Art and Politics During Amsterdam’s City Council Elections: An Interview of Zippora Elders

 
 

interview by Lara Schoorl
portrait by Coco Olakunle

Zippora Elders Tahalele has been designated Director of the Nederlands Fotomuseum effective mid-April, as she is running for Amsterdam’s city council elections, and election day is today, March 18. Currently number 14 on GroenLinks’ list of candidates, a party she joined as a young adult, Elders intends to step up for art and culture in the city and beyond. Her platform is built on inspiring people to use their imagination in every aspect of life, which mirrors her curatorial approach as well. In her most recent exhibition Make Some Noise - Desire. Stage. Change at van Abbe Museum, Elders invites the audience to listen to and sense what moves them (emotionally, physically, socially) in a world full of fractured infrastructures. It does so by presenting work that offers deeply personal methods to amplify voices beyond oneself in an effort to ignite change. Elders was motivated to actively take on that charge at home in Amsterdam after having witnessed and fought cancellation, in addition to the exclusion of programming and dissenting perspectives in Berlin while in her role as head of the curatorial department and outreach at Gropius Bau.

LARA MACARENA SCHOORL: In a conversation we had a few months back, you mentioned that, for you, entering local government felt like a civic responsibility. Can you elaborate on that? And, perhaps, why specifically as someone working in the arts, who will continue working in the arts?

ZIPPORA ELDERS TAHALELE: I’m running for [the Amsterdam] city council, a municipal body that acts as the peoples’ representatives on various topics such as public transport, benefits, youth services, etc. and that checks the mayor and alder(wo)men. Representation is of utmost importance, especially today when so many democratic rights are under pressure. Worldwide.

And, as a curator I hope to emphasize the importance of art, and culture at large, as an inherent part of the fabric that makes up a healthy and happy society. The arts have been highly neglected in the Netherlands, as an intrinsic value to society. Perhaps this is hard to believe for people who live elsewhere, but it is barely mentioned anymore because we got used to it. It all started 15-20 years ago with neoliberal policy changes and the rise of the radical right. You can see it in how, for example, art and museums are secondary programming in children’s education, and how ruling parties call for governmental support for art focused on large, “classic” (their words) institutions, rather than on attempts to extend access to the arts and creativity, both within the city and throughout the country.

Calling the wish to program in socially engaged ways problematic, or pushing it out, is in itself an anti-democratic tendency. We need people from the arts represented in the city council, because they know the work and daily challenges, but they also bring creative thinking, beyond the ruling norm. Art fosters resilience, and cultural workers shape society around us, artists are system thinkers fueling change. With curators, it is even in the name of their title: it is about care for culture and heritage, about channeling creativity and stories, and bridging art to the public. Culture is what makes humans human, so it’s extremely important to not do away with it. Rather, to protect it, to nurture it, and to bring it closer to everyone. If, as many of us as possible can inspire their own creativity, I firmly believe the world will be a healthier and happier place.

“[art] creates connection, but it also creates a critical mindset. It brings poetry to life, and poetry is such a beautiful and wonderful thing: bending one’s mind by challenging language, our everyday tool. Art nurtures the ability to rethink the norm, which will eventually lead to system change. System change is necessary, because we see the world collapsing as it is organized now.”

Selma Selman, Painting on metal (Satellite Dish). Installation view Make Some Noise - Desire. Stage. Change., Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands, 2026. photograph by Peter Cox

SCHOORL: About a year ago, after the 2024 US presidential elections, my family and I moved (back) to the Netherlands from Los Angeles. This was partly a political decision, although globally, here as well, the political climate can feel eerily homogenous. Yet, while current global political actions feel so visceral and close, they seem to remain so intangible. Can you speak more to how you see the relationship between local politics to national and global politics. Or rather how would you wish for local politics to create connections to change beyond their immediate environment?

ELDERS: For international context, it is important to know that the past few years, the Netherlands had a very right wing-oriented national government, while Amsterdam remained a more green and social leaning city. Local governments can, to a certain extent, balance and compensate what is decided nationally, and therefore act as models for possible alternatives. For example, against the current call for criminalization of those not having documents.

Municipalities [in the Netherlands] have agency, they can make certain decisions by themselves. Not everything has to follow or be run by the national government; there can be nuances. As such, local governments can show that alternatives to the inhumane, oppressive forces of this moment are possible. Many right-wing politicians currently show their way as the only, and “necessary, reasonable” way to carry our world forward. What I think is necessary and common sense is collaboration. I stand behind a collective and communal mindset, rooted in multiplicity rather than singularity. One in which we prioritize taking care of each other, including the planet and our fellow inhabitants of the planet. In the end, it is about how people live their life; I believe that lives lived healthily—emotionally, politically, environmentally and collaboratively—sustainably and positively influence society at large.

SCHOORL: Leading up to this conversation, I have wondered if, or how, a conversation about local politics in Amsterdam might be of interest to a readership elsewhere. And simultaneously, how inclusive the conversation in Amsterdam is, for those who may not speak Dutch. While I understand that Dutch is the default election language, is there something in particular you might want to share with an audience that is more comfortable in English?

ELDERS: I’m a city council candidate with GroenLinks. This is the last election for which GroenLinks will exist as such and that you can vote for it as an independent party. Over the course of 2026, we will merge with PvdA. I would say GroenLinks’ objectives are close to other green parties internationally: founded in a strong progressive, climate-oriented, social base. It has a long history with social values and also is the outcome of previous party fusions in 1990. GroenLinks is rooted in a strong sense of solidarity that believes in progress and change from a climate and increasingly also a planetary perspective. In Amsterdam, our current focus is on resistance, hope, and change. I think that is extremely important, to encourage and to stimulate people, especially young people, to make themselves heard, to be active in society, and to be able to think independently from Big Tech, algorithms, and other paralyzing tendencies. We have to continue to include our own feelings, our own visions, our own creativity in our lives, but also in politics. Free expression is essential in a democratic rule of law and there is a technological dimension to that as well. 

Jack O'Brien, Semblance. Installation view Make Some Noise - Desire. Stage. Change., Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands, 2026. photograph by Peter Cox

SCHOORL: In a recent interview by Yuki Kho, you said that “societal engagement and love for art go hand in hand; everyone lives with art and creativity.” Do you think that art can make a difference, politically? Personally, I believe that art can heal, help process, mourn, it can be a form of therapy; and if it can bring on change it may be by its possibility to share perspectives different from what one knows or has experienced, therefore making alternatives visible.

ELDERS: Absolutely. I hope we can also do that beyond the commercialized versions of “self care” and individual lived experiences. Art shares other interpretations, stimulates one’s own imagination, and encourages us to deepen our interest in frameworks; perspectives we don’t know yet. It creates connection, but it also creates a critical mindset. It brings poetry to life, and poetry is such a beautiful and wonderful thing: bending one’s mind by challenging language, our everyday tool. Art nurtures the ability to rethink the norm, which will eventually lead to system change. System change is necessary, because we see the world collapsing as it is organized now. It is very important that people also vote in local elections, including the internationals living in Amsterdam. It is our capital, Amsterdam is for all of us, and we all contribute fresh and valuable visions that bring forward multi-perspective thinking and hopefully more health and peace.

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, New Theater Hollywood. Installation view Make Some Noise - Desire. Stage. Change., Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands, 2026. photograph by Peter Cox

It's a Family Affair: An Interview of Jenny Fax

 
 

interview by Kim Shveka
photographs by Jasmin Avner

With her FW26 collection, designer Jen-Fang Shueh of Jenny Fax gives shape to the feeling of time passing. Consumed by this sensation, Shueh found herself reflecting on the power of personal memory as our last bastion of unique chaos; a place before algorithms, where our identities are mapped only by our family trees. Crafting her memories into the room, she made every visitor feel the warmth of her home while keeping her codes of color and whimsical silhouettes. The presentation unfolded like a living photo album, the models appearing as if revived from framed memories sitting on a shelf. In a moment of consensual voyeurism, the audience witnessed personal creation in its most raw form.

 
 

KIM SHVEKA: The atmosphere is reminiscent of your last presentation in October. What is this internal place that you draw from in your creations?

JEN-FANG SHUEH: It comes from my own life. It’s about family reunion, like at Christmas when you see a bunch of relatives you haven’t seen in two years or so. Family is that place you can’t choose, you were just born there. Sometimes it can be interesting, the dynamics between everyone, someone can be very close, and sometimes the opposite. With this presentation, I just wanted to show a lot of different characters. I’ve been trying to think what makes a difference between me and any other brand, and I realized I am actually very old, (laughs) and I tried to see how I can make myself different from the rest. Personal memory is what makes the difference; it’s far from AI or social media; there’s nothing used to calculate it, personal memory is chaotic and unique, and there’s no pattern.

 
 

SHVEKA: You emphasized the fact that we can’t choose the family we were born into. 
Are you happy about yours?

SHUEH: I think it's really difficult to say if you are happy or not. There’s always something happening in the family, and somehow it can make you strong. I know I became a really strong person because of my family.

SHVEKA: The clothes are very whimsical, very light and airy, everything feels like a fairy tale. Do you use those as a way to reflect, or rebel in your personal memory?

SHUEH: I was looking from pictures of my past. You can see there a model dressed all in white, she’s reflecting my mother. I was looking through pictures and photo albums, and I found her always in this kind of style, this sort of white pyjama. In many photos, my parents were having fun, goofing around— that was the starting point for this collection.

 
 

SHVEKA: The way you do presentations is very special. You really convey a certain atmosphere of mystery, but also familiarity. Would you ever consider doing a fashion show?

SHUEH: I think the position we have right now fits my budget and also allows me to be free. I can do anything I want within a given space and time.

SHVEKA: Do you feel more freedom when you can direct life?

SHUEH: It’s always interesting when something happens in your life, and you have to act on that.

SHVEKA: Do you sometimes feel blocked when you think of ideas for your next shows?

SHUEH: This always happens. I’m not really a good character designer, and I’m also not very logical. For example, this is a fall/winter collection, but I had no ideas about designing for the cold. That’s why everything’s so light. I just thought, winter also exists on the inside.

 
 

A Living Spiral of Becoming: An Interview of Lily Kwong

interview by Alper Kurtul

Raised among redwoods and working at the intersection of ecology, sculpture, and community, Lily Kwong approaches art as a living system rather than a fixed object. From EARTHSEED DOME to the intimate transformations of motherhood, her practice unfolds through cycles of care, renewal, and collective belonging.

ALPER KURTUL: You’ve said you were raised by redwood trees. Do you think the relationship you formed with nature as a child also shaped the relationships you formed with people?

LILY KWONG: Absolutely. You can actually see outside—I’m in Mill Valley right now, which is where I grew up, just outside of San Francisco. It’s right by Muir Woods, our national monument, filled with redwoods—the tallest trees in the world. They really influenced me and felt like ancestors when I was growing up. They’re so mighty, so energetically powerful—especially to a sensitive little kid—that they felt like beings, more than just trees. That obviously shaped my relationship to nature. As an imaginative kid who spent a lot of time in the woods, with an artistic spirit, I started this conversation with nature that felt very real to me at a very young age. And in adulthood, I’ve worked to maintain that feeling of mystery—almost mysticism.

When you have that deep grounding in nature, you feel you’re part of an ecosystem, a community. You see how plant communities and ecological communities create resilience, and how they create richer, healthier environments. I’ve applied that to my life and my relationships with people. I take my friendships very seriously, very deeply. A lot of them feel like sisterhoods, like family. It’s like a grove of trees: everyone sharing resources underground, even if we look separate above ground. So yes, it deeply influenced how I relate to other people. Community is what makes up a deeply enriched human life.

KURTUL: So you might say you found yourself in art as a child. When do you think you really started?

KWONG: Yeah, I think I did. My parents are artists—my dad is a writer, and my mom was a seamstress and painted a lot when I was a kid. There were always crafts and storytelling and projects happening in our home.

My mom went to great lengths to create elaborate projects that I’d work on with her—whether it was decoupaging a special treasure box, building a playhouse instead of buying one, or writing stories with my father. So, I grew up in a really creative household, and also inside the container of the redwoods, which felt so rich. I was constantly building forts and, as I said, in conversation with the woods.

And I was lucky to go to a high school called the Urban School in San Francisco, which really influenced me and had a strong focus on the arts. I had a photography teacher, Chris McCall, who was the first person to truly believe in me as an artist. He got me an internship at Fraenkel Gallery, one of the strongest photography galleries here.

Frisch Brandt, one of the directors, took me under her wing. I was also taking pre-college courses at the San Francisco Art Institute. So, the Bay Area in the early aughts—being in the city and then returning home to this powerful natural environment—really set the stage for what I do now.

