Every six weeks, members of Art Basel’s Editorial team pick their favorite exhibitions across the globe. Here are eight shows not to miss this September.

‘THE PRELUDE THE HOURS THE KISS THE END’
Tarek Lakhrissi
Galerie Allen, Paris
September 9 – October 7

The term ‘polymath’ often gets used in inflationary ways. In the case of French artist, poet, performer, composer, and film director Tarek Lakhrissi, however, its deployment feels legitimate. Often produced in collaboration with fellow creatives, Lakhrissi’s work oscillates between the sensual and the cerebral, inspired by queer source material that bridges the same poles, from the musings of Jean Genet to the pamphlets of Monique Wittig. Polished glass, colliding bodies, and dramatic lighting are recurring elements in Lakhrissi’s practice – an ode to the potential for beauty and camp in interpersonal relationships. K.C.

curated by, ‘the neutral’
Multiple galleries, Vienna
September 8 – October 13

Vienna’s annual fall art festival celebrates its 15th year: As always, the city’s galleries have invited mostly non-Viennese curators to stage exhibitions around a central theme. This year, 24 shows tackle the idea of ‘the neutral’ – a rejection of binary thinking, but also a problematic stance in a world in which taking a stand is ever more crucial. Participating curators include artists Angelo Plessas and Tobias Pils, writer-curators Gaby Cepeda and Quinn Latimer, and other international guests like Giovanna Manzotti and Helena Papadopoulos. After an invariably lively opening weekend on September 8–9, the month will be packed with panel discussions, performances, and other activations. K.B.

‘“Pictures girls make”: Portraitures’
Group show
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
September 9 – October 21

The ingredients of this expansive exhibition are beguiling: A fearless curator (Alison M. Gingeras), an infinitely rich topic (portraiture), and 59 fascinating artists spanning more than a century (including Joan Brown, Elaine de Kooning, and Yannis Tsarouchis). Once combined, these elements result in nothing short of a literal feast. Gingeras has a knack for broadening audiences’ horizons; at Blum & Poe, she brings together works that, historically, were often not taken seriously by viewers and critics – whether for their makers’ gender, race, or wider practice. The exhibition celebrates a fruitful form of art-historical revisionism that crucially seeks to make the artworld more inclusive. K.C.

‘Parole’
Eliza Douglas, Lily van der Stokker
Air de Paris, Romainville
September 10 – October 21

At Air de Paris, Eliza Douglas and Lily van der Stokker team up for an irreverent show, the central tenets of which are humor and text. At the outset, Van der Stokker’s mysterious drawing announces I Fake Nothing (2018), while a painting by Douglas boisterously spelling out ‘Ha Ha Ha’ (Untitled, 2023) seems to be laughing at the medium itself. The two artists’ colorful worlds collide in this exhibition, testing the legitimacy of artistic production under the guise of innocence. J.A.

‘FOUND SUBJECT’
Raphaela Vogel
BQ, Berlin
September 15 – November 5

For this show opening during Berlin Art Week, the eclectic, electric artist Raphaela Vogel presents an installation and film centered on Jewish-German writer Erich Hopp (1888–1949), who with his family hid from Nazi persecution in the 1930s house that the artist now inhabits just outside Berlin. Her film ‘dissects’ the house’s utopian ornaments and highlights a psalm written by Hopp; the installation incorporates ephemera such as letters from the house’s architect, Hopp’s book of psalms, and his memoir published in the US in 1947. The exhibition deftly addresses modernist architecture, fascist history, and the life-affirming transformation of despair into spiritual hope. K.B.

‘Voices without borders’
Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal
KINDL, Berlin
Until January 1, 2024

In a renovated former brewery, Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal, two of the Arab world’s most poignant voices, are brought into dialogue. United by partnership in art and life, Adnan and Fattal speak boldly through their works to feminist and political engagement. With paintings, tapestries, and more, the exhibition unveils their remarkable journeys. A showcase of Fattal’s Post-Apollo Press – founded in 1982 to publish Adnan’s From A to Z Poetry – further enriches the exhibition, which serves as an homage to these two luminaries and underscores their impact as art-world voices. A.R.

‘A WORLD IN COMMON: CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY’
Group show
Tate Modern, London
Until January 14, 2024

How to do justice to the vast subject of artists working with photography across a continent of more than 1.4 billion people? Inspired by Achille Mbembe’s vision to ‘think the world from Africa’, the show reclaims the generally reductive and controlling use of the camera during colonial times. ‘A World in Common’ features 36 artists whose work joyfully reimagines traditions and histories, projects new identities, and offers visions for a truly planetary future. Works range from Zina Saro-Wiwa’s thought-provoking performances celebrating masks as living objects to Julianknxx’s In Praise of Still Boys (2021), which, although its subjects hail from Sierra Leone, nonetheless tells a global story that follows the course of the continent’s many diasporas. E.B.

‘Constellation’
Diane Arbus
LUMA Arles, Arles
Until April 30, 2024

In the main gallery of The Tower at LUMA, one can enter a 454-print labyrinth comprised of Diane Arbus’s photographs. Spread out like a spider’s web, the multitude of images (some of which are being shown here for the first time) is truly awe-inspiring. There is no prescribed route through the show, meaning each visitor’s experience is entirely individual, rhythmed by portraits united by the piercing, raw humanity they exude. Arbus immortalized those whom puritanical America chose not to see: hundreds of lives, captured over decades and across countless states, to create a scintillating ‘Constellation’ indeed. J.A.

Art Basel’s Editorial team is composed of Juliette Amoros, Tatiana Berg, Emily Butler, Karim Crippa, Jeni Fulton, Andi Harris, Alexis Laki, Coline Milliard, Alicia Reuter, Katie Rothstein, and Patrick Steffen. Art Basel’s commissioning editors are Stephanie Bailey, Kimberly Bradley, and Emily McDermott.

Published on September 4, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed image: Raphaela Vogel, Kunstabzugshaube, 2023 (video still). Courtesy of the artist and BQ, Berlin.