APAA’s Top Picks From Frieze London
Frieze London returns this week, bringing together over 160 international galleries and newly curated sections highlighting the themes of digital minimalism, post-colonial narratives, and environmental futurism. The invitation-only preview opens on Wednesday, October 15, with the fair open to the public from Thursday, October 16, through Sunday, October 20.
APAA advisors share their standout selections from both Frieze London and Frieze Masters, reflecting the range of expertise that defines our community—spanning contemporary highlights, historical rediscoveries, and new directions shaping today’s market. Thank you to our members for their thoughtful curations and expertise.
Mire Lee, Open Wound: Surface with many Holes #7, 2025
“Mire Lee is a young artist from Seoul who has intrigued me from the first moment I saw her work through its compelling combination of repulsion and fragility.
Her practice balances the organic and the mechanical: sculptural installations that seem to breathe, leak, and pulse, though never seamlessly, as if they form the interior of a body caught between life and decay.
I first encountered her work at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Using ceramic, silicone tubes, metal, and liquid glaze dripping over her structures, she created an installation that felt both threatening and delicate.
Later, I saw her monumental installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, where the scale further amplified the sense of vulnerability. It was as if you were standing inside an old organism: parts still in motion, mechanisms still turning, yet everything unmistakably in decay.
I am drawn to artists who challenge aesthetic conventions and dare to confront us with our own physical fragility. In her work, the structures seem to struggle for survival. They confront and unsettle, yet they also move you through their persistence.
The same sense of fragility resonates also in her smaller pieces, such as this piece at Sprüth Magers.”
150 x 90 cm (59 x 35 3/8 inches)
Pigmented methylcellulose on construction netting
Presented by Sprüth Magers
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived, 2023
“This multi-color screenprint captures the artist’s signature approach, layering themes of domesticity with cultural and historical references. The central figure, seen from behind, is draped in a colorful, geometric-patterned garment that flows like a patchwork quilt, evoking echoes of personal histories, memory, and identity. The floor is intricately collaged with photographic transfers that incorporate imagery drawn from Nigerian pop culture, family archives, and ephemera. Crosby’s distinctive and textured visual language rewards close observation and encourages deeper engagement and contemplation.”
243 color screen print on Rives BFK paper
75.9 x 101.3 cm (29-7/8 x 39-7/8 in.)
Edition of 60 plus 10 artist's proofs and HC 2/3
Presented by Victoria Miro
Sosa Joseph, Pink Balloon, 2025
“Indian artist Sosa Joseph’s Pink Balloon, presented by David Zwirner, is my pick for this year’s Frieze London. Joseph is a powerful colorist and storyteller, creating complex, atmospheric paintings that include female members of her own family and community, an island village in South India, alongside symbols from the natural world. Joseph’s paintings function in opposition to history painting; in her approach, everyday moments are presented as extraordinary parts of a rich collective history. Having grown up surrounded by water, the motif of the river plays an important role in the artist’s work, serving as a backdrop for domestic scenes or as a subject itself, a vessel in which Joseph explores ideas of beauty, fertility, fear, and escape. Even the artist’s process alludes to her personal, watery world—Joseph begins each painting with a single, rich hue, subsequently introducing improvisatory threads of figuration. She works in many layers, wiping down the painting's surface frequently to reveal dreamy, blurry layers, almost as if the viewer is gazing at the work through water.”
Oil on canvas
24 1/4 x 29 7/8 inches
Presented by David Zwirner
Leonora Carrington, Equinoxio, 1958
“At the heart of Equinoxio (1958), amid a cosmic realm of symbols and celestial forms, stands Carrington’s iconic horse, her mystical alter ego, mirrored by a luminous, shadowed self. A powerful embodiment of her surreal imagination and personal mythology.”
Oil on canvas
28 3/4 x 36 3/5 inches / 73 x 93 cm)
Presented by Wendi Norris Gallery
On view at Frieze Masters.
Otobong Nkanga, Cadence - While We Wait and Watch, 2025
“Otobong Nkanga's (b. 1974, Nigeria) tapestry Cadence – While We Wait and Watch evokes the intricate harmony between humanity and the natural world that surrounds us. Nkanga is known for her multidisciplinary practice that examines the complex social, political, and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals, and the earth. The sheer scale of this work stopped me in my tracks, but what’s even more invigorating is witnessing how the artist visually captures the entangled histories of land, resources, and exploitation in beautifully detailed textile craftsmanship.”
Woven tapestry
157 1/2" x 413 3/8" x 11" | Ed. 1 of 3 + 1 AP
Presented by Lisson Gallery
