Sep 16–Mar 4, 2018

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago will hold Michael Rakowitz’s first museum survey in the United States. The Iraqi-American artist, known primarily for his mixed-media sculptures and installations which tackle the relationship between Iraq and the West, will showcase new commissions and ongoing projects that draw upon his personal experiences of cultural dislocation, as well as the destruction of his family’s war-torn homeland. Among the exhibits will be Enemy Kitchen (2003– ), a pop-up food truck project that sees veterans from the Iraq war serving up Iraqi dishes to museum visitors, and a portion of the installation What Dust Will Rise? (2012), commissioned by and first exhibited at Documenta 13.

Sep 29–Feb 4, 2018

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia    

Recognized worldwide for his superflat aesthetic, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s first major survey in Russia will feature an impressive selection of over 80 films, paintings and drawings, showcasing the ways in which the artist has blurred the boundaries of high and low art and transposed the post-war visual culture of Japan onto the contemporary international arena. The exhibition will be divided into five sections: Geijutsu, The Little Boy and Fat Man, Kawaii, Sutajito and Asobi & Kazari, each examining a unique technique or characteristic of the artist’s oeuvre. 

Sep 30–Dec 17 / Sep 26–Nov 4

Kim Yong-Ik is known for his trailblazing navigations between the edges of what were two dominant and oppositional modes of art-making in South Korea in the 1970s and ‘80s: Dansaekhwa (“monochrome” paintings) and Minjung misul (“people’s art”). His first solo show in the UK will be a major survey spread over two locations. In Spike Island, the exhibition will trace the trajectory from Kim’s Dansaekhwa paintings to his later works, marking the artist’s departure from the movement. In its second base at the Korean Cultural Centre, the presentation will focus on Kim’s later paintings from the ‘80s and ‘90s, including his “Polka Dot” series (1980– ), which feature the subtly flawed circles that the artist used to undermine sterile, modernist aesthetics.

Sep 30–Feb 25, 2018

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan    

Featuring 35 artists from across Asia selected by four international curators—Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Ade Darmawan, Kenji Kubota and Lin Hsiao-yu—the sixth edition of the Asian Art Biennial promises to not only acknowledge the devitalizing socio-economic issues that continue to pervade contemporary society, but will also offer insight into possible solutions, aiming to spark the imaginations of visitors and artists with new dialogues and theoretical tools, opening up possibilities for ways in which we can navigate the uncertain future. Artists will include Lawrence Abu Hamadan, Tarek al-Ghoussein, Hrair Sarkissian, Yason Banal, Chim↑Pom, Bouchra Khalili, Praneet Soi and Zhou Tao, among others.

Oct 3–Jan 14, 2018

Sesc Pompeia, Sao Paulo, Brazil

For its 20th edition, the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil will be exhibiting artworks by 50 artists from Portuguese-speaking countries as well as the “global south,” selected from 1,922 submissions to an open call. The newly commissioned pieces will include art shows, videos, performances, symposiums and public programs. The far-reaching festival aims to “invent new forms of circulation and visibility,” fostering fresh discussions on the production and preservation of artworks from the region. Among the diverse roster of participating artists this year are Kavich Neang, Jiwon Choi, Quy Minh Truong, Sasha Litvintseva, Ximena Garrido-Lecca and Alia Farid.

Oct 6–Jan 7, 2018

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA

The Guggenheim in New York will hold a major exhibition focusing on Chinese experimental art from the post-1989 era—a historic period which saw China’s rapid modernization, globalization and rise to the international stage. Organized by Alexandra Munroe, Samsung’s senior curator of Asian art, and co-curated by Philip Tinari, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, with Hou Hanru, director of the MAXXI in Rome, the show’s title is a nod to Huang Yong Ping’s installation Theater of the World (1993) where living reptiles devour weaker species within a turtle-shaped cage over the course of the exhibition; metaphoric of the power dynamics in the dog-eat-dog society of China’s post-industrial epoch. Divided into six thematic sections that run chronologically across the spiraling museum’s architecture, the exhibition will feature some 150 seminal works including paintings, photography, films, installations, land art and performances by more than 70 artists and collectives.