For 90 minutes, The Great Yes, The Great No explores themes of exile, resistance and the complex dynamics of colonialism through surrealist imagery and performance elements. The libretto draws inspiration primarily from Césaire’s book-length poem, “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal,” or “Notebook of a return to my native land.” The all-female chorus performs music in eight different languages of South Africa.

The critically acclaimed Yoko Ono retrospective that generated large crowds at Tate Modern last year will open in October at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, its only presentation in the US. The show, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, spans 70 years of Ono’s career from her early Fluxus pieces and conceptual works to more recent participatory installations, bringing together more than 200 objects.

The Minneapolis art museum has acquired more than 50 works for its permanent collection through purchases and gifts as part of its ongoing effort "to diversify its holdings with the work of both acclaimed and lesser-known artists from around the globe." Added to the Walker's collection of more than 16,000 works is a significant work from painter Gerhard Richter. "Abstract Painting" (1990) is part of an ongoing series he began in the '70s. It will join Richter's "Chicago" (1992), which is already in the Walker's holdings.

The Shilpa Gupta's minimalist interventions at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, grapple with absence, erasure and exile. In his treatise on literature’s relationship to loss and the limits of representation, The Writing of the Disaster (1980), Maurice Blanchot suggests that ‘[w]hoever writes is exiled from writing, which is the country – his own – where he is not a prophet’. For the French theorist, writing is inextricably linked to absence, erasure and exile, shaped by the spectre of what cannot be said. This negative space left behind by writing – and, indeed, by art – finds poignant expression in Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s solo presentation at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, ‘Some suns fell off’. Through a series of minimalist interventions, Gupta articulates the keenly felt absences of voices exiled from public life, while probing incorporeal structures that shape systems of control, such as the nation-state.

"Multidisciplinary artist Kiki Smith visited the Clark Institute of Art last Saturday to discuss her evolving body of work — which spans sculpture, etching, printmaking, photography, drawing, and, most recently, textiles. Her art wrestles with themes of sex, reproduction, mortality, and nature. Her large-scale tapestry, Seven Seas, was the most recent addition to Wall Power!, a special exhibition on show at the Clark until March 9. The exhibition showcases a collection of contemporary French tapestries on loan from the Mobilier national of France."

The William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company’s masterpiece, Faustus in Africa comes to The Baxter, 30 years after its phenomenal success. Thirty years after its premiere and following on from its resounding success, William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company re-unite to present Faustus in Africa! at The Baxter from 26 February to 22 March 2025.

Kunsthalle Wien presents a major new exhibition examining the pioneering role of women in digital art. Organised in collaboration with Mudam Luxembourg–Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 (February 28–May 25, 2025), brings together over one hundred works by fifty artists including Rosemarie Trockel, with painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance and many computer-generated drawings and texts.

illycaffè, the global coffee brand renowned for its sustainable quality and its unique connection to the world of contemporary art, continues its collaboration with Frieze Los Angeles as the official global coffee partner. At this sixth edition of the international contemporary art fair illycaffè presents for the first time to the American market its last illy Art Collection which showcases the stories of four famous artists. These artists are Simone Fattal from Syria, Shirin Neshat from Iran, Monica Bonvicini from Italy, and Binta Diaw, a Milanese artist of Senegalese origin. Each artist has used the illy cup as a canvas to reflect on pressing cultural, environmental, and social issues, sharing their experiences as women from diverse geographical and social backgrounds.