projects

“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

James Baldwin’s quote about the artist’s role in society is emblazoned on billboards across Los Angeles this winter. Created by artist Patrick Martinez, the purpose of the signage is two-fold: to promote Frieze Los Angeles and, in the case of neon signs at the art fair’s entrance, to stand as a discrete work of art on its own.

Martinez, an East Los Angeles-based artist, has long translated protest language into storefront-style neon, a strategy he now extends into a broader campaign tied to Frieze, which runs Feb. 26 through March 1 at the Santa Monica Airport and features more than 100 galleries.

This year, however, some of the fair’s most compelling work may be happening outside the tent. Frieze Projects’ “Body & Soul” features eight installations staged across Santa Monica’s Airport Park and beyond. The initiative is intended, organizers say, to broaden the fair’s reach beyond its art world audience — positioning Frieze as a civic platform rather than a purely commercial event.

In addition to Martinez’s creations, “Body & Soul” brings together site-specific works including Amanda Ross-Ho’s durational performance rolling a 16-foot inflatable Earth around the perimeter of a nearby soccer field; Cosmas & Damian Brown’s interactive fountain installation incorporating ceramic heads, incense and water; and Shana Hoehn’s first large-scale public sculpture, fabricated from a fallen tree sourced through Santa Monica’s Urban Forest program. Off campus, Kelly Wall extends the program to a former Westwood Village newsstand, where glass “magazines” will be displayed — 136 in all, priced at $300, with 15 given away.

Martinez’s billboards bearing 2024’s “If I Love You (James Baldwin)” serve as the most highly visible part of the fair’s public outreach. His neon installations respond to ICE raids and immigrant rights, placing protest at the literal threshold of one of Los Angeles’ most visible art events.

L.A. artist Patrick Martinez’s work is featured on billboards around the city, as well as at the entrance to Frieze Los Angeles.

(David Butow / For The Times)

The public art program acts as “a way that we can bring in people who may not be just the ticket goers or the VIP,” said Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas.

It also serves to amplify the city’s cultural temperature.

“Our job is to represent what’s happening in our community,” Messineo said, adding that immigration and social impact are not anomalies at the fair but part of its foundation.

Some of Martinez’s neon entrance signs — including “Abolish ICE” (2018), “No Body Is Illegal” (2021) and “Then They Came for Me 2” (2025) — predate the current political moment. Instead, they emerge from years of observation and protest.

The artist credits Messineo with approaching him last summer to utilize what he calls his “urgent warning signs” as the face of the fair. Demonstrators also carried signs bearing Martinez’s imagery last June during protests against ongoing federal immigration crackdowns in downtown Los Angeles.

Those events, Martinez says, are not experienced evenly across the city — particularly by the well-heeled audience that attends Frieze and spends $85 to $106 for weekend general admission tickets.

Patrick Martinez, “If I Love You (James Baldwin),” 2024.

(artwork Patrick Martinez / photo Paul Salveson)

Martinez wants his signs to unsettle viewers who are insulated from the city’s unrest.

“The Westside people aren’t even going to see any of that, right? So it’s bringing that kind of mindfulness to that space.”

“It felt prescient then,” Messineo said of engaging Martinez last year, “and I think even more so now.”

Frieze has integrated public art into its Los Angeles fair since its 2019 debut. But the works in “Body & Soul,” produced with the nonprofit Art Production Fund, lean into the particular conditions of public space.

The exhibition brings together Los Angeles artists exploring ideas of memory, community and collective experience — often in quieter ways than Martinez’s overt messaging.

Additional participants include Dan John Anderson, Polly Borland and Kohshin Finley.

Casey Fremont, Art Production Fund’s executive director, said most of the works are newly commissioned.

The program is designed to prioritize innovation over sales. “It isn’t transactional. It’s really just about experimenting and giving the public the opportunity to experience art like they’ve never experienced before.”

