Marking the opening of Frieze London, the Serpentine Pavilion and Therme Art, in partnership with MYTH, hosted the transdisciplinary collaboration COMMUNION, drawing together leading voices from across the fields of art, architecture, fashion, music, and technology in a multi-disciplinary event exploring the importance of gathering and creative production on mental wellbeing. The 2021 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, served as the centre stage and catalyst for the event.  

The one-night-only event featured a live performance by rapper and singer Tinie Tempah, including the release of a new track, and a live performance by ENNY of her iconic hit song “Peng Black Girls,” which transformed Counterspace’s Pavilion into a stage that radiated themes of identity, empowerment, community, belonging, and gathering.

The evening also featured Wellbeing Culture Forum panel discussions hosted by Therme Art with Counterspace Co-Founder and architect Sumayya Vally, artist Torkwase Dyson, fashion designer Priya Ahluwalia, and Artistic Director of Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist, moderated by journalist Yomi Adegoke.  

In between the Wellbeing Culture Forum talks, curator and art critic Daniel Birnbaum and Hans Ulrich Obrist introduced artist Carsten Höller’s digital extension of his most recent monographic exhibition at the MAAT Museum, DAY. The digital work, produced and displayed by Acute Art via their App, titled 7.8 (Reduced Reality App), augments and reduces reality through the flickering of screens at 7.8 Hz, a frequency that stimulates brain wave frequencies and may induce hallucinatory effects. Gathered at the Pavilion, guests experienced Höller’s work together as a shared art experience.

The 2021 edition of the Serpentine Pavilion opened to the public on June 11 in Kensington Gardens, with smaller fragments presented across the city of London, illustrating the power of architecture to inspire a sense of community, identity, belonging, and gathering back into our lives. The Pavilion’s abstract, superimposing and interlaced sculptural elements reference the architecture of local restaurants, markets, bookshops, and cultural institutions that played a significant role in the vitalisation of cross-cultural communities during their migration into neighborhoods such as Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Peckham, and Notting Hill, among others.

Since first launching in 2000, the Serpentine Pavilion has become an emblem of belonging and community engagement in the buzzing heart of metropolitan London, providing people with an inspiring and creative space to congregate and share creatively with one another. Therme Art has served as the lead support of the Serpentine’s annual architectural commissions programme for three consecutive editions.

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