KURTUL: It sounds like a perfect childhood.

KWONG: It really was. I’m so blessed. It was full of creative games and projects. I really got to be a kid. Now I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old, and I’m trying to capture that experience for them in a world that’s gotten much more complex and technological. Wandering, exploring, getting lost, finding curiosity, letting yourself be bored, and then blooming again—I really hope to cultivate that in my kids.

KURTUL: EARTHSEED DOME is a living structure—it grows, decays, transforms. Is there something in your own life that you allow to remain unfinished—something that evolves over time?

KWONG: Myself—my entire being. When I was younger, I was trying to construct a fixed identity and feel safe by grounding myself in something less mutable. As I get older, I feel like I’m constantly being undone and remade.

I loved working with the symbol of the spiral for Gardens of Renewal, because that’s what life is. It’s not linear; it’s a spiral of becoming, returning, folding inward, blooming again. The less attached I’ve become to my expectations—of myself and of other people—the more textured and dynamic and meaningful life has become. And it’s really been through releasing that need to “finish” who I am that life has opened up.

KURTUL: In your work, rather thana metaphor, nature is often its own character; an interlocutor of sorts.

KWONG: Absolutely. There’s a quote I love from Robin Wall Kimmerer—she says, “Nature knows you even when you are lost.” And that has always been true for me. Human beings are complex. Relationships ebb and flow. And especially now, there’s more noise than ever. In a lot of ways, nature is the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

When I feel untethered or ungrounded, and I carve out the time to sync myself back to the rhythms of the earth and the natural world, that’s when I become more regulated—more myself. Mother Earth is so generous in that way: you can bring anything to her. When I go to the woods, the jungle, the ocean with complicated human emotions, she’s always there, helping integrate those feelings. When you’re at your saddest, one long swim in the ocean can shift something almost immediately. So yes, I often feel most seen and heard by the natural world.

KURTUL: There have been numerous scientific studies conducted globally which suggest that spending time among trees and in nature has real biological effects: reducing cortisol, inflammation, releasing serotonin. It’s not pseudo-science.

KWONG: Exactly. Something is truly happening biologically, and it can change our mindset and physical wellbeing.

KURTUL: And EARTHSEED DOME also transforms the viewer into a pollinator. Allowing people to physically touch your work isn’t very common in art. Is that a personal loss of control for you, or an act of trust?

KWONG: It’s a total act of trust—and community. It never occurred to me that it could be perceived as a lack of control. The sculpture doubles as a seed-dispersal hub. We designed pockets within the sculpture where people can reach in and take thousands of seed packets. I’ve also been really inspired by Ruth Asawa—being back in San Francisco, seeing her retrospective at SFMOMA—and how much she worked with children.

So, I went to my kids’ preschool, and the children created cyanotypes. Their cyanotypes are actually printed on the seed packets. Talk about a lack of control: you’re working with 3, 4, 5-year-olds—and you’re working with cyanotypes, directly with the sun, with all the variables that come with this nineteenth-century printing technique.

The reason I invited children into it, and then the public, is that we’re practicing ecological stewardship by participating. By sharing seeds, sharing wisdom, sharing information, we’re reminded that we’re interconnected. That was one of the core intentions of the work.

KURTUL: You’ve created work in many places around the world, but this project brings you back to the geography where you were born. Is returning home more comforting, or more confrontational for you?

KWONG: It’s been very comforting, honestly. I haven’t lived here in twenty years, and I’ve never done a piece in San Francisco. I’ve come home to make this work, and I’m a completely different person now: I’m a mother, a wife, I have my career.

It’s been surreal. The drive I take from Marin to the site mirrors the drive I used to take as a high school student—it brings back a sense memory that’s been buried for decades: this young girl with dreams and aspirations to create work and share ideas and explore. And now I’m doing it at a meaningful scale. ICA San Francisco has been an extraordinary partner—believing in this work and supporting something that uses experimental technology and building strategies.

The opening was so emotional because it brought together incredible curators, gallerists, and artists I had admired as a student, along with my former teachers, my first employer, family friends, extended family, and my godparents. I was reminded of a line I once read: “I am an accumulation of everybody who has nurtured me.” Being there, I truly felt that.

KURTUL: And where were you for the other twenty years?

KWONG: I was in New York for thirteen years, then LA for five years. Then I did a stint in Miami for a couple of years when I was learning about plants—I worked in Florida in my mid-twenties.

KURTUL: Becoming a mother—do you think it affected you and your art?

KWONG: It shifted everything. I became much more fearless and experimental with my work. Once you’ve grown a human being in your body and birthed them, you feel a deep confidence in your creative power—in your power as a creator. So then it’s like: why not try building EARTHSEED DOME? Why not experiment with photography differently?

It unclogged certain blocks and opened this portal of letting creative energy flow through you. That’s what childbirth is, and that’s what it felt like to me: letting your innate, biological intelligence take over—without overanalyzing or overcomplicating. Transferring that to making work has been really fruitful.

KURTUL: As someone who works so closely with nature, are there moments in your personal life when you feel hopeless in the face of climate change? Or does that concern feed your creative impulse in any way?

KWONG: I honestly never feel an emotional burden while creating work, because my work is focused on celebrating the abundance and miracle of nature—the true awesomeness of it. In one scoop of soil, there are more organisms than there are human beings on Earth. There are countless relationships happening—fungi, bacteria, microbiomes. It’s truly marvelous. The cycles of seasons, blooming flowers, relationships between wildlife, native species, pollinators—it’s extraordinary.

The endless questions I have about this planet, and the composition of elements that allows us to experience so much beauty and becoming—life, death, the life cycle constantly unfolding—that’s what fuels me. Where I get depressed and overwhelmed is when I read the news and think about human activity and the threats to the natural world—our lifestyle, our culture, our economy.

KURTUL: Is there a private ritual that nourishes you?

KWONG: I have a lot of rituals that give me life force, that help me move through the day and through my work. Part of my ritual when I’m making work is that I’m constantly making offerings to the land throughout the project. I shared with Madison Square Park that it felt like my offering to New York. EARTHSEED DOME feels like an offering to the redwoods. I mean that at the deepest level. When I’m installing, I bring materials and totems and objects that express reciprocity, reverence, gratitude. There are stones from my favorite beach in Mill Valley hidden throughout the Redwood Grove in Transamerica Redwood Park. For Madison Square Park, I made a big offering—seeds, spices, tobacco—around the perimeter of the work.

For people who need a place to reconnect with themselves, to grieve, to connect with one another, to celebrate nature, I want them to know I consider these works sacred spaces for myself—and I extend that offering to anyone who visits.

KURTUL: Beyond your work, what makes you most yourself?

KWONG: I think what makes me who I am is connecting more and more to my original essence every day. Having children has allowed me to connect to my inner child more—spontaneous curiosity, joy, that original essence.And I think it is an energetic practice to stay in touch with that person. It does make me more myself.

Between Light and Material: An Interview of Grimanesa Amorós

Image courtesy of Sutton and Grimanesa Amorós Studio.

interview by Mia Milosevic

Influenced by the extreme terrain of Peru—its vast deserts where light refracts off the sand and temperatures plunge at night, and its rough Pacific coastline where ocean foam catches and fragments the sun—Grimanesa Amorós has built a practice around light as living material. For Amorós, darkness is imbued with light waiting to be released. Her two current works mark a significant moment in that practice. 

Radiance, a monumental installation within Walt Disney Concert Hall, was created in collaboration with the LA Philharmonic to coincide with its production of Prometheus—directed by composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet—which transformed the hall into an immersive landscape from January 9–11. Perfect Timing, Printemps’ first-ever commission of a light artist, opened January 19, 2026 at One Wall Street and runs through the end of March, engaging passersby in a meditation on presence amid Manhattan’s Financial District. 

MIA MILOSEVIC: Well, first of all, congratulations on your installation at the Philharmonic, and of course Perfect Timing for Printemps in the Financial District. Let’s start with your process behind Radiance and all that went into the work. 

GRIMANESA AMORÓS: Radiance was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s a light sculpture—a very large one that occupied basically the whole stage. It was very important to me to incorporate the architecture of Frank Gehry, because as soon as you enter the concert hall, you feel it—the wood he used, the large organ in the center. 

I was also thinking about Prometheus. As we all know, Prometheus shared the gift of fire with humanity, sparking technological advancement and human progress. At the same time, I wanted to incorporate my own Peruvian cultural heritage—specifically the Incan god Viracocha, who bestowed knowledge upon his people by teaching them the arts, guiding them toward civilization and creativity. Both of those ideas helped me create Radiance. 

MILOSEVIC: It’s so interesting to consider what it means to play with fire, especially in the context of Prometheus. How did you approach representing fire through the work? 

AMORÓS: It was a very interesting, challenging project because I don’t read music. So I asked myself, How am I going to approach this? I made a lot of drawings—conceptually the work was there—but part of my process is also the lighting sequence. How do you manage the rhythm of sound and light? I started looking at the scores and saw combinations of notes and pauses. I thought: when those moments come together, that’s when the music gets intense. So, I based the lighting sequence on my own interpretation of those nodes in the score. 

What’s also interesting is that when you’re presenting the work live, things have to be right on point. The beginning, the intermission, the ending—it has to be precise. And the conductor is never precise (laughs)—a few seconds before or after, you know, we’re all human. Afterwards, I learned I could work with someone who reads music. In one of the rehearsals, I was off on my ending. But when you work with someone who reads music, they know when the end is coming, and they’ll count you in. That was very important for how the pacing of the lights evolved. 

Prometheus always dreamed of making a composition with color—he had a lot of colors in mind that I took as inspiration, but I didn’t want to use them literally. It took me about two weeks just to create the colors I wanted to use. 

MILOSEVIC: That’s amazing. Do you know what colors he wanted to use? 

AMORÓS: Yes—blue, green, purple, yellow, violet. But for example, if I used blue, it was a very different blue, like a royal blue you haven’t quite seen before. These are colors that come from my own mind. I was very pleased with how they all came together. 

It was also wonderful to have the support of Esa-Pekka Salonen. I wanted to start with darkness, then bring up just a light on him, and finish again in complete darkness—because I believe there’s nothing in life that truly has a beginning and an end. 

I wanted the stage to be able to look back at the audience. The final moment is very cathartic: the chorus is singing, the cellos, everything building to a peak. You feel lifted out of your seat. At the same time, the piece starts pulsing white and moving with the intensity. Then the house lights—which I also designed—turn and illuminate the entire audience in white. And then everything goes black. 

As the audience, you don’t know what to expect. You’re already inside these incredible moments of sound and visuals. And then white comes toward you, and darkness follows. 

MILOSEVIC: That reminds me of something you said in a podcast—something like, when you’re all in the room sharing the same light. I’d never thought about light that way, especially indoors. The parallels you drew were really striking. 

AMORÓS: I always say that for me, light is a romance with the unknown—wherever you go, you don’t know what kind of light you’re going to receive. And light is ephemeral. In that sense, it’s very similar to sound. So, you have visual and sonic stimulation at the same time, which is amazing for us—even health-wise. (laughs)

Image courtesy of Sutton and Grimanesa Amorós Studio.

MILOSEVIC: To take it back a little—I heard that you began by drawing maps, that you were fascinated with continents, and your mother noticed and put you in art classes. Can you talk a bit about your evolution as an artist and how it all started? 

AMORÓS: I always had this explorer inside me. I was obsessed with drawing continents—first Peru, then South America, then Europe. My mother would say, “Okay, it’s midnight, lights off.” And then, tick tick tick, I’d wait for everyone to fall asleep and stay up until three or four in the morning drawing. She could see I had a real love for it—and also, I think she wanted to protect her white walls, (laughs) because I was drawing on those too. So, she enrolled me in drawing classes. I was painting in oil by age ten or eleven. While my friends were out having fun, I was going to class. That was important—it gave me direction early on: how brushes work, composition, how to train your eye. 

MILOSEVIC: With the LA Phil work, and your work in general—would you say it’s rooted in Peru? I also heard you mention the sea foam on the coast as an early influence. 

AMORÓS: Yes, very much so. When you grow up close to the Pacific Ocean—and in Peru it’s very rough—there’s a moment, I think around the end of March, when the fishermen used to say the ocean was sick, because it would throw up this enormous amount of foam. I was fascinated by it. The foam caught the sun and created these reflections and fragmentations. I used to poke the little bubbles, and when I was small I imagined I could get lost inside them—they seemed so large you could actually go in. I think that created my fascination with this kind of organic shape, which eventually showed up in my work many years later. 

MILOSEVIC: And your fascination with light—did that begin in a similar place, with the reflection? 