Artists scale up — and slow down

“Body & Soul” marks several participants’ first ventures into public work, including Hollywood artist Finley, whose “The Piano Player” will be installed near the corner of Airport Avenue and Donald Douglas Loop. Finley’s piece arranges ceramic vessels inside shadow-box shelving that the artist describes as containers for memory — some “you love to take out and peek into,” others that “should just stay shut forever.”

Kohshin Finley’s “The Piano Player” arranges ceramic vessels inside shadow-box shelving that the artist describes as containers for memory.

(Micaiah Carter)

The title references the film “Casablanca,” and its piano player, Sam, whose music stirs up memories of the central love story.

Finley said the public setting creates an unusually direct encounter as he, like many of his fellow artists, will be standing with his work.

“A lot of people have never seen a living artist,” he said.

Ross-Ho takes visibility even further with her inflatable soccer ball Earth, which weighs 78 pounds. The familiar “blue marble” image will no doubt draw spectators at the Airport Park Soccer Field outside the Frieze tent.

Amanda Ross-Ho is creating a durational performance on a soccer field by Frieze Los Angeles.

(Jennelle Fong for ILY2)

Ross-Ho’s performance, “Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE),” functions as an endurance test that is a response to what she calls “the temporal container of the art fair” — and to the pressures of contemporary life.

“Gesture and duration are the ways that I could achieve scale rather than something that was materially constrained like a giant sculpture,” she said.

Designing for gathering

Brown’s installation, “Fountain: Sources of Light,” invites guests to congregate. Positioned between the Airport Park playground and dog park, it combines running water, ceramic vessels, incense and sound.

“I really wanted to make a fountain because I thought that [it’s] something that … people tend to gravitate to,” he said.

The work will incorporate metal plates and bowls created by participants in the youth workshop Art Sundae, taking place Feb. 28 at Airport Park.

Near Brown’s fountain, Echo Park artist Hoehn will present “Deadfall,” a massive fallen fig tree embedded with carved cheerleader legs and skirts — imagery drawn from her Texas upbringing.

Shana Hoehn with one of her carved wooden sculptures.

(Josh Cohen)

“I’ve been working with cheerleading iconography for the past few years,” she said, linking the imagery to what she calls an omnipresent football culture layered with “American patriotism and militaristic qualities.”

Hoehn acknowledged that the fair’s four-day window and limited nearby parking may keep the audience closer to fair-goers than the broader public the program aims to reach.

Beyond the airport fence

A few miles away in Westwood Village, Mar Vista artist Wall will extend the program beyond the airport campus with “Everything Must Go,” installed at a defunct newsstand and on view from 5:48 p.m. (sunset) to 8 p.m. during the fair.

Where magazines and newspapers once were, glass stand-ins bearing skyline imagery will occupy illuminated lightbox shelves. As the glass “magazines” are removed, glowing silhouettes mark their absence.

Kelly Wall, ‘Everything Must Go’.

(Kelly Wall)

Wall’s related project will appear on the Frieze campus with found newspaper boxes transformed into lightbox displays for her glass publication.

“In things coming to an end, there is no real end … there’s transformation,” she said. “How you might see [the piece] may differ depending on different times — or where you’re personally at in your life.”

Feb. 20 (UPI) — The Dominican Republic opened the year with 1.22 million tourists in January, a 5.5% increase compared with the same month last year. The increase was driven by growth in air arrivals and sustained demand from the United States.

Tourist arrivals to the island by air surpassed the 800,000-passenger mark for the first time in a single month, posting year-over-year growth of 8.7%, according to the Ministry of Tourism,. The figure exceeds pre-pandemic levels and is 61% higher than recorded in January 2019.

“Receiving 1,219,606 visitors for the first time in the history of Dominican tourism tells us how extraordinary this year will be for the sector,” Dominican Republic Tourism Minister David Collado said.

Collado held meetings in New York with representatives of JPMorgan, Bank of America, Standard & Poor’s and American Express, as well as other key players in the international financial system, as part of a strategic agenda to position tourism as the country’s leading productive sector.

