Devika Singh brought six galleries specialising in South Asian art into Frieze Masters’ Spotlight section, a strand devoted to solo presentations. Singh, a former Tate curator specialising in South Asian art who now lectures at the Courtauld Institute, co-organised the selection.
The fair is held in Regent’s Park, London, where galleries show historical and modern art to international collectors and institutions. Spotlight has been concentrating on non-Western regions and artists who have received less attention.
One of those artists was Ganesh Haloi, the 90-year-old painter presented by Akar Prakar, a gallery based in Kolkata and Delhi and co-founded by Reena Lath. The gallery sold three of the six Haloi works it brought to the fair.
His drawings are priced at approximately £35,000, while larger paintings are around £130,000. Tate is reportedly considering acquiring one of his works.
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Mumbai-based Dara Mehta and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art were among those who bought works at Frieze Masters. Buyers from the Global South have become an increasingly powerful presence at the fair.
Akara Modern, associated with Puneet Shah, also made its first appearance. Before the fair opened, it had sold two wooden wall-based works by Piraji Sagara to Indian collectors, at prices between £40,000 and £250,000.
Loft Art Gallery made its debut at Frieze Masters from its bases in Marrakech and Casablanca. The gallery, co-founded and directed by Yasmine Berrada, sold Mohamed Melehi’s Untitled (1967) for €180,000 and had reserved two further works by the artist.
Pacita Abad’s work formed another part of this wider field. The Filipino artist’s family left the Philippines for political reasons in 1970. Alison Jacques gallery began working with her estate last year, and a travelling exhibition of Abad’s work is due to begin in Madrid next year.
Several of the fair’s most compelling presentations come from artists whose influence has received little recognition in the West.
Frieze is extending that geographic reach through the rebranding of Abu Dhabi Art as Frieze Abu Dhabi. The fair will bring together 84 galleries from 36 countries, including galleries from the Middle East, India, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and elsewhere.
Dyala Nusseibeh, Abu Dhabi Art’s longtime director, is now director of Frieze Abu Dhabi. She said the new fair drew on decades of work in a regional art ecosystem and was intended to connect the regional market with the wider world.
Its Global Futures section, curated by Tarini Malik, will include eight galleries: Gallery 1957, Aisha Alabbar Art Gallery, Artwin Gallery, Chatterjee & Lal, Taymour Grahne Projects, Marfa’, Vermelho and Zawyeh Gallery.
Malik described Abu Dhabi as a place shaped by an “extraordinary confluence of geopolitical and cultural migration”, alongside institutions and culturally led spaces being built for the future.
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