AMORÓS: I was always fascinated by light, by shadows, by your own shadow walking along the shore and the reflection it makes. But it didn’t really start in earnest until a trip I took to Iceland, where I had a sculpture under the Northern Lights. That’s when I truly began working with light. 

MILOSEVIC: And how did the transition happen—from painting to sculpture to light? 

AMORÓS: I was a painter until, I’d say around ’92. I was working very intensively—twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day—and I reached a point where I felt I had nothing more to say with that work, nothing left to challenge myself with. So I applied for two grants: the National Endowment for the Arts and a travel grant, also through the NEA. My dream had always been to go to Africa. I was obsessed with Africa and with African art—Africa and drawing maps had always been connected in my mind. 

Once I went, it completely changed my life—my perception of time, my perception of my own work. When I came back, I started using sculpture. I saw how people built their huts, mixing materials with straw. That inspired me to work with handmade paper, but in a very sculptural way. 

And I should say—I didn’t go to art school. I went to the Art Students League on 57th Street for about four years. My art history education came from going to the Met constantly, memorizing paintings, and coming back to test myself. That was my training. 

MILOSEVIC: As someone who loves New York and works with light, how did you approach capturing the city in Perfect Timing? 

AMORÓS: When I get a commission that’s going to be large-scale, I always visit the site. In this case, it was easier—it was downtown. (laughs) When I go, I become a viewer. I watch how people move through the building: some open the door and dash straight up the stairs, others open it slowly and take their time. I find that so interesting. 

Architecture is also always very important to me. The architecture has to invite the artwork and make it a part of itself—so that the piece and the building receive you, and you become one. Sometimes, artwork in a space just clashes because it doesn’t consider the lines or how it will be perceived. For me, that integration is what makes a person think. I generally don’t want to control what you take from the piece—I have my own conceptual reasons for why the work exists, but I want the viewer to arrive at their own experience. 

I was also thinking a lot about the red, yellow, and green. Traffic lights are very important to New Yorkers—the way we interact with them is its own kind of rhythm.

Perfect Timing is set to change colors in March and will be on view through the end of the month.

From Shaker Celibacy to Circus Unicorns: An Interview of Jodi Wille on the Utopian Ideals & Sex Practices of the Occult

The Source Family 
Source Family women posing for Ya Ho Wa 13 album promotion 
1974 
35mm still/ digital file 
Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara Library 
Courtesy of Isis Aquarian Source Family Archives 

interview by Caia Cupolo

For over two decades, filmmaker and curator Jodi Wille has acted as a primary cartographer for the American underground. Known for her empathetic deep dives into intentional communities—most notably in her documentary The Source Family—Wille’s work consistently bypasses the “kooky cult” headlines to find the sincere human yearning beneath the robes and rituals.

Her latest endeavor moves from the screen to the gallery floor with Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes. Invited by the Museum of Sex, Wille has curated an expansive exhibition that bridges 300 years of history through 300 rare artifacts. From the celibacy of the Shakers to the “complex marriage” of the Oneida Community and the Neopagan experiments of the 1970s, the show reframes these groups not as failed experiments, but as vital “think tanks” for human freedom.

CAIA CUPOLO: What initially drew you to the field of new religions and what inspired you to narrow your focus on their respective sexual practices and creative output for this exhibition?

JODI WILLE: I have been fascinated by outsider culture and alternative spirituality for probably the last twenty-five years, and I’ve been studying it passionately, and I’ve gotten to know a number of different communities. Personally, I like to immerse myself when I get to know a group, and I’ve gotten to know a number of the most respected scholars in the field of new religions and intentional communities.

I’ve noticed along the way, because I’ve been able to see a number of archives too, that the histories of these groups are very different from what we are popularly told about them. I’ve also always been interested in art, but particularly self-taught art, visionary art, outsider art. When I got to immerse myself in a number of communities in their archives, I found that there was a lot of extraordinary process-based art, visionary art, and I always wanted to put a show together of art and artifacts by these groups. 

The Museum of sex curator approached me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to do a show. And my work has never been that focused on the sexuality of these groups, although it’s always a part of it. But I felt like that was a very interesting doorway into the culture and focal point. And so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to do it!

CUPOLO: The exhibition spans groups with practices ranging from celibacy to complex marriage and communal relationships. Can you talk about your curatorial approach to defining utopia in this context?

WILLE: It was very interesting to have sexuality be the focal point of the exhibition, because with so many of the groups that I’ve gotten to know and that I researched for the show, what I was most interested in presenting were spiritual communities who had a sacred relationship to sexuality. Many of them infuse some sort of spiritual intention or awareness with their sexual practices or their abstinence. And I consider abstinence a sexual path. It’s a sexual choice not to have sex.

The abstinent groups are some of my favorite in the show who don’t get enough attention. It was important to me in this day and age when a lot of people aren’t having sex—some of which are experiencing sexuality through porn and have this denatured idea of sexuality—to be able to bring in these groups who often have uncommon ideas and new ways of looking at the most fundamental aspects of our lives. So, that’s how I approached it with the show.

Most of us have grown up thinking of utopia, and it's been this way for centuries, as something that doesn’t exist. It can’t possibly exist. It’s an impossible dream, utopian thinkers are foolish, and utopias always fail. What I’ve noticed after years of studying radical idealists and visionaries and utopian thinkers, but not just utopian thinkers, more importantly, utopian doers, people willing to put their lives on the line and take a risk by living by their principles. I found so many groups who, unlike the popular stereotypes, endured for decades, were able to ride out difficult times and provided communities for people who  ended up influencing the larger culture in interesting ways.

So what I aimed to do with this show was to see the idea of utopia through a new lens. And for me, it’s more like a North Star; it’s more of a guiding idea. It’s not a place that you land and then you’re there. It’s a desire to find a more beautiful, equitable, peaceful, just world, and to have that yearning and that dream. And I feel that most of the groups and people that I featured in this exhibition had that dream, and many of them still have that dream, because a number of the groups are still active.

CUPOLO: With over 300 rare artifacts, what was the most surprising or unexpected item you found while researching and is there a single piece you feel most powerfully encapsulates the show’s theme?

WILLE: One of the pieces that really encapsulates the show is the hot pink Barnum & Bailey poster of Lancelot, the unicorn that was bred by the occult Neopagan group, Church of all worlds. I would say what it encapsulates is the bonkers “I can’t believe that this really exists” quality because this Neopagan group were surgically altering goats and turning them into unicorns and then selling them to the biggest circus production in the country, Barnum & Bailey Circus. 

We think of these groups as anomalies in our culture that pop up and flame out and leave a trail of tears and devastation, and then disappear. But what you can see with a number of these groups is that they last far longer than you might imagine, and they influence our culture in surprising ways. My friend James got that when he was a 10-year-old with his parents at Bailey’s circus.

CUPOLO: Due to the sensitive nature of this subject, what was the process like gaining access to these artifacts and personal stories, and what was it like interacting with these communities on such a vulnerable topic?

WILLE: I’ve been researching these groups and getting to know them over the last twenty-five years now, so I’ve developed a lot of relationships. I’ve always been fascinated in meeting the experiencers of these groups, and I find that those are always the best stories, and it’s where I get the best research, the primary research to try to understand these these groups, especially the groups who don’t have established histories, or those who do, but their history is written by people who don’t understand their reality. And so, because of my relationships with certain groups, I was able to get people to agree to participate, like the Source family. That was easy. The Unarians, I had to really talk into it, because they’re not really a sex-oriented group, and they were slightly suspicious, but they did trust me, because I’ve been putting their work into museums and galleries for the last ten years. 

Then other people were really excited about it, like Fayette [Hauser] from the Cockettes. Her stuff has been shown in museums everywhere. And then other people, like Dudley from Dudley and Dean, the video documentarians of all of those groups. 

I just had to have conversations with them and let them know my perspective for the show. I didn’t really include the tragic stereotypical groups that we usually hear of in the show, and a number of the participants thought this was a very refreshing point of view, so they trusted me, which I'm very grateful for.

CUPOLO: With all of that, how did you manage to build a cohesive narrative that bridges over 300 years of history, especially because of the vast differences in available primary sources whether it be 18th century or 20th century? How did the narrative fit together?

WILLE: Much of the history of these groups is pretty sparse, and that’s why I was very fortunate to be able to do this as an actual three-dimensional exhibition with artifacts, instead of doing this as a book or a documentary. I felt very grateful to lay out the proof that these groups existed and show what they created and for me, what became the thread to tie all of these groups together was this search for a different way of living. It was, to me, a search for freedom within this larger society that tends to box people in and move them into certain places and norms that don’t always speak to people.

Also what I noticed over the centuries, especially in the 1700s, 1800s, and then the ’60s and ’70s, was that a number of these groups, who were often dismissed as dangerous or kooky cults, actually had principles and actions that were aligned with reform movements, like women’s rights, children’s rights, abolition, health reform, ecological reform.  In a time when the progressive culture has just been so weaponized, I thought it would be fascinating to go back through history with these subcultural communities who really lived with shared principles, and present their principles, whether they endured or flamed out, regardless of the outcome.

CUPOLO: How would you say your curatorial  work differs or is similar to your work in film and book publishing?

WILLE: It was similar in that it involved the heavy use of archives. Most of the work that I’ve done in film and book publishing involves working with people who have amassed these extraordinary amateur, participant-driven archives and subcultural archives. It was very different in that I didn’t have a big crew shooting interviews, and I didn’t have to spend months with an editor. This show came together much more quickly than my new film, which is coming out in the spring. I had to put this show together in about six months, and so it was a much more intense process than my most recent film, which was edited during covid, and had a more drawn out arc to it. I like to work between different media and installations like this. It all ultimately connects together, because it’s about the depth of knowledge and access.

CUPOLO: Are there any threads of research, maybe a certain community or concept that you wish to explore in a more in-depth project?

WILLE: Well, for years, I’ve wanted to do a Bigfoot movie! I’m fascinated by the supernatural dimensions of Sasquatch throughout both American and Native American cultures, as well as Indigenous cultures throughout the world. There’s something far more than our superficial ideas of Sasquatch that rises above current political situations and can bring people together to examine something outside of that framework.

I also am working on turning this exhibition into a book. These micro cultures are like think tanks in a way. They’re people living collectively with each other, which feels incredibly important for us to examine, just knowing that we can have community and share resources to move forward in ways that we feel are right. I’ll probably do more work in that zone.

CUPOLO: What is the primary takeaway or conversation that you hope visitors have after experiencing this exhibition?

WILLE: I truly hope that visitors will walk away after they see the show, feeling lighter, feeling inspired, feeling astonished by this hidden history of Americans, regular Americans, who have done extraordinary things, and who have courageously lived in ways that that other people may not have approved of when they did it, but were able to to explore notions of freedom outside of societal norms. I hope it inspires people to know that there are many different ways to live and find a rich and meaningful life, and these groups are just a very small sampling of people who have done that before us.

Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes is on view through April 12, 2026 @ the Museum of Sex in New York 233 5th Avenue, New York. Wille’s newest feature documentary, Welcome Space Brothers, about The Unarius Academy of Science, will be released in theaters in spring and summer 2026

 
 

Barbara T Smith, Fiona Duncan and Mara McCarthy Discuss Radical Actions

 
 

interview by Oliver Kupper

Over the past seven decades, Barbara T. Smith’s transformative practice has charted the evolution of feminist movements, performance art, radical action, self-liberation, time-based media, and collective organizing. In a similar spirit, Fiona Duncan launched the literary social practice Hard To Read in 2016, and she is now presenting a special edition within Julia Stoschek Foundation’s audiovisual poem What A Wonderful World. This program spans multiple floors and features a rare recreation of a 1970s performance by Smith. Joined by Mara McCarthy—founder of The Box Gallery, representative of Barbara’s estate, and daughter of legendary artist Paul McCarthy—Smith and Duncan discuss the intersections of their practices, the lineage of feminist performance, and the enduring power of radical artistic experimentation.

OLIVER KUPPER: Let’s start with Hard To Read, which you’ll be organizing at the Julia Stoschek Foundation. What can we expect? And can you speak to the scope and expansiveness of this endeavor?

FIONA DUNCAN: I was immediately inspired by the building, which was originally erected as the Friday Morning Club—founded by suffragettes. It later became the Variety Arts Theater and went on to host all kinds of events. I’ve heard that even Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin made appearances there, and that it later became a venue for punk shows and more. My program really leans into those feminist origins. It’s a femme-centered program—something Hard To Read has always been. That reflects both my interests and my bias. When I saw what Udo was curating in the space—this sweeping selection of works grappling with American violence, global violence today, and the impulse to rise above it—I noticed some of Barbara’s contemporaries who also made video work alongside performance art, like Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden. And I thought: We need Barbara in this. It felt essential. I was absolutely thrilled when she said yes. There will also be eight additional performances, and the program is intentionally multi-generational—something I always try to prioritize. There's dance, theater, music... It’s like a variety show.