According to information released Thursday by the presidency, Collado presented projections for Dominican tourism for this year, highlighting the sector’s sustained growth and predicting that if the current trend continues, 2026 could close with new record figures for the industry.

Dominican tourism continues to position itself as a reliable destination for investment, authorities said, backed by what they describe as “a vision of sustainable development that inspires confidence in international markets.”

According to information from the Ministry of Tourism, North America is the main source market for tourists to the island, accounting for 59% of air arrivals, led by the United States and Canada. Latin America also showed solid performance and expanded its share of total visitors.

Punta Cana accounted for the largest share of the country’s air traffic during the month. The cruise segment recorded a slight decline compared with the same period last year, while hotel occupancy averaged 82% nationwide during peak season.

Tourism is one of the main generators of foreign exchange and employment. In 2025, the country received more than 11.6 million visitors, consolidating its position as the Caribbean’s leading tourist destination.

As part of its international promotion strategy, the Ministry of Tourism signed a strategic alliance with Visa Inc., making the Dominican Republic the first country in the Caribbean to finalize an agreement of this kind with the global payments company.

The alliance includes joint campaigns, targeted promotions and exclusive benefits for international travelers, with emphasis on key markets such as the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

The Dominican Republic is projected to be the fastest-growing economy in Latin America and the Caribbean in the coming years, according to the most recent forecasts by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Growth projections for 2026 place real GDP expansion between 4.0% and 4.5%, positioning the country as one of the economic leaders in the Caribbean region.

In that scenario, tourism is a strategic engine and the backbone of the Dominican economy. Its role is not only to generate revenue, but also to act as a catalyst for other key sectors, such as construction, commerce and transportation.

In 2025, the sector contributed approximately $21.1 billion, representing about 16% of the gross domestic product.

BY THE NUMBERS

Spending on AI is forecast to skyrocket to $2.5 trillion in 2026, dwarfing even the largest scientific and infrastructure projects.

World leaders and tech executives are convening in New Delhi for the India-AI Impact Summit 2026, focusing on the role of artificial intelligence in governance, job disruption and global collaboration.

However, behind these discussions lies the financial reality. Over the past decade, AI has drawn one of the largest waves of private investment in modern history, totalling trillions of dollars.

According to Gartner, a United States-based business and technology insights company, worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total $2.5 trillion in 2026, a 44 percent increase over 2025.

To understand the magnitude of these investments, Al Jazeera visualises the staggering amounts by comparing them with some of the largest projects ever created by humanity. We also highlight which countries are spending the most on AI and provide insights into expenditures on data centres, models, services, and security.

What does $1bn look like?

To help understand a trillion dollars, it is useful to first visualise what millions and billions of dollars look like by using a stack of US dollar bills.

If you break these amounts down using $100 bills, here is how they stack up:

• $1,000 would form a stack about 1cm (0.393-inch) high.
• $10,000 would form a stack approximately 10cm (3.93-inch) high.
• $1m would fit inside a briefcase.
• $10m would fit inside a very large suitcase.
• $100m would fit on an industrial pallet stacked waist-high.
• $1bn would create a building approximately 5.2 metres (17 feet) high, with a width and a length of about 2 metres (6.6 feet) each.

Another way to think of it is if you spent $1 every second, it would take:

• 11.5 days to spend $1m
• 31 years to spend $1bn
• 31,000 years to spend $1 trillion

In more tangible terms, $1bn is roughly equivalent to:

• The estimated cost of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, one of the largest archaeological museums in the world
• The cost of constructing two to three modern football stadiums, depending on size and design
• Buying 10 luxury private jets (at $100m each)
• Buying 6.3 tonnes of gold (at $5,000 per ounce)
• Buying 1 million high-end iPhones at retail price

$1.6 trillion already spent on AI

Over the past decade, AI-related investments have surged nearly 13-fold.

