For the summer issue of frieze magazine, four contributors – Travis Diehl, James Hoff, Jordan Nassar and Rachel Valinsky – pen love letters to Printed Matter, the cult bookstore celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Plus, Chloe Aridjis profiles artist Donna Huddleston ahead of her first solo show at Ortuzar in New York.
Dossier: Four Love Letters to Printed Matter
‘Every book there carried hope, the basic human desire to be heard.’ In its landmark 50th year, artists and writers celebrate the cultural institution that reshaped the artists’ book.
Profile: Donna Huddleston
‘The stand-in is steeped in the possibility of performance and the mix therein of desire, hope, disappointment, success.’ The former set designer reflects on the theatricality of self-presentation in her coloured pencil creations.
Also featuring
Daisy Lafarge pens a thematic essay on the aesthetics and politics of chronic illness in contemporary art contexts. In 1,500 words, Liliana Porter remembers her close friend Ana Mendieta, touching on the artist’s enduring, earth-bound practice. Plus, Okiki Akinfe speaks with Peter Davies about lasting influences and the politics of art schools as her debut solo institutional show opens at Peer Gallery, London.
Columns: Portraiture
Cici Peng examines how Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s portrait of Marianne Faithfull in Broken English (2025) challenges notions of a fixed identity. Lisette May Monroe considers the intimate, autobiographical impulse of Chantal Joffe’s paintings. Zoë Hopkins traces how Leilah Babirye’s scarred sculptures turn concealment into revelation. Kim Córdova outlines how Gabriele Stötzer’s photography reframes GDR surveillance as defiant portraiture. P. Eldridge speaks with Shu Lea Cheang about the way her work utilizes collective resilience to imagine another world.
Finally, Geoff Dyer looks at how Robert Adams constructed his enduring landscapes. Okiki Akinfe contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and senior editor Vanessa Peterson pens a postcard from Milan
