Spring 2024 Issue

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:
Frida Escobedo

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents select from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the first installment of 2024, we are honored to present the architect Frida Escobedo.

Frida Escobedo

Hans Ulrich ObristWhat is your most recent work?

Frida EscobedoA curtain, a library, a restaurant, and a museum.

HUOWhat is your unrealized project?

FEA garden.

HUOWhat role does chance play?

FEChance is the manifestation of resonance.

HUOWhat keeps you coming back to the studio?

FECuriosity.

HUODo you write poems?

FENo, the poet in the family is my youngest sister, María.

HUOHow would you like to die?

FEAbruptly.

HUOYour favorite color?

FEThe inky neon blue of the sky just after the sun has set, and the red in magnolia flowers’ stamen scars.

HUOWhat have you forgotten?

FEAll my past lives.

huoWhat ought to change?

feOur priorities.

huoDo you have rituals?

feSitting with my dog on the living room couch to watch the sunrise.

huoWhat music are you listening to?

feBrian Eno’s “Golden Hours,” Air’s “Radian,” Porno for Pyros’ “Kimberly Austin.”

huoWhat couldn’t you live without?

feLove. And curiosity.

Black-and-white portrait of Frida Escobedo

Frida Escobedo established her eponymous studio in Mexico City in 2006. The studio has achieved global recognitition since 2018, when Escobedo designed the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens, becoming the youngest architect to undertake the project to that date. Most recently she was asked to design the new Modern and Contemporary Wing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Black-and-white portrait of Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine, London. He was previously the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Photo: Tyler Mitchell

See all Articles

The Art of the Olympics: An Interview with Yasmin Meichtry

The Olympic and Paralympic Games arrive in Paris on July 26. Ahead of this momentous occasion, Yasmin Meichtry, associate director at the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, Lausanne, Switzerland, meets with Gagosian senior director Serena Cattaneo Adorno to discuss the Olympic Games’ long engagement with artists and culture, including the Olympic Museum, commissions, and the collaborative two-part exhibition, The Art of the Olympics, being staged this summer at Gagosian, Paris.

BRONX BODEGA Basel

On the occasion of Art Basel 2024, creative agency Villa Nomad joins forces with Ghetto Gastro, the Bronx-born culinary collective by Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, to stage the interdisciplinary pop-up BRONX BODEGA Basel. The initiative brings together food, art, design, and a series of live events at the Novartis Campus, Basel, during the course of the fair. Here, Jon Gray from Ghetto Gastro and Sarah Quan from Villa Nomad tell the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier about the project.

Jane Fonda: On Art for a Safe and Healthy California

Art for a Safe and Healthy California is a benefit exhibition and auction jointly presented by Jane Fonda, Gagosian, and Christie’s to support the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California. Here, Fonda speaks with Gagosian Quarterly’s Gillian Jakab about bridging culture and activism, the stakes and goals of the campaign, and the artworks featured in the exhibition.

Laguna~B

An interview with Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda, artist, designer, and CEO and art director of the Venice-based glassware company Laguna~B.

Frank Stella

In celebration of the life and work of Frank Stella, the Quarterly shares the artist’s last interview from our Summer 2024 issue. Stella spoke with art historian Megan Kincaid about friendship, formalism, and physicality.

Hold a World: Lucinda Chua

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and composer Lucinda Chua meets with writer Dhruva Balram to reflect on the response to her debut album YIAN (2023).

That Carousel of Thought: Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley’s self-taught musical and artistic practice utilizes a strategy of salvage to recontextualize his past lives. His new album, Oh Me Oh My, is the latest rearticulation of this biography.

Richard Armstrong

Richard Armstrong, director emeritus of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, joins the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald to discuss his election to the board of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, as well as the changing priorities and strategies of museums, foundations, and curators. He reflects on his various roles within museums and recounts his first meeting with Frankenthaler.

Wayne McGregor

Alice Godwin speaks with the choreographer about his inspirations from literature, visual art, music, and more.

Willem de Kooning and Italy

In tandem with the 60th Biennale di Venezia, the city’s Gallerie dell’Accademia is featuring the exhibition Willem de Kooning and Italy, an in-depth examination of the artist’s time in Italy and of the influence of that experience on his work. On September 20 of last year, the curators of the exhibition, the American Gary Garrels and the Italian Mario Codognato, engaged in a lengthy conversation about the exhibition for a press conference at the museum. An edited transcript of that conversation is published below for the first time.

Oscar Murillo: Marks and Whispers

Ahead of two exhibitions—The Flooded Garden at Tate Modern, London, and Marks and Whispers at Gagosian, Rome—curator Alessandro Rabottini visited Oscar Murillo’s London studio to discuss the connections between them.

Vladimir Kagan’s First Collection: An Interview with Chris Eitel

Chris Eitel, Vladimir Kagan’s protégé and the current director of design and production at Vladimir Kagan Design Group, invited the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier to the brand’s studio in New Jersey, where the two discussed the forthcoming release of the First Collection. The series, now available through holly hunt, reintroduces the first chair and table that Kagan ever designed—part of Eitel’s efforts to honor the furniture avant-gardist’s legacy while carrying the company into the future.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire:Frida Escobedo

Related Articles