Frieze London 2022: Nikita Gale’s artwork ’63/22′ explores the politics of sight and sound

LA-based multidisciplinary artist Nikita Gale at Frieze London 2022

Five custom-made electric guitars are mounted on the makeshift wall at at Frieze London. These intricate objects form part of a larger artwork called ’63/22′ by LA-based multidisciplinary artist Nikita Gale. Each guitar is named after significant Black female guitarists of history: Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Barbara Lynn, Big Mama Thornton and Joan Armatrading. Every few minutes a spotlights directs our gaze from one guitar to the next. Later in the day, three musicians will activate the guitars through live ten-to-fifteen-minute performances.

This is what happens when seemingly disparate industries overlap – when ideas collide. ’63/22′ is an artwork loaded with meaning. It takes on the current discourse surrounding the politics of sight and sound, what we are guided to see, and what we are told to hear, and of invisible voices. Through the medium of design and sound, Gale is asking us to review our biases, question what has come before, and make change happen.

’63/22′ is directed by Gale in collaboration with a team of car designers and the luthier Ian Malone for BMW Open Work by Frieze. The initiative itself aims to bring together art, design and technology, and to show this in a setting outside of the auto world.

The 63 in the title refers to the year 1963, when Gibson Guitar commissioned a car designer by the name of Ray Dietrich, who had pioneered the concept of the custom-built car designer in the age of classic cars. The idea was to bring in a creative voice from outside the traditional music world who would investigate the possibilities of the electric guitar in shape and feel.

Conventions were broken with Dietrich’s asymmetrically shaped Firebird sporting a taller horn positioned on the right rather than the customary left. The wooden neck had nine strips of alternating mahogany and maple, layered for strength and stability, spanning the full length of the instrument. It featured some wonderful quirky details too, with the wings thought to resemble the car’s tail fins. Naturally, the Firebird sounded different to other electric guitar of the time.

One of five custom-made electric guitars for ’63/22′ by Nikita Gale

I meet Nikita Gale at Frieze London to untangle the complex artwork, ’63/22′.

Why an interest in the politics of sound?

My mum was a music teacher, and music was always happening in our house. Alongside teaching me the piano, she would speak about historically significant musicians. Growing up on an air force base in Alaska, she was often a visiting music teacher to our school, giving lessons on Black music history and so on. For me, it wasn’t only about enjoying the music but thinking about the histories that preceded it.

Your project at Frieze continues the investigation into the politics of sound but through the lens of the car. How did this connection happen?

At grad school, I began thinking about cars not just as technologies but as objects that we project cultural and political information into, in that the modes and the means of production of these technologies are not neutral. Decisions are being made that are informed by political positions: are the cars powered by fossil fuel versus electric, or the designs and shapes they take? What cars look like is largely determined by the understanding and biases of the people designing them.

Most of whom would be of a certain gender. How did you then circle this back to music?

While investigating cars, I began encountering interesting information about music, particularly American blues and rock. Early blues and rock songs were largely about cars, such as Ike Turner’s 1951 ‘Rocket 88’ – considered the first rock and roll record. Cars are metaphors for personal freedom, sexuality, and gender expression. The overlaps kept happening during my research, which is when I came upon Ray Dietrich and his work with Gibson in 1963. It is the first time these two industries overlapped on such a large, mass-produced scale.

It must have seemed quite a surprise then to be approached by BMW for the Frieze project. Speaking with the curator Attilia Fattori Franchini earlier, she was unaware you were already thinking along these streams of ideas.

Crazy, right? I had this idea in my back pocket for seven years, so when BMW reached out to collaborate at Frieze, I already knew what I wanted to do. It was an incredible coincidence, and I knew we had to do this. Added to this, I’m a real car fan.

And how do you feel about the project that is displayed before us?

It never ceases to amaze seeing an object born out of a concept that exists in space. This project has truly taken this to a new level. These guitars are not just aesthetic art objects but functional technology; they are all playable guitars that Ian Malone helped make possible.

The guitar you’ve designed have clearly questioned the conventional shape of the instrument, its masculinity.

Yes, absolutely. During the design process, I discussed the profile of the types of users of these technologies with the BMW designers. We looked at who would be playing the guitars and how we should be designing with other bodies in mind other than the typical type who were determining the shape of things in the 60s, which would have been primarily white men. The musician St. Vincent recently designed a signature guitar that has a much narrower body to accommodate people with breasts. I asked our designers to consider ergonomics with all body shapes in mind.

Can you explain the performative side when these aesthetic objects neatly lining the wall are played?

We’ve invited three diverse musicians to perform at 3 pm each day, giving them carte blanche to do what they want and choose the guitar they like. It’s been fascinating to see which ones they go for. Luckily no two have gone for the same guitar.

’63/22′ interrogates the politics of sight and sound, what we are directed to see and allowed to hear, and how this manifests itself in invisible voices. What were you hoping to achieve with the project?

I strongly believe in the importance of modelling possibilities. So, when I think about this moment in 1963, where these industries overlap, I look at this as a demonstration of what is possible when conversations are allowed to overlap in a very direct way. I’m looking at the moment when ideas collide.

Given that general guitar design hasn’t changed so much in the last 60 years, by recreating and almost staging the scene in this context, we can shine a light on the possibilities of change.

The shapes and forms of technologies were largely determined by the biases of people designing them. As political and cultural landscapes change, those biases also shift. Where are we now? Why are we sticking to what came before? We can still change things. Nothing is set in stone. In the essay Technology and Ethos, Amiri Baraka, writing as LeRoi Jones at the time, has a great line: Nothing has to look or sound the way that it does.

The 19th edition of Frieze London takes place from October 12-16, 2022. 

