiential lens, helping us unpack the complex power structures that undergird the arts, seeing the old and new with attention to our own positionality.
We go back in time to the launch of Frieze London in a tent in a municipal park in 2003, interrogating the ubiquity of art fairs and how they impact artmaking and consumption. Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander reflects on using her practice to counter hegemonic structures of race, gender and power, on the heels of her exhibition 'Collective Behavior' in Venice. We visit arts spaces in Luanda, where
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artists acknowledge the shadow of colonialism and civil war, multi-tasking as they build institutions and grow a local audience in Angola's capital city. Speaking to designer and curator Mehdi Dakhli, we learn about his approach to furniture design, where elements of his personal heritage intersect with references from art history.
Being online is about being visible as we imagine and optimise our lives for the two-dimensionality of social media. In this climate, the term 'no filter' dangles the possibility of truth in image and word – that you show yourself as you are, a thing of brutal honesty, without smoothing out the rough edges.

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