MARA MCCARTHY: Barbara, I feel like, especially when you first started, that distinction was crucial: the difference between black-box, theater-style work and early performance. None of it existed within the context of a theater.

BARBARA T. SMITH: See, I don’t think theater’s important. It’s all learned—like dance. It’s about pretending to be somebody else, and it’s meant for an audience. Performance art was none of that. We didn’t memorize lines. We weren’t doing it for an audience. It happened out in the world, often spontaneously. It carried a different meaning. It wasn’t about creating intriguing interactions between people—it was usually something the artist did themself.

DUNCAN: I think it’s only changed because of material conditions. As the cost of living has risen, younger artists need to be connected to some kind of revenue stream or institutional structure—it’s incredibly difficult to survive without money. Life is expensive. At the same time, the art world has absorbed many radical practices that once existed independently—through experimental theater, alternative spaces, or other autonomous contexts. Now, those practices are largely held within the art world.

SMITH: We didn’t have an audience in mind. We made the work for ourselves and for our friends. And every so often, outsiders would wander in.

MCCARTHY: Well, if we look at the performance you will be doing on Sunday, it was mostly for the public. 

SMITH: We didn’t publicize it to the public to try to get an audience. We just said, “I’m gonna do this piece on Saturday. Come and see it.” 

DUNCAN: You are doing one of your groundbreaking performances from 1975. What’s wild is that you did three performances in a single month—March of ’75—according to your book right here. That’s a remarkable amount. One of them was What Would Dogs Say When They Bark. 

SMITH: For What Would Dogs Say When They Bark, we had someone bring a couple of dogs. The idea was to see what would make the dogs bark—what actions or sounds could provoke them. In the first part, I sat on a stool against the wall, my skin painted completely white. I think people were throwing things at me—there’s a picture of me sitting like that. Then a group of four women joined in. Each wore fabric and clothing in a distinct color—red, orange, green, and blue. They began singing and moaning spontaneously—not a structured song, just sounds. All of this was happening alongside the “throwing” segment. We even played a recording of dogs barking, hoping it might trigger a response from the live dogs. It went on and on, and honestly, I don’t remember if the dogs ever actually barked.

KUPPER: Your performance on Sunday night uses some pretty advanced tech. The use of technology has been central to your practice, and you’ve never hesitated to embrace new innovations. Like Xerox technology. 

SMITH: The Xerox books grew out of my experience at Gemini [G.E.L.]. I brought a drawing and asked if I could make a print of it. They told me that usually, artists come through a gallery—and I didn’t have one. They acted like they’d never heard of me and said they wouldn’t do it. At the same time, a famous artist was printing there. As I drove home, I realized they were just brushing me off. I was really angry—completely pissed.

I started thinking: What’s the technology of our time? It can’t be ink on a soft lithography stone—that’s too old. What would be the new technology? I thought maybe business machines. I looked at blueprints and other office technologies, and the one that seemed truly revolutionary was Xerox. It doesn’t use ink—it uses tiny plastic beads. It’s electronic: the plastic dots are charged to replicate the image, pushed through, and fixed with heat. Heat melts the plastic and transfers the image.I got a Xerox machine and set it up in my dining room. I made thousands of prints, and tons of books. 

DUNCAN: We’ll have copies at the performance on Sunday. There will be a lot of surprises in store and things people can take home with them. 

Click here to RSVP for Hard To Read on February 15, a roaming night of live activations and readings staged throughout the spaces of the Variety Arts Theater. With performances by Bunny Rogers, Lexee Smith, Barbara T. Smith, Patty Chang, Harmony Holiday, Alicia Novella Vasquez x Maya Martinez, Matt Hilvers, The War Pigs, and NEW YORK With books by Bunny Rogers, Barbara T. Smith, Patty Chang, Harmony Holiday, Maya Martinez, Fiona Alison Duncan, Jason De León, and Coumba Samba

What A Wonderful World: Julia Stoschek & Udo Kittelmann on Their Ode to the Moving Image

Travers Vale & George Cowl, Betsy Ross, 1917, (installation view), “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. Photo by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation. 

interview by Oliver Kupper

Set across all floors of the raw remains of the historic Variety Arts Theater in Downtown Los Angeles, a haunting, confrontational, and revelatory history of moving images flickers in the darkness. Presented by Julia Stoschek and her preeminent Berlin-based foundation for time-based media, this is not an exhibition, nor a retrospective, nor a white-walled museum journey through chronological time. Described as an audiovisual poem, What A Wonderful World—edited (not curated) by Udo Kittelmann—moves from early cinematic experiments and silent film to contemporary video works by artists working today. The breadth of visual storytelling is astonishing. We sit down with Julia Stoschek and Udo Kittelmann to discuss their landmark paean to cinema itself.

OLIVER KUPPER: I want to start with the title, What a Wonderful World. It suggests optimism. The song is an optimistic song but it also carries an undertone of irony, even darkness, especially in the context of a world in crisis; accelerating authoritarianism, shrinking freedoms, and a growing sense of cultural instability. Can you guys talk about where this title came from, and how you hope audiences will interpret it?

UDO KITTELMANN: Personally, I would say, “what a wonderful world” because it really is for me. But I chose this as a title during a time when it goes immediately with a doubt. Louis Armstrong’s song was released in the mid ’60s, during dark times for Americans. There had been war abroad and civil unrest at home. You can easily compare it to how people feel in this moment. It’s the same in the US and in Germany. We all feel a bit disorientated. That’s why it came to me. Why not this wonderful title?

JULIA STOSCHEK: This title could be a question, but I feel it’s more a statement. The beauty and catastrophe coexist constantly. I think it’s a great title, and we also want the people to leave the exhibition with a little glimmer of hope.

KUPPER: It’s a monumental exhibition centered on time-based media and the deeper history of the moving image. You’ve also staged it in the birthplace of cinema at a moment when the industry feels like it’s collapsing under the weight of late-stage capitalism. Did you see the decision to mount an exhibition of this scale here as a provocation, or something else entirely?

STOSCHEK: Hollywood is the birthplace of visual modernity. Staging an exhibition about time-based media and the moving image felt unavoidable. For me, returning images to their origins is the right gesture and has nothing to do with a provocation. How do you feel about it, Udo?

KITTELMANN: It was never intended to be a provocation. When I do projects of this scale, my intention may be to irritate, but it’s ultimately to think about what art can deliver to an audience, how they serve from what they see and hear and experience from it.

KUPPER: Irritation is an interesting word to use as an alternative to provocation.

KITTELMANN: It’s not meant to be a confrontation. It’s an invitation for everyone, not just the art world elite.

Left, Jacolby Satterwhite, 2 Shrines, 2020: right Doug Aitken, 2 Blow Debris, 2000, (installation view), “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. Photo by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation. 

KUPPER: Nam June Paik had a lot of forward-thinking ideas about where media was going, despite not knowing exactly how this attentional economy of flipping and scrolling was going to work. This feels like the opposite of doom scrolling. It feels like you’re flipping through the channels of a real experience as you go through the floors.

KITTELMANN: Absolutely. In 2022, I curated an exhibition about neuroscience in collaboration with Taryn Simon for Fondazione Prada titled Human Brain. What I really took away from it is that we know almost nothing about the human brain. All we know is how easily you can manipulate humans—their thinking, emotions, behaviors—with images.

KUPPER: Time-based media has always been not only understood as a mirror of the zeitgeist, but also as a powerful mechanism to shape it by propagating ideas, ideologies, and mass psychological states. At the same time, the US feels increasingly in the grip of a new fascist oligarchy, one that echoes Germany in the interwar period, particularly in its weaponization of propaganda via media spectacle. Why do you think we remain so seduced, almost helplessly, by the power of moving images?

STOSCHEK: I’m coming from a European perspective that was shaped by postwar history, where political images are never neutral. That awareness stays with us and brings a sense of responsibility. From the outside, what strikes me most in the US right now is the power of the spectacular. Images move super fast and often simplify very complex things. That’s not new, but it has been amplified by the scale and the speed of current technologies. I observe these developments closely. I’m a collector and my role is to create a platform for artists and their work. This exhibition, What a Wonderful World, is not about moralizing or offering answers. It’s about slowing down. We want people to pause, to reflect, and to create a space of awareness.

KITTELMANN: You may consider What a Wonderful World propaganda as well, but for the better, not for the worse. You can use images for both sides. This project is a plea for a return to humanity. I’m not talking about the US. I’m talking about the whole world. That’s it.

Precious Okoyomon, It‘s dissociating season, 2019 (installation view), “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. Photo by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation. 

KUPPER: How did you guys come together for this, and on both a conceptual and formal level, what were some of the frameworks that helped shape this project?

STOSCHEK: I’ve been following Udo’s work for a long time. From when he was director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin to when he was working for Prada Foundation, Beyeler Foundation—a very, very long time. A few years ago, we were talking and I mentioned that two thirds of my collection is comprised of either artists or works that have a connection to the US. I was a board member at MOCA from 2018 until 2022, and I have always wanted to show these parts of the collection in the US, but since then, it was clear that it had to be Los Angeles because of its connection to the moving image. And then Udo came up with the idea to show all of the early cinema classics and silent movies.

KITTELMANN: Well, when Julia asked me what I thought about doing the project in Los Angeles, I immediately said yes. I was thinking about combining the history of the moving image, from silent film to more recent art-based works. That was the very first step. The conceptual idea was drafted one and a half years ago, and nothing big has changed. But what we can see now is that the issues that this project is dealing with are getting more and more present. I wanted to look at early film classics to show that the technology may have changed over a hundred years, but the issues that the films were dealing with haven’t changed at all. These are the general lines of humans: they’re looking for love and they’re always in some kind of struggle. Life is always a combination of magic, tragedy, and drama.

KUPPER: At what point was it decided that the exhibition would take place at the Variety Arts Building? How did you find this space?

KITTELMANN: From very early on, it was clear to me that I did not want to move into a building that could be easily transformed into a white cube event. So, we looked for places like shopping malls, theaters, but no white-cube-related buildings.

STOSCHEK: It was a long, long journey. I don’t know how often I was flying to Los Angeles to find the right venue. We were supposed to do this show last year, and as you all know, the fires happened. And then, last summer, we all flew in with a location scout. Luckily, we found this treasure, this incredible landmark in downtown with a wonderful history. This building was founded in 1924 by LA’s first women’s club. It was used as a cinema in the ’30s, but also many important figures like Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Clark Gable, all of their careers began on the main stage and in the main theater. This venue is filled with so much history and now it’s an event space that gets rented out for things like Halloween parties. To reactivate it with stage performance and the moving image makes me very, very happy.

Georges Méliès, Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), 1902, (installation view), “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. Photo by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation. 

KUPPER: Going into the basement really feels like you’re stepping into a Berlin nightclub.

STOSCHEK: Yeah, absolutely. But also, there’s three main stages. There were some older people at the opening who remembered going to the theater, but I was also so impressed to see so many young people. A lot of them had never been in this old building. It was lovely to introduce people to something that’s always been here.

KUPPER: It really is a gift to LA, so thank you for that. Calling it an audiovisual poem really allows for a lot of risks, contradiction, emotional slippage. As a curator, what kind of freedom did calling it an audiovisual poem give you to frame the exhibition?

KITTELMANN: First of all, I hoped that changing the term from an exhibition to a poem would change the expectations of the audience. An audiovisual poem makes it immediately more emotional. It asks you to share the poem with empathy.

STOSCHEK: This show, this poem is beyond familiar formats. Opening hours are Wednesday to Sunday, 5:00 PM until midnight, which is quite unusual for Angelenos. People get popcorn. We have at least forty-four rooms, and the visitors also have the freedom to move around wherever they want to. There are no rules. I think that’s very important

KITTELMANN: As I said, embrace the disorientation. And this comes so much with the feeling of our current time. We are so in a mood of being disorientated.

KUPPER: Why not make this a permanent experience in LA? Have you been asked that a lot?

STOSCHEK: Intensity needs finitude. The complete show is a cinematic experience. A film also has an ending. I feel very happy to feel so welcomed in Los Angeles. Let’s see what the future brings.

What A Wonderful World is on view until March 20th in Los Angeles. Click here for more information/reserve tickets.

Arthur Jafa, Apex, 2013, (installation view), “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. Photo by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation. 