Images © Nikita Gale/BMW

Refik Anadol’s artwork at Frieze Art is a dialogue on humans And machine

Media artist Refik Anadol is using data from the color of every Rolls-Royce motor car built in the last decade to create an LED canvas to explore the challenges and the possibilities we face in the digital age. Presented during Frieze Los Angeles, ‘Art of Perfection: Data Painting’ is the latest commission in the Rolls-Royce “Muse” program, the initiative designed to help advance the medium of the moving image, explore materials and support arts and ideas. Take a closer look at his textural work here, and watch the artist in conversation here.

Also see Émeric Lhuisset’s work for Paris Photo

Frieze, PAD and Serpentine in picture

London was at the centre of an art-frenzy last week – the capital city turned into one giant arts exhibition. At the centre was off course Frieze, the annual art fair based in a gigantic pavilion in Regent’s Park. Running alongside this was Pavilion Art and Design London, showing art and design from a much smaller and a rather more elegant marquee in Berkley Square, Mayfair. Combined with all the other satellite events around city it gave a speedy overview at the state of art today.

In Frieze and PAD galleries from around the world create micro spaces showcasing their flair and ultimate finds. At Frieze there was a cocktail of work that ranged from the brilliant to the silly, the artists were a mix of super names such as Anish Kapoor to lesser known contemporary artists hoping to be spotted by the many buyers who flock on Frieze for this very purpose.

Highlights included work by Portuguese photographer Helena Almeida shown at Galería Helga de Alvear whose large black and white photographs with splashes of red from the 70s are rather haunting. It was, however, outside the confines of the pavilion where the art really shone – the amazing sunny autumn week for sure highlighting the sculpture park  that includudes work by Gavin Turk and Tom Friedman.

PAD was less extreme. As with last year, this refined exhibition space only really shows the very best in art and design that covers work from the last century and features work by Picasso, Rothka & Co alongside new designers and artists. It is more palatable but rather less exciting than Frieze.

Kensington Gardens saw the Serpentine Marathon. The two-day art event ran alongside Frieze and featured non-stop live presentations by over fifty artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists.

This year the theme was gardens. Participants included architects and designers Elizabeth Diller, Alice Rawsthorn, Stefano Boeri, Dan Pearson, Andrea Branzi, Pascal Cribier, Adriaana Geuze, Fritz Haeg, Charles Jencks, Catherine Mosbach, Gunther Vogt, among many others.

For more on Frieze and London’s art-frenzy week read the FT report. Read our report on PAD London 2010.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Design Talks | 5 – 25 Scrutton Street | Old Street | Shoreditch | London | EC2A 4HJ?W | UK | www.d-talks.com | Bookshop www.d-talks.com/bookshop | Published by Banksthomas

All rights and labelled images are covered by ©

PAD London: Objects of desire

London turned into a giant art fair in October as representatives from galleries from around the world descended on the capital city to take part in the now highly established Frieze Art Fair and Pavilion of Art & Design London – both offering art for sale and attracting international buyers and collectors as well as art and design enthusiasts.

Joris Laarman Branch Bookshelf in bronze, 2010

The two affairs that run simultaneously from 13 – 17 October, though, couldn’t be more contrasting. Frieze is a racy affair that has at its core a giant pavilion constructed in the middle of Regents Park offering a vast selection of contemporary works of art by an international set of galleries. It is large, loud – almost chaotic – and feels current, attracting not just those who can afford to buy but also people from all walks of life.

Fernando & Humberto Campana, Sushi IV Chair, 2003 ©Perimeter Editions, Paris

PAD London is an altogether more serene experience. In its third year, the art and design fair has grown to include 50 of the world’s most elite galleries. Plus its location – a tent constructed amongst the sculptural trees of Berkley Square in the heart of exclusive Mayfair – limits its size and to a degree its customers.

Taking 1860 as its starting point, paintings by Pablo Picasso,  Egon Schiele, some brilliant work by German expressionist George Groz, were on exhibit alongside those by Bridget Riley, Richard Prince and more avant-garde artists including the controversial Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein with his rather haunting work that is a visual critic of war, and outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who’s 2004 China Bench (pictured bellow). Both were exhibited on New York gallery Friedman Benda‘s visually rich stand.

Ai Weiwei, China Bench, 2004 ©Freidman Benda, New York

This gathering sat alongside mid 20th century European classic of Gio Ponti and co to Dutch designer Joris Laarman and his exquisite Branch Bookshelf that managed to be both organic and highly technical (pictured above and also on exhibit by Friedman Benda), and New York designer Karim Rashid’s bright Blobulous Chair (pictured bellow). Jewelery design ranged from vintage Cartier to sculptural pieces by artist Anish Kapoor. There was even a selection of unusual tribal art on show.

Karim Rashid, Blobulous Chair Chromo, 2008-2010 ©Edizioni Galleria Colombari, Milan

There was also an exhibit by graduate designers from London’s prestigious Royal College of Art. Curator Janice Blackburn and the college’s director of architecture Nigel Coats selected 20 pieces from the 2010 graduate show with 15 percent of the profits generated from the sale going towards the RCA Student Fine Art Award Fund.

Royal College of Art's 2010 graduate show at Pavilion of Art & Design London

PAD London is a chic and exclusive affair – the 50 galleries taking part are from the elite of the art and design world. It was conceived by two Frenchmen Patrick Perrin and Stéphane Custot who spotted a gap in the market and filled it with the kind of work – and the mix – that no one else caters for.

This may be a purely commercial affair, but much like Frieze it is a chance to see a varied selection of creative work gathered, rather conveniently, under one roof.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

Design Talks | 5 – 25 Scrutton Street | Old Street | Shoreditch | London | EC2A 4HJ?W | UK | www.d-talks.com | Bookshop www.d-talks.com/bookshop | Published by Banksthomas

All rights and labelled images are covered by ©