Precious Okoyomon. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
New York’s Frieze Art Fair opens today, but the prestigious Frieze Artist Award commission, a performance featuring artist and poet Precious Okoyomon, has already come and gone, staged quietly last week before a small, socially distanced crowd.
When art collectors descend on the Shed for the city’s first in-person art fair since March 2020, they will only be able to experience
This God Is a Slow Recovery (2021) in video form, playing at the fair and streaming online.
A cacophony of sound and music, the piece saw Okoyomon and other performers perched on black platforms decorated with silver and camouflage netting in the center of the Shed’s performance hall. A collaboration with Los Angeles-based industrial designer Jonathan Olivares, the set was meant to recall the collapse of the Tower of Babel, encircled with branches, leaves, and a scattering of yellow flowers.