Highlights 2014 - Nick Aikens

By Nick Aikens

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Adelita Husni-Bey, Postcards from the Desert Island, (2010–11), included in 'Really Useful Knowledge’, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; courtesy: Kaddist Art Foundation Collection

My most memorable exhibitions of the year (in no particular order):

• ‘New Habits’, CASCO, Utrecht
• ‘A Special Arrow Was Shot in the Neck’, David Roberts Foundation, London, curated by Vivian Ziherl and Natasha Ginwala
• Harun Farocki, ‘Serious Games’, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
• ‘Ways of Exhibiting: Lina Bo Bardi’s Exhibiting Architecture’, Museu da Casa Brasileira, São Paulo
• Raqs Media Collective, ‘A Sublime Economy of Means’, Tranzit, Prague
• ‘Really Useful Knowledge’, curated by What How and for Whom?, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
• Philippe Parreno, ‘With a Rhythmic Extinction to be Able to Travel Beyond Existing Forces of Life’, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London
• ‘Allegory of the Cave Painting’, Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp
• ‘Love Among the Artists’, Walden Affairs, The Hague (full disclosure: a show organized by my partner Laure Prouvost)
• Vlasta Delimar, ‘Mature Woman’, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana

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Installation view of Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art, Oaxaca

My favourite museum experience:
• Visiting the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art in Oaxaca

Two performances that have stayed with me:
• Hito Steyerl, ’35 Ways to Break Through a Wall’, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
• Jérôme Bel, ‘Disabled Theatre’, Frieze Projects, London

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Installation view of ‘How to (…) things that Don’t Exist’, 31st Bienal de São Paulo; © Leo Eloy / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Hands down the most memorable biennial I have seen in a long time (impartially perhaps as two colleagues co-curated it but, regardless, it was phenomenal):
• ‘How to (…) things that Don’t Exist’, 31st Bienal de São Paulo

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Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (designed by Lina Bo Bardi and Marcelo Ferraz, 1977); © Pedro Kok

Buildings / places that blew my mind:
• Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (designed by Lina Bo Bardi and Marcelo Ferraz, 1977)
• The campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Mexico City
• Leon Trotsky’s House, Mexico City

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Pascal Gielen (ed.), Institutional Attitudes: Instituting Art in a Flat World (2013)

A strange collection of books I read this year that will stick with me:
• Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
• Gary Shteyngart, _Super Sad True Love Story _(2010)
• William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890)
• Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty (2013)
• Pascal Gielen (ed.), Institutional Attitudes: Instituting Art in a Flat World (2013)

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Forensic Oceanography (Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzani, SITU Research), LEFT-TO-DIEBOAT, Synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery (A and B) showing the ‘left-to-die’ boats, included in ‘Forensis’, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

Three things I wish I’d seen:
• ‘Yvonne Rainer: Dance Works’ Raven Row, London
• ‘Performance Days’, organized by If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution, Amsterdam
• ‘Forensis’, curated by Anselm Franke and Eyal Weizman, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

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