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Gagosien Quarterly

Spring 2022 Issue

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:Precious Okoyomon

For this new series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents are invited to make a selection from the larger questionnaire and to reply in as many or as few words as they desire. Additionally, they are invited to provide an additional question of their choosing that will be added to the list for future participants. For the inaugural installment, we are honored to present the artist and poet Precious Okoyomon.

Installation view, Precious Okoyomon: Earthseed, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, August 22–November 1, 2020. Photo: Axel Schneider, courtesy the artist and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Installation view, Precious Okoyomon: Earthseed, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, August 22–November 1, 2020. Photo: Axel Schneider, courtesy the artist and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. He was previously the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 300 exhibitions. Photo: Tyler Mitchell

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Precious Okoyomon

Precious Okoyomon is a Nigerian-American poet and artist who lives in New York. Their second book, But Did U Die?, will be copublished by Serpentine Galleries and Wonder Press in 2022. Okoyomon was a 2020 artist-in-residence at Luma Arles and received the Frieze Art Fair Artist Award in 2021.

Hans Ulrich ObristWhat is energy?

Precious OkoyomonThe love that keeps us all grounded.

HUODoes money corrupt art?

POAbsolutely.

HUOWhat is time?

POThe love that makes us free.

HUOWhat music are you listening to?

POJustin Bieber, Messiaen, Standing on the Corner.

HUOYour favorite color?

POThe color of pomegranates and the soft blue/pink when the sky and the sunset start to kiss and god comes to bless us.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Precious Okoyomon

Installation view, Precious Okoyomon: A Drop of Sun Under the Earth, Luma Westbau, Zurich, February 21–April 21, 2019. Photo: Nelly Rodriguez, courtesy the artist and Luma Westbau, Zurich

HUOWhat was your first museum visit as a child?

POZaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

HUOWhom are you working with/thinking with?

PORight now, I’m working and thinking with Toussaint Louverture through Édouard Glissant’s play about his life and the revolution he led, Monsieur Toussaint.

HUOAny miracles lately?

POMy miracle is the unending love of everyday life, the magnetic energy of love, a whirlwind of encounters, the wind kissing my face and brushing me anew; today I wrote a poem while walking my dog and it felt held, and held in the world itself.

HUOWhat is the role of titles?

POTo confuse, to trouble.

HUOWhat is your definition of art?

POEntangled organic movement and everyday life.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Precious Okoyomon

Installation view, Precious Okoyomon: Every Earthly Morning the Sky’s Light touches Ur Life is Unprecedented in its Beauty, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, June 11, 2021–September 21, 2022. Photo: courtesy the artist and Aspen Art Museum, Colorado

HUOWhat is your unrealized project?

POMy unrealized project is a new way of everyday life, a movement of errant roots, a forest, a series of communications, of rhizomes spreading information into the world, a new language created by an environment, a new way of breathing and an ability to breathe. I want to make a space for fragilization, a utopia to feel in! That manifests in what one might call an existential healing center, a place outside of time in the middle of a forest.

HUOWhat couldn’t you live without?

POChoosing love.

HUOWhat ought to change?

POEverything.

Artwork © Precious Okoyomon

Five white objects lined up on a white shelf

to light, and then return—Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann

This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York. Inspired by their shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis, the works included will form a dialogue between their respective practices. Here they meet to speak about the origins and developments of the project.

Close up self portrait of the musician Anohni

ANOHNI: My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross

British-born, New York–based artist ANOHNI returned with her sixth studio album, My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, this past summer. Here she speaks with Michael Cuby about the genesis of the project and the value of life.

Robbie Robertson

In Conversation
Robbie Robertson

The musician Robbie Robertson is having quite a year. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is rolling out a new record, for which he designed all the album art; a documentary based on his memoir Testimony; and the score for Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman. Derek Blasberg met him at his LA studio to talk about how he’s created his music for decades and, more recently, his artwork.

A woman stares forward and stands with her arms raised and draped in a white cloak.

Body Horror: Louise Bonnet and Naomi Fry

Cultural critic Naomi Fry joined Louise Bonnet for a conversation on the occasion of Louise Bonnet Selects, a film program curated by the artist as part of a series copresented by Gagosien and Metrograph. The pair discussed how the protagonists of the seven selected films are ruled, betrayed, changed, or unsettled by their bodies, focusing on David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979).

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol at Paris Apartment Window, 1981

In Conversation
Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosien Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosien director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

Two people embracing and sitting on a large grass field

International Center of Photography: Love Songs

This summer, the International Center of Photography, New York, is presenting Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy. Featuring the work of sixteen contemporary photographers, the exhibition is a “remix” of an earlier iteration at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, organized by Simon Baker with curator Frédérique Dolivet and Pascal Hoël. The curator for the New York presentation, Sara Raza, met with one of the participating artists, Aikaterini Gegisian, and the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to discuss the distinctions between the two shows and the importance of—and complexities around—visual pleasure.

The exterior of Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro in Sao Paulo Brazil

The Square São Paulo: An Interview with Mari Stockler

Curator and photographer Mari Stockler and Gagosien director Antwaun Sargent met to discuss The Square São Paulo, the third installment of a cultural exchange series established by Bottega Veneta in 2022. Marking the brand’s ten-year anniversary in Brazil, the exhibition and publication project, initiated by Bottega Veneta’s creative director, Matthieu Blazy, and curated by Stockler, took place at Lina Bo Bardi’s legendary Casa de Vidro.

Multiples dancers in bright costumes against a yellow backdrop. Five have their backs to the camera with their arms stretched out and two are sitting center stage.

Sasha Waltz: “In C”

Alice Godwin speaks with German choreographer Sasha Waltz about the evolution of her dance In C, the democratic nature of the piece, and its celebration of life and human connection. 

Lynn Hershman Leeson

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Lynn Hershman Leeson

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the second installment of 2023, we are honored to present the artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Portrait of Edward Enninful

Fashion and Art: Edward Enninful

Edward Enninful OBE has held the role of editor-in-chief of British Vogue since 2017. The magazine’s course under his direction has served as a model for what a fashion publication can do in the twenty-first century: in terms of creativity, authenticity, diversity, and engagement with social issues, Enninful has created a new mold. Here, Enninful meets with his longtime friend Derek Blasberg to discuss his recently published memoir, A Visible Man.

Close up of a person's profile, they have one finger in their mouth

The African Desperate

Artist and filmmaker Martine Syms teamed up with writer and poet Rocket Caleshu to create the 2022 film The African Desperate. Starring the artist Diamond Stingily as Palace, the film received rave reviews for its honest and unflinching portrayal—and parody—of the art world. Mixing genres and proceeding according to Syms’s singular aesthetic vision, The African Desperate leads audiences through a twenty-four-hour period in Palace’s life and into questions about education, romance, race, and more. Syms, Caleshu, and Stingily met with Fiona Duncan to discuss the film’s creation.

10-image exposure of Marilyn Monroe in different poses

Avedon 100

In celebration of the centenary of Richard Avedon’s birth, more than 150 artists, designers, musicians, writers, curators, and representatives of the fashion world were asked to select a photograph by Avedon for an exhibition at Gagosien, New York, and to elaborate on the ways in which image and artist have affected them. We present a sampling of these images and writings.