What’s Happening: The first woman and first African selected for the prestigious BMW Art Car project sees her 1991 milestone recreated at Frieze L.A. thanks to the brand’s innovations in color-changing technology.

The Download: In 1994, on a blistering summer day in Washington, D.C., Esther Mahlangu and her team of painters were adorning the facade of a downtown building in traditional Ndebele patterns. Though the commission separated her from her familiar KwaNdebele region of South Africa by thousands of miles, Mahlangu was still in her comfort zone. She learned the tribal art of painting ornamental murals on clay huts as a child but emerged as a disruptor by reimagining the tradition on canvas, as well as carpets and everyday objects. Controversial at the time, it proved fruitful: Oprah, Usher, and Swizz Beatz are among the many collectors of her vivid geometric abstractions. Mahlangu seems to have known it all along—in a Washington Post profile, she affirmed the art of her people works its beauty wherever it goes.

That may explain why BMW selected Mahlangu as the 12th artist for the annual BMW Art Car project three years prior. The first woman and first African tapped for the initiative, she followed a list of bold-faced names like Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Alexander Calder. Not only did the commission mark one of the first times that African art blended with contemporary automotive design, but it also propelled Mahlangu to the global stage. The mural she and her team were creating in 1994 was next to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which was preparing to open a retrospective about her decades-long career. At 88 years old, she only continues to add to her list of achievements. She was selected to participate in the 60th Venice Biennale this spring, and the Iziko South African Museum recently unveiled another retrospective of her work, with the BMW Art Car front and center.

Though making the trip to South Africa may be untenable for some, attendees of Frieze Los Angeles can view Mahlangu’s BMW Art Car in a different format. Thanks to the brand’s innovation in color-change technology, it programmed the surface of a brand-new white BMW i5—lovingly named the BMW i5 Flow Nostokana after Mahlangu’s son—to electronically animate with her patterns. More than 1,300 sections of laminated electrophoretic film (think of it as “digital paper”) containing micro-capsules roughly the diameter of a human hair are layered across the vehicle’s roof, bonnet, rear section, and sides, and can be controlled to accurately recreate every detail of Mahlangu’s ornamentation. The electronic control design and laser cutting process used to trim the film were both developed with E Ink, but BMW’s team of in-house engineers adapted the technology for curved surfaces and programmed animations.

BMW originally unveiled its color-changing iX Flow technology at CES 2022, when it pitched a curious question about personalization: Does a car always have to look the same? Attendees watched as an electric iX SUV changed color from black to white in one fluid motion when programmed with an electrical impulse. The innovation allows drivers to change their car’s color to suit their mood, but also has environmental benefits. Turning the vehicle reflective white on sunny days and heat-absorbing black in the cold can reduce energy use and increase the vehicle’s range. Thanks to the technology reaching even greater heights, the vehicle can itself become a canvas—and bring a boundary-breaking artist to entirely new audiences.

In Their Own Words: “Her art inspired me years ago, back when the concept of color change on a car was just an idea in my head,” says Stella Clarke, BMW’s research engineer of open innovations. “Now, being able to realize this idea, and work with Esther Mahlangu, is absolutely surreal.”

Surface Says: We’re just counting down the days until capitalism strikes and the technology is used as an advertising tool.

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Annie Leibovitz was recently named Ikea’s first-ever artist in residence, a creative collaboration the esteemed photographer described as a “dream project,” and has culminated in her newest exhibition: “Life at Home.” In keeping with her accolades as the fashion glossies’ photographer of choice, the exhibition’s 25 images will be on view for the remainder of Paris Fashion Week, until March 3 at 28 Rue de Lappe.

Yet “Life at Home” doesn’t focus on the kinds of gilded residences often enshrined in the magazines of yore. Instead, the project took Leibovitz around the world in pursuit of documenting diverse ways of life—houseboats, apartment dwellings, and recreational vehicles—everywhere from London to Mumbai and Tokyo. A single statistic, shared by Ikea and Leibovitz, underpins the collaboration: 48 percent of people around the world do not feel their home life is represented in the media. With “Life at Home,” perhaps the tides are changing.

After finding affinities in how their shared upbringing on the Mexico/California border influenced their design sensibilities, Denise Martinez and Jorge Arturo Ibarra founded their furniture studio, Deceres, which creates carefully handcrafted pieces in collaboration with local artisans. The studio’s pieces, which draw from the creative well of their Mexican ancestry, never distract or over-exert their presence thanks to how they temper severe silhouettes with humble materials that lend a restrained presence.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

“Nightmare” Willy Wonka Experience Leaves Children in Tears—and Prompts Families to Call the Police [People]

Starbucks Is Releasing a Pork-Flavored Coffee Drink in China [Delish]

Weightlifter Ate 39 Coins, 37 Magnets Because He Thought “Zinc Helps in Bodybuilding” [AOL]

Kuwaiti “Death Ship” Carrying Cattle Causes Stench in Cape Town [Reuters]

Roommates Forced to Flee $1,650-a-Month Apartment After Mushrooms Grow Through Their Floorboards [New York Post]

The California painter reinterprets the mythos of his state’s civic and cultural iconography, bringing blood and sweat to his latest exhibition’s haunting finale.

Here, we ask an artist about the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Cole Sternberg, 44, California.

Title of work: owls stirred the silence here and there.

Where to see it: Experimentally Structured Museum of Art, Lawndale.

Three words to describe this work: An ethereal warning.

What was on your mind at the time: I was hoping to create a focal point for the final room of my exhibition, where a visual dreaminess concludes a literary and concept-heavy journey. Its journey involved creating the dynamics of an entire nation-state—a new constitution, budget, clothing, billboards, and a new telling of history. This breadth of information, known as “The Free Republic of California,” flowed across the museum. The concept is meant to conclude with a call to dream of bigger things wrapped in a warning of the necessity of change. This aim guided the creation of owls stirred the silence here and there, a piece that feels romantic and immersive in its visuals, scale, and installation, yet is decaying while the tide rises towards the horizon.

This week, Hans Ulrich Obrist celebrated the launch of his new book “Remember to Dream: 100 Artists 100 Notes” at the Sized Selects exhibition that took place at the former Howard Hughes Building during Frieze Los Angeles. In his latest book, the curator collected an abundance of thoughts, drawings, quotes, and general musings from some of the world’s greatest artists. They were on full display throughout the evening, which was hosted by Sized Selects, Faber-Castell, USM Modular Furniture, and Tequila Komos.

When was it? Until June 2

Where was it? Howard Hughes Building, Los Angeles

Who was there? Alexander May, Thaddaeus Ropac, Alex Poots, Will Whitney, Lucas Hoffmann, Elen Dali-Jones, Malena De La Torre, and more.

For the past 10 years, Tepozán has been Jalisco’s best-kept secret. Tepozán is one of the few estate-grown tequilas that is fully grown, processed, and hand-bottled at the source. Pared down to the essential ingredients of mature blue agave, natural yeast, and volcanic-filtered well water from our estate, the brand pours a tequila with absolutely no additives of any kind—just incredible flavor.

Surface Says: Estate-grown and additive-free, Tepozán stands out for its commitment to excellence through the old ways of the tequila-making craft.

More than 100 species of sea life are discovered off Chile’s ocean mountains.

Scientists, volunteers, and incarcerated women are supporting this butterfly.

Here’s how an interspecies experiment with dolphins ended up unraveling.

On the doll’s 65th birthday, Barbie’s changing style is highlighted in London.