According to the 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University, between 2013 and 2024, total global corporate investment in AI reached $1.6 trillion. This substantial expenditure dwarfs even the largest scientific and infrastructure projects of the 20th and 21st centuries.

To put the scale of AI investment into perspective, consider how it compares with some of the most ambitious and expensive projects in modern history. All figures are adjusted to 2024 US dollars:

• The Manhattan Project (1942-46): $36bn
• The International Space Station (1984-2011): $150bn
• The Apollo Program (1960-73): $250bn
• The US Interstate Highway System (1956-92): $620bn

In just over a decade, investment in AI has surpassed the cost of developing the first atomic bomb, landing humans on the moon and the decades-long effort to build the 75,440km (46,876-mile) US interstate highway network.

Unlike these landmark projects, AI funding has not been driven by a single government or wartime urgency. It has flowed through private markets, venture capital, corporate research and development, and global investors, making it one of the largest privately financed technological waves in history.

Global corporate investments in AI cover a vast array of operations, including mergers and acquisitions, minority stakes, private investments, and public offerings. These monumental expenditures highlight the extensive financial commitment to advance AI.

Which countries are spending the most on AI?

The AI investment surge is concentrated in just a few countries, where private capital has fuelled thousands of startups and shaped global innovation hubs.

The US has dominated AI spending, accounting for roughly 62 percent of total private AI funding since 2013. Between 2013 and 2024, US companies spent $471bn on AI. Chinese companies are the second-largest spenders at $119bn, followed by the United Kingdom at $28bn.

These figures exclude government spending, such as the US CHIPS Act or European national AI subsidies.

Global private investment in AI by country, 2013-24:

• US: $471bn, supporting 6,956 newly funded AI companies
• China: $119bn, 1,605 startups
• UK: $28bn, 885 startups
• Canada: $15bn, 481 startups
• Israel: $15bn, 492 startups
• Germany: $13bn, 394 startups
• India: $11bn, 434 startups
• France: $11bn, 468 startups
• South Korea: $9bn, 270 startups
• Singapore: $7bn, 239 startups
• Others: $58bn

AI spending to total $2.5 trillion in 2026

AI spending is forecast to skyrocket to $2.5 trillion in 2026, driven by a massive global build-out of data centres and services, according to Gartner.

The bulk of the spending is expected to go towards:

• AI infrastructure: $1.37 trillion
• AI services: $589bn
• AI software: $452bn
• AI cybersecurity: $51bn
• AI platforms for data science and machine learning: $31bn
• AI models: $26bn
• AI application development platforms: $8.4bn
• AI data: $3bn

By 2027, Gartner is forecasting that AI spending will surpass $3.3 trillion.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” asks German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans with a laugh during a recent video call from his home in Berlin.

As he lights his cigarette, he looks every bit the renegade artist he is known for being. At 57, Tillmans is in the midst of staging his 10th exhibition in Los Angeles since the mid-1990s at Regen Projects. He is one of the most celebrated photographers of his era, with a practice that collapses the distance between fine art and the pulse of street culture, spanning epic abstractions and the familiar textures of contemporary life.

At the same time, Tillmans has another life as a serious electronic musician, recording a series of experimental albums, including his most recent, 2021’s “Build From Here.” He is deeply connected to the music world, and photographed the cover for Frank Ocean’s acclaimed “Blonde,” making him a rare artist to be in major museums while genuinely engaged with popular music and the club scene — a bit of a rock star in his own right.

The official opening of his Regen show, “Keep Movin’,” attracted a line that wrapped around the building. Fans are drawn to his varied strands of work, which move instinctively between disparate approaches and subject matter, from famous faces to images sensitive to light and shape, in subjects as simple as the curve of paper folded softly over itself.

A security guard, right, stands near the work “Robin Fischer, Dirostahl, Remscheid 2024” in German-based photographer Wolfgang Tillmans’ current exhibition, “Keep Movin’,” at Regen Projects.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

During an early walk-through for a few dozen invited guests, Tillmans held forth on his personal cosmos, surveying pictures from the experimental to the deeply intimate. Portraits, politically charged tabletop collages and quiet photographs that capture the simple vibrance of daily life are strewn across Regen’s 20,000 square feet of gallery space.

