Frieze Masters' Queering Modernism Traces Queer Visual Language from the Early 20th Century to the 1980s

Key facts

• Queering Modernism: Visual Languages of the 20th Century is curated by Anke Kempkes at Frieze Masters.
• The section is spread across the fair rather than contained within a single area.
• It traces queer experience and LGBTQ+ representation from the early 20th century to the 1980s Postmodern queer art scene.
• Kempkes recently curated the 2025 exhibition Queer Modernism 1900 to 1950 at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf.
• Bahman Mohassess is presented by Ab-Anbar Gallery; his bronze nude Faun Musician, erected in 1971 in front of Tehran's City Theatre, was removed and mutilated during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
• Ismael Nery is presented by Danielian gallery from Rio de Janeiro.
• Agnews shows Glyn Philpot's King Balthazar (1929) and Lotte Laserstein's Portrait of Louis Hahne (1939).
• Luis Fernando Zapata, diagnosed HIV positive in the mid-1980s, is presented jointly by Galería Elvira Moreno and Alonso Garcés Galería; his Sarcofagi N° 9 (1992-94) is included.
• Ruth Bernhard's photographs are presented by Galerie Albrecht.
• Kempkes argues the market can become a mechanism of art-historical recovery for artists who died without direct heirs.