A Great Deal of Quiet Drama: An Interview of Painter Sosa Joseph

Sosa Joseph, Devil’s hour, by the river, 2025

interview by Alper Kurtul

Some landscapes are not merely seen, but remembered. In Sosa Joseph’s canvases, rivers overflow, rain does not simply fall; it seeps into bodies, homes, and time. These paintings do not so much narrate the past as they establish a state of memory that revives it. Figures sometimes become distinct, sometimes fade; like memories, they oscillate between clinging and vanishing.

ALPER KURTUL: Standing in front of these paintings, I felt as if the river was remembering on my behalf. When you return to Parumala in your mind, what is the first sensation that comes back to you?

SOSA JOSEPH: Rivers remember—especially, I’ve read, where they used to flow. But I don’t know if the river I remember remembers me. In any case, when I “return in my mind” to the riverbank in Parumala, where I was born and raised, the first sensation that comes back is a sense of peace and contentment that feels very close to joy. I don’t think this is because my childhood and adolescence were free of privations, anxieties, or conflicts—there were many. But the setting made all the difference.

We lived right by the river, and much of my childhood was spent roaming the wilderness along its banks. I spent a great deal of time in the company of the river and the rain, as well as plants, birds, and animals along the shore. From an early age, I formed a sense of camaraderie with animals and plants. There was a kind of idyllic primitivism to those days, which now strikes me as blissful.

Even today, if I spot a squirrel in the park, or watch coots or ducks in London’s many water bodies, it sends me into raptures. I also seek out water—it calms me and makes me feel peaceful. However, one can return to that Parumala only in the mind. Urbanization has changed the place considerably: the swamps and wetlands were filled in, the swamp birds and animals are long gone, and the savage verdure largely lost. The river and the rain remain.

KURTUL: Many of your figures seem to hover between presence and disappearance. When you paint people from your past, are you trying to hold onto them, or let them go?

JOSEPH: Ephemeral—if I may say so—is the quality you’re pointing to: manifesting, then quickly fading away. But isn’t this a quality shared by most of what makes up our lives, or life itself? In a broader view of time, we are all transients—fleeting, fading apparitions. Holding on and letting go are two things we are constantly trying to do within our brief time here.

In the studio, however, when I paint—not just people, but also geography or setting—I can’t say whether I’m trying to hold on or let go. I don’t consciously plan to paint a particular person or place; they simply manifest on the canvas. A painting from the current exhibition that remembers my brother fishing in the rain is a case in point. I didn’t walk into the studio one morning deciding to paint my brother. The process is far more unconscious and spontaneous.

I often paint to see what is already in my head. As I push paint around, figures, activities, situations, and narratives begin to emerge—just like composition and colour. In this instance, I was simply trying to capture rain in a landscape. Through improvisation, a figure began to appear, followed by fish, and only much later did I realize it was my brother, fishing as he once did. In such an unconscious process, I can’t be sure of my motivations. So am I holding on, or letting go? I truly don’t know.

 

Sosa Joseph, Amma wants to finish singing before the flood drowns her, 2024-2025

 

KURTUL: Floods appear in your work not only as natural events but as emotional states. Is there a particular memory of water—its danger, its generosity—that still shapes the way you see the world?

JOSEPH: We loved rain and the river—especially rain over the river—but when it rained heavily and without pause, the river could rise and swallow our homes. And it did, quite often, during my childhood. Floods were common; some years we experienced more than one.

Not all floods were equal. Sometimes the river rose just enough to enter our homes like a timid, almost apologetic guest, occupying only a couple of feet from the floor for a few days. On those occasions, we tolerated its presence and carried on. We children were placed on tables or other high surfaces while adults navigated between these islands. From our perches, we watched the floodwater surround us. Driftwood floated in, sometimes with a snake wrapped around it; fish and frogs entered through the windows.

It made me realize that floods are great levelers. Humans, frogs, snakes, fish, wetland birds—we were all equally affected, disrupted, displaced. And then there were years when the waters rose much higher, submerging our homes almost entirely and forcing us into rehabilitation camps. I remember being evacuated to shelters run by the church or local administration, often schools converted into makeshift camps.

There is a painting in this exhibition that addresses such displacement and rehabilitation: Rain’s Refugees. So yes, this duality—nurturing and destructive at once—is something I’ve come to see as the essential nature not only of rain and rivers, but of most things in life.

KURTUL: I was struck by how women move through these paintings with a quiet authority, even when the scenes look chaotic. How do the women you grew up around continue to live in your work?

JOSEPH: I’m glad to hear that. I’ve painted women living in deeply patriarchal societies for some time now, and when I look at these works, I see it too: a certain silent authority—dignity is another word I would add—shared across these feminine figures.

Even while navigating repressive power structures, women in communities like ours held a great deal of authority, particularly within domestic and personal spaces. They resisted by choosing a middle path between open rebellion and total submission—silently subverting these systems while remaining, on the surface, compliant.

This quiet resistance, marked by subtle authority, was something I saw especially in my grandmother and my mother, but also in many working-class and lower-middle-class women I grew up around. The female figures in my paintings inherit not only this body language, but also the self-possession that comes with it.

Sosa Joseph, The rooster’s crows gave her nausea, 2025 (detail)

KURTUL: You paint from memory, not documentation. Does memory ever resist you—does it ever refuse to give you an image you need?

JOSEPH: Painting from memory suits my practice better. Memory, like imagination, isn’t entirely clear or concrete, and that lack of clarity leaves room for aesthetic interpretation. Photographs or direct observation can be restrictive, making departures from the real more difficult. Memory gives me just enough to work with, without overwhelming detail, and that freedom matters deeply to how I approach color, form, and texture.

That said, oblivion is as powerful a force as memory. Like a tattered tapestry, memory has holes that even imagination can’t fill. I might forget the structure of a flower or the anatomy of a fish or turtle. In those moments, I do turn to studies or reference material.

KURTUL: Your colors feel like weather systems, shifting moods on the brink of something. Do you think of color as something that happens to the painting, or something that emerges from inside it?

JOSEPH: I’m certainly not a painter who meticulously plans color. So yes—color happens. It emerges as I work.

I’ve come to think of color as a kind of music you listen to with your eyes — symphonies of light, in a sense. Some people create music through deep theoretical knowledge; others play by ear. I belong to the latter group. I don’t know much about color theory, and I resist generalizations. I move pigment around daily until I find the tints and shades that feel right.

KURTUL: Some scenes feel like they’re happening now and years ago at the same time. Do you experience time this way when you remember home?

JOSEPH: I wouldn’t say I experience time as non-linear, but memory does refuse to stay neatly in the past. Certain places and moments from home remain active in me—as sensations rather than stories. When they surface in painting, they tend to exist in a kind of present tense, which may explain why the scenes feel suspended between then and now.

KURTUL: In many works, the background feels as charged as the figures, almost like a witness. What does it mean for you when a landscape starts to behave like a character?

JOSEPH: A landscape only feels remarkable as a “character” if one assumes it is merely a backdrop. I don’t approach composition that way. The spaces my figures inhabit aren’t separate from them.

More broadly, I’ve always experienced plants, animals, weather, and geography as living—almost sentient—presences. I grew up talking to plants and animals, even reading to calves, as seen in Girl Reading to Her Buffaloes. I still anthropomorphize elements of nature.

So, when I paint a tree alongside human figures, I treat it with equal involvement. Humans, animals, plants, and the natural world carry equal weight for me—not just aesthetically, but spiritually.

 

Sosa Joseph, The rooster’s crows gave her nausea, 2025

 

KURTUL: Showing these deeply rooted memories in New York—so far from the river that shaped them—did it change the way you understand what the paintings hold?

JOSEPH: I think it’s important to clarify that I’m not showing my memories in New York. My memories matter only to me. What I’m showing are paintings that are incidentally based on memory. That distinction is crucial.

Art is not the same as its subject matter. The real content of a painting is the painting itself—not what it appears to depict or narrate. These works are often called autobiographical, which is partly true in terms of subject matter, but I was never interested in creating a painterly memoir or socio-cultural commentary. My motivation has always been formal: engaging with the aesthetic challenges of painting itself. Everything else is incidental.

Distance doesn’t change what the paintings hold. If anything, it tests whether viewers are willing to engage with painting on its own terms—beyond familiarity, narrative, or place.

KURTUL: Your canvases turn ordinary gestures into something tender, almost ceremonial. When you paint, how do you know that an everyday moment carries enough weight to stay?

JOSEPH: I don’t know in advance. I don’t curate moments from memory to paint. I simply paint, and as I do, moments arrive. Figures walk in. They evolve.

The everyday—the mundane, the banal—contains a great deal of quiet drama and theatrical potential. My task is simply to remain open to it.

Sosa Joseph

Complicated Patterns: An Interview of Ian Davis

Ian Davis, Agenda, 2022. Photo: Ed Mumford. Copyright: the artist. Courtesy Galerie Judin, Berlin.

interview by Mia Milosevic

Connoisseurs of world order fill Ian Davis’s canvases, their picturesque and surreal stomping grounds an ode to both beauty and horror. The eeriness of his hyper-structured displays is overlaid by a rhythmic attitude and hip-hop influence. Davis’s landscapes keep a certain distance from the scenes they portray—the viewer is implicated at altitude, surveying a scene as you might an out-of-body experience. The entrapments of the modern day—wealth, power, surveillance—are articulated by a contemporary rendition of art history’s revered flâneurs. Starting with a blank canvas and a commitment to an idea, Davis’s process is completely inseparable from his final product, which are both uniquely his own. 

MIA MILOSEVIC: How did you get into art initially, and what brought you into your distinct style? 

IAN DAVIS: I got into art the way a lot of people do. I grew up in the Midwest, so I didn't have a ton of exposure to fine art, but I did travel with family. I had grandparents that would take my brother and me to Europe once we got into high school, so I started looking at art. I could always draw though, and people just said, “You're an artist, draw this.” Growing up in Indianapolis, I didn't think of artists as being a job that anybody really had, I didn't know any. So then I went to college in Arizona 'cause I didn't know what a good art school was (laughs). While I was in Arizona, the last year I was in college in the mid-to-early nineties, I saw Jean-Michel Basquiat's work, which wasn't like everywhere at that point—they didn't make like skis and backpacks and t-shirts. I had known his name from hip-hop music 'cause I was big into music, but I didn't know him as an artist. When I saw his work, it was the first time I really related to the way a painting was made. All my paintings were very influenced by him and Philip Guston and Max Beckmann and kind of sloppy figurative paintings—and people were buying my paintings, so I didn't have to get a job. It was cheap to live in Arizona, so I kind of drifted through college, not really knowing what I wanted to do. 

There was a retrospective of Basquiat’s work at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005, I think. When I walked in and saw these things I was like, Jesus, I knew exactly how they were made. I just realized I had internalized them so much that while I was there I was like, I gotta do something else. Like this isn’t me, I'm not doing my thing at all. So I decided I wanted to start making paintings that weren’t expressionistic, but instead very controlled—retaining some of the repetitive, rhythmic qualities of Basquiat’s work. I kept all these compositional things that I learned from him, but started making them in a really methodical, slow way. That's when I started to really paint the way that I paint now—this really hypercontrolled, repetitive kind of thing.

MILOSEVIC: Does music still have an influence on your work? 

DAVIS: Yeah, I mean I like art but music to me has always just been more direct—it just hits me. I’m just more fascinated by music. It just does things to me that art doesn't usually, it can go with you anywhere and it doesn't have all the trappings of the art world. I don't make music so I can just enjoy it, I suppose.

MILOSEVIC: Are there musicians that you feel like you could point to that influence your work, like aesthetically?

DAVIS: Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of music that I like is very sort of repetitious and minimal, like The Fall or Can, or a lot of reggae, I like a lot of jazz stuff like Fela Kuti, just things that sound like interlocking patterns. I think that's what I feel like relates to my work—a lot of my paintings are just a huge series of complicated patterns that are laid on top of one another. I think I like a lot of what that kinda music is doing because it’s what I feel like I'm trying to do with my paintings.

MILOSEVIC: In your artnet interview from a few years ago, in reference to the people you paint, you said, “You know how you hear about a person getting mugged in broad daylight and nobody does anything about it? Sometimes I think I’m painting all those people who didn't do anything.” Could you elaborate on that?

DAVIS: It's funny, I don't remember saying that. I mean, a lot of times the people that are in my paintings aren't really doing anything. And if they are, it's not really clear what they're doing. Like, there's a formal element that they're there for, which is for scale, et cetera. But I think in terms of the meaning of the people, they're not participating—I can't say that for all of them—but usually when they are doing something, I don't want it to be very clear what they're doing. And even if it is clear what they're doing, why they are doing it isn't clear. So, there's a kind of nonsense to it all. I guess maybe that's what I meant, even if the paintings are about some problem, the people aren't really helping. It's a pretty dim view of humanity, I think (laughs).