“I see my work evolve more in evolutions, rather than in revolutions,” Tillmans said, gesturing to a conceptual wall-sized image created with a photocopier.

His Regen show, through March 1, also features short video works and the abstractions of camera-less images he considers “pure photography,” created in the darkroom by shining light directly onto photosensitive paper. There are pictures relating to human sexuality and images from nature. Each subject and approach is an ongoing concern left intentionally open-ended, and never contained within a single project, title or grouping. They are all inseparable in his own mind, free from categories or a finite series of pictures.

“I am aware that these art historical categories exist in my oeuvre, but I’m not seeking them out,” Tillmans explained after the walk-through. His practice is not about “working through one series or genre and then moving on to another.”

Installation view of Wolfgang Tillmans’ “Keep Movin’” at Regen Projects.

(Evan Bedford / Regen Projects)

On his trip to Los Angeles, Tillmans made a long-planned visit to the Mt. Wilson Observatory to satisfy his lifelong interest in astronomy. He used the giant telescope to capture the twinkling of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. This preoccupation resurfaces at Regen in a large-scale print of 2023’s “Flight Honolulu to Guam,” revealing a star field above the clouds.

Tillmans’ interest in stargazing goes back to his adolescence, and images of the moon and cosmos recur in his work. “It gave me a sense of not being lonely, seeing the infinite sky and universe,” he says. “I always felt it was a very grounding experience that all humans share. I always got something from this — besides the beauty and the formal marvel of it all — this sense of location and locating myself.”

His depiction of the heavens is just one of many threads and themes that run through his decades of work.

A piece of work personally hung by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans in his current exhibition, “Keep Movin’” at Regen Projects.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Early in his career, Tillmans began shooting for the British street style magazine i-D, creating portraits of the famous and unfamous, while also documenting club life and gay culture. In 1995, Taschen published his first book, which made a stir with portraits of soft, indirect illumination, emphasizing naturalness. By avoiding the dramatic lighting and exaggerated special effects often seen in pictures of youth culture, he landed on a distinctive visual style.

“I felt the heaviness of life and the joy of life,” Tillmans says. “I saw myself as a multifaceted complex being, not just as young. So I experimented with lighting and film — how can I photograph my contemporaries in a way that approximates the way that I see through my eyes? And that was stripping back anything effectful, almost taking away the camera.”

He continues to do assignment work for magazines, which he considers part of his artistic practice. Several recent portraits are at Regen, including a foundry worker in Tillmans’ hometown of Remscheid and another of actor Jodie Foster. The editorial work brings him into contact with people and places he might not otherwise meet.

In 2000 Tillmans became the first photographer and first non-British artist to win the prestigious Turner Award. Tate Britain staged his mid-career retrospective in 2003 and the Hammer Museum in Westwood mounted his first major U.S. retrospective that same year, which traveled to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

Coming after major retrospectives at the Pompidou Centre in Paris last year and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, in 2022, the Regen show dispenses with the retrospective frame while quietly performing a similar task — taking in the main currents of Tillmans’ work over the past two decades, and a few images dating to the late ‘80s. His relationship with the gallery began with his first Los Angeles exhibition.

Visitors walk through photographer Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition, “Keep Movin’,” at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

As ever, the images are displayed in a startling range of shapes and sizes: framed and unframed, huge wall-size prints hang alongside tiny, snapshot-scale pictures. One of the largest, “Panorama, left” (2006), spans nearly 20 feet and hangs only from bulldog clips. Smaller pictures are simply taped to the wall, but nothing is meant to indicate hierarchy.

“The biggest may not be the most important, and the smallest might be overlooked,” he explains. “It’s a little bit like projecting the way that I look at the world.”

