Frieze 255 November/December 2025

Dossier: The 25 Best Works of The 21st Century  

This year frieze asked 200 artists, curators, critics and museum directors to name the most outstanding works of art from the past quarter century. From their nominations, we compiled a list of 25 works that have shaped contemporary art since the year 2000. 

Also featuring   

Camille Bacon profiles artist Tau Lewis, whose monumental works trace African diasporic lineages, ahead of her participation in Performa. Booker Prize - nominee Tash Aw pens a thematic essay on Singaporean contemporary art, focusing on the practices of Heman Chong and Ming Wong. In ‘1,500 Words’, celebrated novelist John Banville recounts a recent residency at the Prado in Madrid, immersing himself in the enduring power of the museum’s masterpieces. 

Columns: Performance 

Aria Dean discusses her new theatrical work, which will debut at the Performa Biennial in New York; Jeanette Bisschops examines how the artist-run space Pageant fosters experimental performance rooted in digital culture and community; Saidiya Hartman talks to senior editor Vanessa Peterson about the diasporic traditions behind her latest ‘performed discourse’. Miriam Stoney charts performance’s institutional turn, touching on its reinvention of technique, temporality and audience engagement. Assistant editor Cassie Packard profiles Ayoung Kim, whose speculative performance practice disrupts time, labour and queerness. 

Finally, Paige K. Bradley responds to Sylvie Fleury’s Coco (1991). Plus, Rose B. Simpson contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and assistant editor Lou Selfridge pens a postcard from Edinburgh.