 
 

MILOSEVIC: In terms of the perspective that you use for a lot of your work, is there a strategy behind it?

DAVIS: I suppose it depends on the painting, but I guess it should be said, I don't really plan them. I kind of figure 'em out while I'm making them. Obviously I'm attracted to a very symmetrical composition a lot of times, especially with the architecture paintings, it's sort of cobbled together. Like it's correct enough that it's not meant to look off, but a lot of times I think about the way a picture can move your eye around. I also think a lot about trying to make a thing that will look striking and interesting from a distance, but then when you get in close to it, there's a lot to examine both with what's painted and how it's painted. 

I like this idea of really clearly and plainly trying to describe something that doesn't really add up or make sense. It's like the bits of a narrative, but I don't have a narrative in mind necessarily. And if I do, I'll realize why I'm making it or what it means while I'm making it. I'm just sort of following formal, allegorical or symbolic notions of giving something a feeling. 

MILOSEVIC: Your recent show at Nicodim was called “God’s Eye View.” Did you come up with the title? 

DAVIS: They asked me for a title and I was having a hard time. Titles to me are always either just there, or I have to search through scraps of paper that I write things down on that could maybe be a title. Usually if I have to come up with one, 'cause somebody's asking me for one, my mind goes blank. Ben from Nicodim called me and said, how about “God's eye view?” And I said, “Oh, that's pretty interesting.” He said, “Well, it's something you said when we were at your studio.” So yeah, I guess it was my idea, but I wouldn't have thought of it. 

MILOSEVIC: It seems like your style has stayed pretty similar maybe since that experience in the Brooklyn Museum and deciding what you were going to paint from then on. Do you feel like your process has changed? Like, not necessarily what paint you use, but your mindset and how you choose your content?

DAVIS: Yeah, because when I first started making them, I couldn't paint very well that way. So they were kind of clunky and I was focused more on the painting than what they were about. I mean, the ideas in them have remained fairly consistent. I think that the kinds of things they're talking about, like wealth and power, are still topics that I'm preoccupied with. That stuff was there even when my work looked like Basquiat, Philip Guston, Max Beckmann hybrids, but I can just paint so much better now. It's kind of subconscious, you just gather techniques that work for what you're doing. I try not to get too concerned about being efficient—there's definitely a quicker way to make a painting like this.

You could plan it and make a digital image and project it and lay it out and do it a lot more directly, but to me, figuring it out as I go and not knowing exactly what I'm making is kind of the reason I'm doing it. I'm sure there’s an easier way for me to do it, but I just figured out some inefficient way. I'm trying not to use technology (laughs).

MILOSEVIC: Do you enjoy the process of not having your paintings pre-planned?

DAVIS: Yeah, because I don't want to make something I've already seen. There has to be something in it for me because—I enjoy painting obviously, it's like the only thing I do—but it's also a lot. It takes a lot. It's a lot of labor. Especially filling in huge areas of people or whatever, it all has to correspond with everything around it. It’s never just like mindlessly filling in. I have to pay attention to all this stuff while I'm doing it. And also try not to like, smear my sleeve across a part of the painting that has wet paint on it and then have to figure out how to fix it (laughs). There's a lot of days where I'm just sitting with one brush, one color, painting one thing over and over and over all day long. And that's kind of a drag, but I think that that's how my paintings end up being what they are.

MILOSEVIC: In terms of the repetition, how do you go about that? Are you trying to be meditative or is the process meditative at all? Are you trying to create that effect visually?

DAVIS: Yeah, it's great when that happens, when you lose track of time, but a lot of times I'm considering so many things spatially and keeping everything in line. I have tricks I can use to do that, but it's rare that I can just shut my brain off and it'll all be laid out correctly. It takes a long time to start something. By the end I'm working on top of a framework that's already there, so it's easier for me to work out how everything will correspond. It’s fun to start them and it's fun to finish them, but the middle is a slog—especially with a larger painting. 

I had a big painting in my show at Nicodim, it was a huge airplane painting, huge for me at least, and the whole time I was just like, well, I'm painting this airplane. I didn’t know why I was painting it the whole time I was doing it. What was the purpose of it? I painted this airplane with all these branches and plants sort of framing it. And I was just like, this isn't enough. But then I kind of just ignored it for a few months, and when I brought it back out and looked at it, I realized that was the point. You can't tell if it's taking off or landing. And there's a lot of different ideas suggested in that—is it going up or down? I just need to have a reason to do things and sometimes I don't know until the end.

MILOSEVIC: Do you feel like you enjoyed your expressionist painting more, or are you drawn more to the visual order that you paint now?

DAVIS: It’s fun to make a painting that takes a couple days or a few hours, but those weren't really my paintings, they didn't really feel like they were mine. I knew I was just learning how to build a painting. But, I'm not like an orderly person. That's the thing. Like this obsessiveness—I'm not like this outside of painting. Obviously it's part of my nature to be this way, but also sometimes I wonder if it's like, I'm from the Midwest and I have to show people that I can really work hard or something. Like I have to prove to whoever, maybe myself, that I can really make a painting and this is the way I'm doing it. 

It wasn't my plan to turn into this, it just sort of developed. I should say though, that in terms of the meanings of the paintings, what's been strange in the last 10 years is that I felt like they used to be speculative. Like some of the paintings were just sort of me being afraid that something could happen. There's this quality of anticipation about them, like something bad is about to happen. I feel like reality has moved so much closer to the thing I'm describing or the world I'm painting, and it's a bit confusing. It's been a bit confusing over the last several years because I feel like I don't want these to feel too topical. I also don't want them to feel too on the nose, you know?

MILOSEVIC: Do you have thoughts about taking your work in another direction?

DAVIS: I don't have fantasies about doing something totally different. I do have temptations to make abstract paintings, I would love to make some abstract paintings, but I feel like there's endless things I could do with the way I'm painting. And if it did change, it wouldn't be because I had some eureka moment that changed it, it would be because I’d want to deal with some kind of subject, so the painting would be dictated by the change in subject matter, if that makes sense. The idea is primary over the way the idea is conveyed. I have something I want to paint and everything else follows—I'll find out how and why while I'm doing it.

MILOSEVIC: What was your process like when you did that cover for The New York Times?

DAVIS: The Times contacted me and needed a cover the following week—it took like four days of haggling over what I was gonna do. It was their idea to portray a bunch of people standing around the White House. But it was my sketches, like they picked one of the sketches I made. And then I made this really little painting because I just didn't have enough time to make a painting the way I would do it. So it didn't feel like my work really. It was a marathon getting that thing done. That felt really different. But it was great to have done a Times magazine cover 'cause however many million copies of that were printed. Ideally it would've been one of my paintings that everybody saw, or everybody who looks at The New York Times. 

MILOSEVIC: Do you think about surveillance when you're making your work? Is that a fear or is it just something that comes out naturally when you're dealing with the content of your work?

DAVIS: Yeah, definitely. Even to the point where I've put surveillance cameras in them, because the viewer is implicated, but not in there. But it's probably a bit broader than that. It's probably more a fear of technology or the unknown. I don't want to emphasize it too much, but the view of humanity I'm describing is fairly dark. Surveillance cameras are just part of the modern landscape but they're also one of the only things I put in my paintings that would put them in the present day. It's a reminder of a lot of different things, I think. And they can also be hidden away in a painting the same way they're hidden away in the world. Like you ever look around, especially in New York, and you're like, God, it's cameras all around all the time and it's like when the hell did that happen—it's a bit of paranoia and there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of anxiety in my paintings.

MILOSEVIC: That's interesting 'cause I feel like your work is super meditative in a way, but there is some anxiety, so the contrast is interesting.

DAVIS: It’s funny because I think that that's really what the repetitions are. Because I literally just do this. Every day I'm here doing this. So whatever is in me is in there from day to day. And some days are very anxious and some days aren’t, and I'm also just dealing with the limit of what my hands can do. Some of the things I'm painting are so tiny and detailed—you can paint the same shape 400 times, but it's never going to be exactly the same. You start to notice even in huge fields of repetitions, all these weird little variations that just occur—'cause I'm a not a machine, you know. I'm kind of treating myself like one, but can't be one.

Between Craft, Culture And Feminism: An Interview of Jingyi Li

 
the hidden drawer tea spoon

Jingyi Li. The Hidden Drawer-Tea Spoon, 2024. 16x26x2.5cm, Bobbin Lace, antique tea spoon case.

 

interview by Lola Titilayo

At the center of feminist practice, soft-spoken materials, and Asian heritage, Jingyi Li is defining contemporary artistry through storytelling. Drawing on her PhD in anthropology, she weaves research, memory, and cultural narrative into delicate, hand-crafted lace and other tactile materials, transforming everyday objects into installations that explore emotion, identity, and history. From intimate cutlery sets in The Hidden Drawer to larger immersive works like The Oyster Pail, Li’s work unlocks the expressive potential of unconventional materials, creating spaces where Asian women’s stories are told.

LOLA TITILAYO: The Hidden Drawer places lace directly onto cutlery and vintage display cases. Can you walk me through the original idea for this series? Where did the first image or object come from?

JINGYI LI: The Hidden Drawer began with my interest in the ways women’s desires have been hidden, silenced, or disciplined throughout history. Across different cultures, women who expressed longing or sensuality were often labelled, shamed, or even punished — from moral condemnation to the symbolic “witch hunts” aimed at women who stepped outside prescribed boundaries. I wanted to create a space where these unspoken stories could surface quietly through objects that seem ordinary at first glance.

The objects came from an antique cutlery case I found while wandering through a market. I love spending time with old objects; they hold traces of the people who touched them, the gestures that shaped them, the lives they silently witnessed. When I looked at this case, I felt it could hold a story.

 
the hidden drawer butter knife

Jingyi Li. The Hidden Drawer-Butter Knife, 2024. 20.5x31.5x1cm, bobbin lace, antique butter knife case

 

TITILAYO: Lace is traditionally associated with feminine craft. Do you work with that history consciously? How do you position your hand-made lace work with your mission to build feminist space in your work?

LI: When I first discovered lace and the histories behind it, I felt as if I had fallen down a rabbit hole. Lace holds a long lineage of women’s labor that was often unnamed and overlooked, yet it carries a quiet depth. Working with lace feels like entering a dialogue with generations of women whose voices were rarely recorded, even though their hands shaped cultural traditions in lasting ways.

During my research, I came across the Lace in Context project led by Professor David Hopkin and Dr Nicolette Makovicky at Oxford. Their work brings together archives, textiles, and social history collections, and the online platform reveals an exceptional range of stories and research. It helped me understand how complex the cultural life of lace is far beyond decorative associations.

For me, lace is a material through which I can rethink what feminine space means today. I do not approach it as something fragile or merely ornamental. I use it to speak about desire, intimacy, and agency, and about the shifting experiences of being a woman. The process of making lace is central to this. The rhythm, the knots, and the tension in the thread all become part of the narrative. My body repeats gestures that many women have performed before me, yet I turn those gestures toward subjects that were often unspoken or hidden.

By placing lace in unexpected contexts such as cutlery, furniture, or sculptural forms, I try to create a feminist space where softness is understood as strength, and where femininity is allowed to move beyond narrow definitions. Lace becomes a language through which women’s experiences can be reconsidered and made visible once again.

TITILAYO: How do aspects of Asian cultural history, domestic rituals, textile work, and family traditions appear in your work, explicitly or implicitly?

LI: I grew up in a home where objects were never just objects. My parents collected everyday folk items from across China, so our living space felt more like a living archive than a typical household. There were stone mills once used to grind soybeans, delicate wooden moulds for printing cloth, herbal scales from old pharmacies, and hand-carved tools whose purposes I only learned much later. None of these things were valuable in a conventional sense, but each carried the wear of a long life.

As a child, I was drawn to these objects without fully understanding why. I would pick them up, test their weight, trace the surface of the wood, or smell the faint memory of herbs caught in the grain. Those textures became part of how I learned to look at the world. I realized that every mark or scratch hinted at someone’s gesture, someone’s labor, someone’s story.

This way of seeing stayed with me. When I began making art, I found myself returning to the quiet presence of old objects. They taught me to think of materials as companions rather than raw supplies, and to pay attention to the lives they have already lived. Working with antique boxes, cutlery, or textiles feels like a continuation of those early encounters. I am not simply choosing materials; I am entering a conversation that began long before me.

The influence of that childhood environment continues to shape my practice today. It bolstered my sensitivity to how objects hold memory, how they record everyday histories, and how they can reveal forms of intimacy rarely spoken aloud. In many ways, my work is an extension of that early fascination — a way of listening to the stories that quietly reside in the things we inherit, discover, or choose to keep close.