In his first decade of exhibitions, he had no frames at all. “I taped those photographs to the wall, not as a gesture of disrespectful grunginess, but as a gesture of purity,” he adds. “That sense of immediacy — and not imbuing something with outside signifiers of value — lets the fragile piece of paper speak for itself.”

One of the current show’s larger conceptual pieces, “Memorial for the Victims of Organized Religion II,” fills a corner with 48 rectangular portrait-sized photographs, all of them solid black or dark blue. It’s a near-replica of a work shown at the Pompidou with the same solemn title, created to recognize those “physically maimed or mentally harmed” by doctrine and intolerance.

“I myself have a spiritual side,” says Tillmans, still grateful for positive experiences attending a Lutheran church in his youth. “But over the years I’ve become ever more distrustful of organized religions and seeing the role of religion in government. I find it incredibly immodest for humans to tell other humans what God wants.”

When he’s not exploring his spirituality and creativity visually, he focuses his energy on the music world. It’s a natural setting for Tillmans, who is increasingly active releasing his own electronic-based pop music. He’s occasionally worked as a DJ, and has been involved in acid house, techno and other electronic music. Despite his notoriety in the art world, he has no concern about hitting the charts.

“This is part of my work. I’m doing it the same way that I’m doing a photograph. I’m not doing a photograph to be peak popular in two months’ time,” Tillmans said. “It’s there and it’s still there in 24 years.”

Feb. 2 (UPI) — A network of environmental organizations warned about environmental and social risks two megatourism projects promoted by Royal Caribbean could generate on the island of Cozumel and in the coastal town of Mahahual, and urged federal authorities to deny environmental permits for both.

The projects, known as Royal Beach Club in Cozumel and Perfect Day in Mahahual are under review by the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources after the company submitted its Environmental Impact Statements between December and January.

According to the organizations, both projects are based on a large-scale tourism model intended to concentrate massive flows of visitors over very short periods.

For Mahahual, a community of fewer than 3,000 residents, Royal Caribbean plans to receive more than 21,000 tourists per day, which the groups say would place disproportionate environmental pressure on fragile coastal ecosystems.

The warning came from Grupo Gema del Mayab, Selvame MX, Territorios Diversos para la Vida, the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry, the Citizen Collective of Cozumel Island, the Salvemos Mahahual Collective, Alianza para la Defensa Ambiental A.C., Defendiendo el Derecho a un Medio Ambiente Sano A.C., Futuros Indígenas and Greenpeace México A.C.

The organizations argue that the Perfect Day megaproject poses a direct threat to the mangroves of Mahahual, considered key to coastal protection and ecological balance, as well as to species such as the jaguar and to sea turtle nesting areas.

They also warn of potential impacts on the Mexican Caribbean reef and restrictions on public access to beaches.

One of the issues described as “highly concerning” is that the company is allegedly promoting both projects as if they already had environmental authorizations, even though the administrative procedures have not been completed.

On Thursday, a District Court in Quintana Roo granted a provisional suspension as part of a lawsuit filed by Defendiendo el Derecho a un Medio Ambiente Sano A.C. against actions by municipal and state authorities that approved land-use changes on more than 264 acres in Mahahual for the Perfect Day project.

The organizations argue that the experience in northern Quintana Roo — in areas such as Cancun — shows that intensive tourism has caused irreversible environmental damage, de facto privatization of the coastline and economic benefits concentrated in a few actors, while local communities bear the social and ecological costs.

They stress that the projects cannot be evaluated in isolation, as the Yucatan Peninsula faces cumulative pressures stemming from accelerated urban growth, other large infrastructure projects and the effects of climate change.

The groups called on the secretariat to guarantee a “strict and transparent” environmental evaluation process, with effective participation by local communities and application of the precautionary principle established under Mexican law. They also requested that no project be authorized if it puts the natural heritage of the Mexican Caribbean and the Maya Forest at risk.

“The Maya Forest is not an amusement park,” the organizations said, insisting that the region must be prioritized for the country’s environmental and cultural conservation.