Nan Goldin, the pioneering photographer and campaigner against the billionaires who fuelled the US opioid epidemic, has topped an annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations.
Goldin, 70, took the number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list. This year, for the first time, the top 10 is made up entirely of artists who use their work and platforms to intervene in the pressing social and political issues of the current moment.
Goldin’s work has documented LGBTQ+ subcultures and the Aids crisis, and includes the seminal 80s photography collection The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, in which lovers and strangers meet, cavort, party and fight in the beaches, bars and cars of Provincetown, Boston, New York, Berlin and Mexico.
Her photography has often drawn directly on her life and her circle of friends, which has included bohemians, addicts and other self-made artists.
In 2017 Goldin founded the advocacy group Pain (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) after her own addiction to OxyContin. The group puts pressure on museums and other arts institutions to end collaborations with the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, which was central to the opioid epidemic.
Over the past couple of years – thanks in part to Goldin’s tireless work – the Sackler name has been removed from museums and galleries around the world. Goldin’s transformation from artist to activist was recently traced in the documentary feature film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice film festival.
ArtReview said Goldin’s blend of personal intimacy and public advocacy had influenced a generation of artists and emboldened them to confront powers-that-be, from art museums to corporate sponsors and governments.
Mark Rappolt, its editor-in-chief, said Goldin’s work had “anticipated many of the themes that are current in today’s culture: raw, confessional autobiography, queer identity, intersectional feminism, body autonomy and, of course, corporate ethics”.
Also on this year’s list at number eight is the British artist and film-maker Steve McQueen, whose film about the Grenfell Tower fire made the tragedy impossible to ignore. The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is at number 3, whose work encourages social interaction, and at number 2 is the German artist Hito Steyerl , who has made video essays on global capitalism and intervened in antisemitism controversies. Other artists in the top 10 include Simone Leigh, Isaac Julien and Ibrahim Mahama.
Artists take nearly 40% of the slots in this year’s power list, while curators make up a fifth. ArtReview said their access to big biennials and triennials made curators instrumental in steering public discussions on issues such as the environment and climate change (Lucia Pietroiusti at 65), colonial and postcolonial histories (Natasha Ginwala at 94), the rights of Indigenous people (Candice Hopkins at 46) and the future of emerging technologies (Legacy Russell at 98).
The list also highlights the growth of art dealers and art fairs, including a handful of large, multi-continent commercial galleries, such as Larry Gagosian (12) and Mendes Wood DM (61), and art-fair chains such as Frieze (54) and Switzerland’s Art Basel (51).
The list is chosen by 40 people from across the world. Last year, Indonesian collective the ruangrupa group topped the list, and before that, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and Black Lives Matter.
This year’s top 10:
1. Nan Goldin
2. Hito Steyerl
3. Rirkrit Tiravanija
4. Simone Leigh
5. Isaac Julien
6. Ibrahim Mahama
7. Theaster Gates
8. Steve McQueen
9. Karrabing Film Collective
10. Cao Fei