 
Artwork featuring oyster pail

Jingyi Li. Oyster Pail, 2024. 110x280x1cm, Chinese takeaway menus, wire, paper

 


TITILAYO: The oyster pail carries strong cultural associations of migration and diaspora that are often translated simply as “Eastern cuisine” in a Western context. How does that history or symbolism influence what you are doing with it in this work?

LI: The oyster pail is widely recognized today as a container for Chinese takeout, yet its story is far more layered. It began as packaging for fresh oysters, but gradually became tied to a Western idea of “Chinese cuisine,” even though this style of food and its imagery were shaped outside China. For many people in the diaspora, the oyster pail carries memories of work, migration, and survival, especially for families who built their lives through small restaurants, takeaways, and other labor-intensive trades.

In my work, I draw on this history by transforming London’s Chinese takeaway menus into a beaded curtain that recreates the pagoda motif often printed on oyster pails. The curtain becomes an entryway into a symbolic enclave, pointing to the early Chinese communities that took root in London during the nineteenth century. These communities formed as sailors, workers, and migrants began to settle, creating businesses that offered familiarity and support in a new environment.

This curtain reflects how migrant communities build small cultural enclaves within a city. Chinese restaurants and Asian supermarkets often become more than businesses; they offer a sense of home and familiarity for people living between cultures. By recalling the imagery of the oyster pail, the work points to these modest yet meaningful spaces where identity is negotiated and sustained across generations. It also connects the everyday world of takeaway culture with the broader history of Chinese migration, showing how belonging and resilience continue to take shape even as a community’s visibility shifts over time.

TITILAYO: You’re also doing research in visual anthropology. How do academic research and studio practice inform each other for you?

LI: Anthropology has taught me to see objects in a different way. [Anthropologist] Igor Kopytoff proposes that objects have “cultural biographies,” and this idea goes beyond simply tracing where an object has been. It asks us to consider how objects move across social worlds, how they are classified or reclassified, and how each transition alters their meaning. This perspective shapes my approach to materials. When I work with antique objects, I do not see them as neutral supplies. I see them as objects whose earlier lives continue to resonate. Their presence becomes part of the work, and making with them feels like opening a new chapter in their biography.

My studio practice then becomes a way to think through questions that arise in my research. Through repetition, gesture, and touch, I come to understand craft in a bodily way, echoing what [anthropologist] Tim Ingold describes about making as a form of knowing. The hands often recognize something before the mind fully grasps it. Working with lace and soft materials turns ideas about labor, intimacy, and cultural memory into lived experience rather than abstract theory.

In that sense, the studio becomes a kind of field site, and the field becomes an extension of the studio. My PhD research examines how craft objects hold anthropological stories, and my practice helps me encounter those stories in a grounded and embodied way. The two processes move alongside each other, offering different pathways toward understanding how materials carry meaning.

TITILAYO: In the context of your broader practice, how does Marriage Story complement or contrast with works like The Hidden Drawer or The Yellow Vessel?

LI: Each of these works comes from a different stage of my life, and responds to different questions I was asking at the time. Marriage Story was made in 2021, when I was living in China and witnessing a strong wave of feminist awakening. Many troubling cases involving marriage and domestic violence were coming to public attention. The piece responds to that moment by revisiting rituals from traditional weddings. One example is “crossing the fire basin,” a custom meant to remove the misfortune supposedly carried by the bride. It reflects an enduring misogynistic belief about women’s inherent impurity. By using this familiar ritual, I reflect on the cultural expectations placed on women and the social pressures embedded in the idea of marriage.

The Yellow Vessel was created during my first year in London, when I was trying to understand how East Asian women are perceived within Western cultural frameworks and how stepping outside an Asian context can change how you see yourself. The work uses silk sculptures shaped like historical vessel forms, drawing attention to how the female body has been imagined, exoticized, or idealized through the male and imperial gaze. It parallels my own feminist consciousness developing alongside a new awareness of how culture shapes the perception of East Asian women, including the ways these views are sometimes internalized.

The Hidden Drawer is more introspective. It explores desire and interiority through antique boxes and lace, tracing a quieter process of self-discovery. Instead of responding directly to social events, it turns inward to consider personal memory and the private languages women create for themselves.

Together, these works map different moments in my growth, both as an artist and as a woman thinking through culture, identity, and change.

TITILAYO: As an artist exploring feminist space and Asian women’s stories, where do you hope your work will go next? What questions or ideas are you most excited to explore in the future?

LI: In 2026, I will join the Sarabande residency, a foundation established by Alexander McQueen to support emerging artists across disciplines. I will be surrounded by artists working in many different mediums, and being in that environment will certainly encourage me to think further about where my work can go and the stories I want to explore. Recently, I’ve been speaking with more women and collecting their personal stories. I am especially interested in the intimate and erotic narratives of Asian women, because these experiences are often shaped by stereotypes. By inviting women to speak on their own terms, I hope to make space for complexity, humor, vulnerability, and desire — feelings that rarely appear in public conversations about Asian femininity.

One encounter that influenced this direction came from a shibari [Japanese bondage] workshop I joined in London, followed by deeper conversations with the practitioner. She approached the practice through trust and emotional grounding rather than erotic display. She once described how she reframes bondage and BDSM relationships through a therapeutic lens, focusing on consent, communication, and the body’s capacity to release tension. When I experienced the practice myself, I realized how strongly the body can hold fear, longing, and memory. It made me think about how many stories sit quietly within women’s bodies, waiting for a language that feels safe.

Looking ahead, I want to explore desire as something shaped by culture yet deeply personal. Intimate stories reveal how women navigate identity and expectation, and they challenge the narrow roles often assigned to us. I hope my work can create more room for Asian women to speak about themselves with honesty, confidence, and complexity — on their own terms.

An Interview of Ari and Eitan Selinger on Their New Film 'On The End'

“He must have had a really bizarre experience. He was sitting on his porch watching the movie of his life.”

 
 

interview by Poppy Baring

On The End, directed by Ari Selinger and scored by Eitan Selinger, tells the story of Tom Ferreira, a mechanic living in Montauk at the end of the glamorized Hamptons town. The film, which is heavily based on a true story and was made within feet of the home that inspired it, is a highly emotional chronicle of a contestable yet ultimately good-hearted man being bullied by property developers. The film not only reveals issues of greed and corruption, but it also tells the story of love and loss between Tom and fellow outcast Freckles. With local actors Tim Blake Nelson playing the former and Mireille Enos as the latter, a certain intimacy with the community lends the film a sense of sincerity. In this interview, Ari Selinger and his brother Eitan Selinger discuss their fraternal dynamic, their choices behind the score, and they reflect on the real Tom who inspired the film and passed shortly after it was made. 

POPPY BARING: Eitan, you once said it was always a dream of yours to work with your older brother. How does that dynamic make your job easier or more challenging?

EITAN SELINGER: I’ve always been used to Ari being the boss. We grew up together playing music, and we have the same taste in music pretty much, so it was easier to know where we wanted to head with the score. Where it was tricky was that he had the freedom to call me at any time, and I couldn’t really be upset about that. It was extremely involved, which is a good thing and…I wouldn't say it's a bad thing.

ARI SELINGER: The grandmaster plan was to get this kid to play music and use it to my own abilities. I always wanted him to be part of that artistic arc that I long to build, and where I knew there was always gonna be enough space for tons of people.

BARING: Were there moments when something you felt strongly about including was fought against?

EITAN: Ari always gave me the freedom to push my own ideas. I was more in love with the idea of making the soundtrack organic in a way where I could have non-instruments, household items, even car parts. I wanted to get very rhythmic with it. I maybe went too far with that, and Ari wanted me to do a bit more on the nylon guitar and find more melody, but we met in the middle.

BARING: Did you end up using those sounds from car parts?

EITAN: We did, actually.

ARI: During some of those scenes where you want to have a sound that’s ineffable, we had Natalia Paruz come in and play a saw in the subway of New York. She played it on the Coppola movie [Megalopolis] and Joker [Folie à Deux]. It's saved for some of the more cerebral moments.

BARING: When you first read the script, were there any songs that you immediately knew you wanted to include?

EITAN: Ari always knew which songs he would pull from. With the score, there were certain scenes that, in order to keep everything cohesive, it was tricky. The first sex scene was originally very erotic music and jazzy, and we couldn’t figure out what would go there, but after a while, we took the music from this song that I wrote called “Run the Show,” and it shone in the movie, which was a nice surprise.

ARI: It’s kind of an anti-sex scene, so we needed something saucy, but also more about the heart. We ended with this very folksy sound, taking his lyrics and just playing them on a nylon string guitar. I really love nylon string, like the way Willie Nelson plays. It reminds me of honey or vanilla, just something very, very sweet and textural.

EITAN: We discovered that different strings and instruments fit different environments. For the scenes outside, nylon worked better, and we stuck to that, then when we went inside Tom’s place, it was grittier, the way that steel string is.

BARING: There were two songs you spoke about after we came out of the theater. The first song that opens the film, and the second one, which is called “Long Black Veil.” What was the significance of those?

ARI: This was how I got Tim Blake Nelson on my side. He’s such a music guy and on one of our first calls, I was telling him the reason I had the narration; I wanted the audience to feel like Freckles is holding your hand throughout the movie, maybe throw you off a little bit, but when I brought “Long Black Veil” up to Tim, he was like, “Oh yeah, I love that song. That song’s written by…” and I knew it was Marijohn Wilkin, very obscure, and he suddenly liked me after that.

That song, it’s like the American Beauty thing, where Lester is describing his last day, and you’re thinking, what does he mean by that? You find out at the end what he means, but because of that, it has this eternal quality, because he’s presenting you the story. It’s like a skeleton telling the story.

Mireille Enos and Tim Blake Nelson in On the End

BARING: You filmed it in a house that was a few doors down from Tom’s real house. Was that environment all a product of the set design, or was it equally as cluttered as the actual house?

ARI: We were gonna shoot at his house, which didn’t need any production design; it’s one of the worst-looking houses you’ll ever see, but he had a little bit of a meltdown, and we had to find another spot. My heart was set on shooting that street, and there was a house that was bought by the town and was set to be knocked down a month before we shot. We went to the town board and asked to use it as our canvas. My production designer, Anna, then decided to bring all of Tom’s nicest crap to the yard, which was probably less than 50 yards, maybe less from where Tom’s house is. It was by design, but also with the actual junk that the town wanted to remove. They then knocked the house down a little after we shot.

BARING: What does the actual house look like now?

ARI: Because people need places to stay during the summer, and because Tom had very cheap housing at the side of his house, he took on tenants every year. When he died, the tenants who loved him so much stayed to take care of his brother, Milton. They stayed and cleaned the place out. It does not look like the same place, maybe it does a little bit, but they got rid of years’ worth of hoarded junk. I shot a movie there in 2011, that’s how I met Tom, and it was dangerous just to walk in there, you would be like, somebody's gonna lose a limb.

I don’t know what this was, but a couple of days before he died, he was like, “I’m gonna order some dumpsters and clean the place out.” He never got to do it, but at the very end of his life, he was like, I’m gonna do it, which I think is very poetic.

BARING: When people started taking stuff out of his house to transport it to where the film was being shot, did he protest against parting with his things?

ARI: He probably did. There are two things. One, he knew he was gonna get it back, and the other thing was he was very sick right around the time we were filming. I believe he had a stroke, and he was not fully cognisant of what was happening when we were actually shooting.

I will say this was his idea to make this movie. He was the one who bothered me to make it for the longest time. I think he also felt bad that he bailed on letting us use this house. It was a little bit of those two things.

BARING: Do you think it would’ve been possible to make the film if it weren’t his idea?

ARI: It never would’ve occurred to me. I had no interest in the town politics of the Hamptons. That is not what I find interesting. I found him interesting. I loved him a lot, even though a lot of people did not. It was like South Park. He just made fun of literally everybody and was mean to everyone, and he got a pass for it all. Everybody thought he was an asshole, but his intentions were beautiful and clear. He let us shoot in his backyard; he didn’t even ask for money. He had that goodness in him. He may not have been the prettiest book cover, but he lived something that was very genuine.

BARING: The love story is extremely sad. Were there ever times when you were wary of making the film in such close proximity to him and his house? Did you ever think it was potentially too close to home?

ARI: I worried sometimes that he would stop talking to me, because he was very sensitive about his teeth. Other than that, there were no barriers or limits at all. His daughter told me after he passed that he stayed alive for the movie. He almost died in 2020, and she told me he was sticking around so that he could see this happen.

EITAN: He must have had a really bizarre experience. He was sitting on his porch watching the movie of his life.

