In a stall painted eraser pink, bodies are shape-shifting. They stand as tall as adult hands, bone-pale, some posing alone and others clutching in clusters like Botticelli’s three Graces—the curio-cabinet kitch kind. Organic growths bulge over their naked forms, as if subsumed by spores or covered in porous coral or morels. The effect is psychological and visceral, an intimate invite to witness transformation from human into something else.

This Frieze booth is Buenos Aires’s Galería Nora Fisch. Claudia Fontes is the only artist on view, and her handful of tiny sculptures makes an impression in the minimalist display. Fontes calls this her Foreigner series—as an Argentinian living in the UK, her choice to work in porcelain confronts Britishness, whiteness, and aspirational middle-class symbolism.

Beyond the social outcasting implied, her ceramics also signify passing time. Fontes sculpts delicate relationships that have ossified. How long have the characters been entwined, and what has changed around them? How have they altered? Surreal and strange, they disturb in their stillness.

Downtown, 154 Art Fair brings work about the African diaspora to the West Village. Featured is Gallery 1957 from Accra, where Tunisian artist Thameur Mejri exhibits paintings and collages ablaze with color and fragmented bodies. Forceful linework superimposes male muscles with symbols of war that stress tensions in North Africa and the Middle East. In one series of powerful works on paper, Mejri embellishes drawings he created as a child, adding weapons and skulls as well as crayoning by his young daughter. As the artist describes, he is simultaneously conversing with his past self and the future.

Body horror is too easy a description for these distinct artists. Fontes’s figurines quietly haunt, while Mejri calls through chaos. He fuels his compositions with the furious pace of machines; she patiently calcifies. But both artists hide their subjects’ faces. Their works depict private lives, political fears, and the shared struggle to relate to others despite never truly being able to know them. They are about each of us, foreigners all.

5/9/2019