Canada has recently announces its’ representation by artist Kapwani Kiwanga at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale. Kiwanga is an internationally recognised rising star born in Canada but living in Paris, she has recently been awarded the Sobey Art Award, the Prix Marcel Duchamp, as well as the Zurich Art Prize. She will be the first Afro-Canadian woman to represent the country. Kiwanga joins the ranks of previously announced artists such as John Akomfrah for Brittain, Julien Creuzet for France, and Edith Karlson for Estonia.
A museum in Pontevedra, Spain is returning two paintings looted from Poland during WWII. The Mater Dolorosa and Ecce Homo by Flemish master Dieric Bouts were lost during the Warsaw uprising. The paintings were listed by the German authorities who oversaw the looting of art in occupied Poland - its whereabouts were thereafter unknown. In 2019 a researcher at the Spanish museum identified these two paintings - they were acquired through the donation of the collection of Spanish businessman José Fernández López who acquired them from a gallery during the Franco dictatorship in the 1970’s.
The sixth Dhaka Art Summit is about the commence. From the 3rd to 11th of February, the art world will celebrate the event under the title “Bonna” meaning flood. The summit, which is only one of the initiatives under the Samdani Art Foundation - founded by collecting couple Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani - has successfully placed Bangladesh on the world art map. The event will feature contributions by Collecteurs artist members such as David Horvitz and Ahmet Ogut among others. Check out the website to see more of their works.
The man who stole three works from Greece’s National Gallery in January 2012 will be serving a suspended sentence of 6 years in jail due to good behavior. Deemed the heist of the century, the man stole Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1934), Piet Mondrian’s Stammer Windmill with Summer House (1905), and Guglielmo Caccia’s sketch St. Diego de Alcala in Ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion.
In more restitution news, Jewish heirs are suing the Guggenheim over a blue-period Picasso painting they claim their ancestor sold under duress when fleeing Nazi Germany. The museum claims that the 1938 transaction was fair and that the seller knew the gallery well, citing their conversation with the owner’s son in the 1970s, who did not raise any concerns.
On January 27, Swiss artist Julian Charrière published a video of his work _And Beneath It All Flows Liquid Fir_e (2019). In the caption, he revealed that the luxury fashion brand Zadig & Voltaire had used a moving image with a striking resemblance to this piece in the company’s current marketing campaign without Chiarrière’s permission. Read more about this story on collecteurs.com
Pioneering video artist John Akomafrah will represent Britain at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The artist is best known for his multi-screen installations on racial injustice, diasporic identities, migration, and climate change. You can see his work 2010 Mnemosyne (neh-mo-zeen) in the Collecteurs exhibition The Wave, curated by Carolina Martínez & Àngels Miralda.
On Wednesday, the United Nations issued a list of sites whose material heritage (which includes art, architecture, and archeology) is endangered. Among the cities listed are several archeological sites in Yemen and Lebanon, such as the ruins in Yemen's Marib province and the Rachid Karameh International Fair in Lebanon's Tripoli. They also listed the entire city of Odessa, Ukraine, due to Russia’s bombing of the port city. Though being put on the UNESCO endangered list is largely symbolic, it opens the avenue for international aid, and there can be legal consequences: 194 nation-states are bound by a UN contract not to destroy the sites.
The Dhaka Art Summit opens next week. The 2023 iteration focuses on the research and exhibition of arts about migration and translation. Among the participating artists are Ahmet Öğüt, who currently has a show with Collecteurs titled Absofuckinglutely, and David Horvitz, whose work you can see in The Wave, and who you can learn more about in our interview with him on collecteurs.com