ARI: Honestly, it was a surreal experience for me just to make it. I can’t imagine what his mind was doing while watching us tell his story and having a bunch of little people just running around, setting up lights.

BARING: Are you guys both still in contact with his daughter, and when did their relationship improve?

ARI: Through the movie. He told her for years, “Uh, they’re making a movie about me.” I think it was his way of being like, I’m virtuous enough for there to be a movie about me, and then he sent her the script, and I think little by little she was like, I guess he’s not BS-ing me.

She called the day after he died and was like, “He was an idiot as a dad, not a bad dad. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he would bring me to the bar so he could pick up chicks.” I was like, “Ooh, Michelle, that’s bad,” And she was like, “But you know, his love language was all twisted,” and I think she really connected with him towards the end.

BARING: Do you ever think you’ll go your separate ways and stop working together?

EITAN: No, never. This was the whole plan.

BARING: As in you’re always gonna work together on each other’s projects.

ARI: Oh, yeah. If he lets me.

EITAN: I’m still trying to get him in the band. I still have a belief that it’s gonna happen. The first class I took at Berklee College of Music, they asked, “What do you wanna do? What is your dream?” I said, “I wanna make music for my brother’s movies.” It’s very exciting to do with Ari, and I think we’ll always do it.

ARI:We’re like the Partridge family. We’re the beach boys.

Tim Blake Nelson and Mireille Enos in On the End

A Powerful Survivor: Tea Hačić-Vlahović On Her Latest Novel 'Give Me Danger'

interview by Summer Bowie
photographs by Cristiano Grim

The structure of the natural and manufactured world may be a nodal web of endless coequal expansion, but if enough people accept a longitudinal hierarchy as their shared reality, mass hysteria ensues, and a social ladder becomes solid enough to climb. Such has been the case since the dawn of human imperialism, and ever since, those of us who can see the undressed emperor have always easily picked one another out in the crowd. I picked journalist and author Tea Hačić-Vlahović out from this crowd the first time I read her work. So, too, did Giancarlo DiTrapano, the late and legendary editor/publisher of Tyrant Books. A beloved champion of young and daring writers, DiTrapano resuscitated an indie lit scene that had been idling on life support for nearly a generation. He saw the hidden potential in writers like Hačić-Vlahović, whose unpolished prose needed just the right amount of elbow grease to elevate their natural patina. It was only a month before he passed in March of 2021 when Tea texted to tell me that he was planning to publish her second novel, A Cigarette Lit Backwards, and that she had incorporated a small anecdote I had shared with her a year earlier. Her third and most recent novel, Give Me Danger, builds on this lived reality, only in this fictionalized version, her lead character Val’s first novel is a lowbrow bestseller, and her dreams of gaining clout in the indie lit scene are dashed by the news of her would-be publisher’s demise. Val struggles to wade through the gatekeeping social climbers who constitute his outer entourage so that she can simply pay her respects, and her experiences navigating the pomp and circumstance of those who consider themselves the cultural elite are a left-of-center mirror reflecting under an alternating strobe of moody and halogen lighting.

BOWIE: The premise of Give Me Danger starts from the real story of Giancarlo DiTrapano [whose name is Luigi in the book], offering to publish A Cigarette Lit Backwards before his untimely death. How was Giancarlo originally introduced to your work, and can you talk about the significance of this lost opportunity?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: So, I sent him my first manuscript, and he passed on it. Being accepted by him—as anyone who follows his legacy or was familiar with him at the time knows—was a big deal. It wasn’t being published with Penguin, but some things matter more than numbers. Why does Taylor Swift hate Charli xcx? Because Taylor’s not cool and she’s never, ever, going to be, no matter how many billions she makes. So, I wanted to describe this feeling in a way that people outside the industry would understand.

With my second novel, I sent Gian the manuscript, and he loved it. He was planning to start his own publishing company, and he was like, “Yours is gonna be one of the few novels I publish this year with my new company.” Sean’s [Thor Conroe] Fuccboi was one of the others he planned to publish. Then, for some reason, there were all these articles about his other authors, but I was left out, and I later found out through various sources that this was a conscious choice made by someone big in PR.

I lived in Italy for a long time, in New York for a very short time, and then moved to LA, so I never got accepted into the New York scene. This book was really written from the perspective of feeling like an outsider.

BOWIE: After living in Milan, you developed a very sizable Italian audience on social media, and I’ve heard you described as an influencer, which is sometimes used against you as an author, but I’ve never seen you use your following to sell anybody else’s products.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: The only thing I ever sell is my own work, but when you have a large following, people like to call you an influencer, which did discredit me a bit in the American publishing world. People were like, “Who is this blonde girl screaming in Italian on her Instagram account? Like, why should we take her seriously as an author?” Now, I’m not blonde anymore, so I think that’s healthy.

BOWIE: Did you attend his memorial? Was that part of the book real?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Yep. About 90% of what happens in this book is based in reality. I was in LA when he passed, and was told by Rachel [Rabbit White] before the news was out. So, I was invited to the memorial and flew out to attend. And a memorial is supposed to bring a community together around a person, but instead, someone physically prevented me from entering the room, then tweeted, “Some people bring out the gatekeeper in me.” To be honest, I’ve never experienced that much clickiness in my life, and I’ve worked in fashion. I’ve organized parties for Dolce & Gabbana and worked backstage at fashion shows in Milano, but none of it compares to the cattiness of the independent publishing industry.

BOWIE: This is part of why I love the rat character in this book. Anyone who follows your Instagram knows you have this strong bond with animals that are traditionally considered pests, like pigeons and rats. Where does that come from?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Yeah, so in my first book, Milano is represented by the pigeons, and my protagonist speaks to the pigeons; they’re really her best friends. The rat in the third book may or may not be the late editor reincarnated—people can decide that for themselves. But people overlook animals like rats and pigeons; animals that you see all around and take for granted. They’re watching you, they’re studying you, they know so much, and you could learn so much from them if you give them a chance. We can find a lot of wisdom through animal companionship.

BOWIE: You also have a very particular way of fictionalizing your friends and various institutions, like magazines, restaurants, bars, and hotels. I’m curious how you approach adapting those real moments that you’ve experienced. What parts do you keep, and what parts do you tend to change?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: The parts that I keep are the ones that are brilliant and teach us lessons. Like, you can go out with your girlfriends, and maybe three hours are the same stories about the same ex-boyfriends. But then, a few genius phrases will pop out that change your life. You might have said something to someone ten years ago, and then they tell you one day that they think about it all the time. Everyone in our lives has these moments of brilliance, and luckily, I’ve got a really good memory, so I retain entire conversations.

I’m lucky to have really funny friends who say iconic things that I can’t take credit for, but I can adapt them into stories. But all writers leech off of the relationships in their lives, and I have only had exes who have been like, “Why did you write me like this?” And I’m always like, “Well, if you wanted to be written better, you should have behaved better.” Because I only ever make people look better than they are. If you’re doing me the great honor and service of being an inspiration in my life, I’m gonna at least do you justice. I never try to just bash someone. Even the quote-unquote villains in my books, including this one, I still always show either how hot they are, or how interesting they are, or why people are so obsessed with them. It’s never one-sided.

I have some regrets, but too few to mention, as Sid Vicious would say. It’s his song, not the other guy’s fucking song.

 

Mur performing at the launch of Give Me Danger

 

BOWIE: There’s an amazing scene of overheards within the lit crowd. Are those all real quotations, or are some of them made up?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: A lot of those are real, or things I’ve said, or I’ve thought. Nothing is completely made up. Even a plotline with a talking animal still comes from something real. It comes from an idea you had while talking to someone real.

BOWIE: I love the rat because there’s this magical realism to it that I’ve never seen you explore before. You once told me you had been holding back in your writing while you were still married. But when I read your books, I wonder what you could possibly be holding back. Were there moments when you would go, Oh, I can’t write that because it will make him uncomfortable?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: It wasn’t necessarily because of him, per se. It was more about being a person whose reputation affects other people, and I was always afraid of embarrassing him. There were things he read in this book, and he was like, “You can’t publish this.” Meanwhile, Will Watkins, my agent at CAA, was like, “This specific part is genius.”

So, I just realized that I should try to not think of the people in my life while I write in that way. I already think about my mother when I write. I’m always afraid she’ll be worried about me. She already told me that when she’s reading my books, she’s like, “I can’t read this. It’s so dark.” I thought A Cigarette Lit Backwards was gonna be a young adult novel. I thought I was writing a book for teenagers. That’s maybe how out of touch I am with what’s normal. Because when I think I’m writing something really sweet, and when I think I’m holding back for other people, I get told it’s too much. So, I don’t know what this next era’s gonna bring now that I’m living alone and I can do whatever I want. I’m almost frightened of it, but maybe it’s gonna be my Russian literature era.

BOWIE: Your parents play such significant roles in A Cigarette Lit Backwards. It’s really a play-by-play of your loss of innocence. Whereas in the first and third novels, your characters are in their twenties and thirties, respectively, and you talk very casually not just about sex, but sexual assault, to the point that it feels like you’ve accepted sexual assault as a normal consequence of being a woman. Would you say that’s more or less a reflection of your tendency to throw caution to the wind?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: I think I share a lot of those experiences with other women, but I can’t take credit for my attitude. It’s a very Balkan attitude. And it’s due to my love of punk rock. I wanted to be Iggy Pop. I always wanted to be Johnny Knoxville when I watched Jackass. I wanted to be my own protagonist, and I just knew that if I lived the way I wanted to, bad things would happen to me. I’m not saying it’s okay or that the world should be violent towards women, but it is. No matter what, the people you love the most are gonna die, or you’re gonna die before them, so you may as well just do what you want in the meantime. I really have lived that way, and I have some regrets, but too few to mention, as Sid Vicious would say. It’s his song, not the other guy’s fucking song.

BOWIE: I’ve always known women who have chosen not to go out because they’re scared to walk alone at night or they don’t want to wear something because they’re afraid it will attract the wrong kind of attention. But I can’t think of a worse consequence than missing out on life because you were too afraid of what might happen.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Oh my god, that’s exactly it. Because, yes, you can experience an act of violence, but you’re violating yourself every single day that you don’t do what you want to do. This hypothetical danger does potentially exist, but they do this to us on purpose. They make us afraid to live.

 

Poet Rachel Rabbit White reading at the launch of Give Me Danger

 

BOWIE: Tell me about this character, Sandboy, and where he comes from.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Okay, so Sandboy is based on a real person. When I was living in Santa Monica, I would skateboard to Venice and back, and he was this boy living on the beach in this sleeping bag by these beautiful houses. He’s this beautiful blonde boy, and we never really talked, but I would give him things sometimes. I loved Sandboy. I used to give him things, and seeing him there every day in the sand was very comforting to me. He and this other drug dealer character are my main character’s best friends in LA. It’s just such an isolating city that the two people you feel closest to might be totally random people who don’t care about you at all. The book is really about ambition and failure and competition, how life fucks you one way or another. So, I wanted to compare his experiences with those of the coastal elite.

BOWIE: I love the way that your character is constantly the one feeling rejected by him, versus the other way around. In your books and your real life, you’re constantly exhibiting a certain socioeconomic code-switching because you grew up outside of these elitist industries, but you float in and out of them. You can dress and act the part to a certain degree, but you have an unwavering empathy for those who are intentionally kept out.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Being an immigrant my whole life helped me with this. I was an immigrant as a kid, going to America with my family, but then I moved to Italy as a college kid, and now I don’t belong anywhere. I’m an outsider with the poor punks, and I’m an outsider with the rich cunts in the fashion world, and so there’s a freedom to that, like the freedom that Sandboy has.

BOWIE: Speaking of freedom, how has being divorced changed your approach to writing?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Honestly, having more free time is its own challenge. Before, I only had so much time alone, and I’d really shove it all in when I could. Aside from the actual devastation and heartbreak, being divorced is, at first, like being a kid on Christmas, when you can eat cereal all day and watch cartoons. But then, after a while, the cartoons make your head hurt, and the cereal hurts your stomach, and you need to be your own husband. Just like my dog makes sure that I leave the house at least three times a day to walk her, I have to make sure I have a good writing schedule. But aside from the scheduling, I have so much more pain to draw from now, and if the mood strikes me, I can write through the night, and no one’s bothered. I’m still learning how to inhabit my new life, though.

We should all be lifting each other up, like Rose, it’s time to let Jack on the raft with you, bitch.

BOWIE: One of the last times we spoke, you were like, “I forgot that I have a whole fan base out here and that life is much easier than it is in LA.” What’s that been like?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Aside from being a bit of a local celebrity (laughs), it’s just more humane here. Not to mention the fact that I’ve already gone to the emergency room and had a bill of zero dollars. And aside from the fact that you can walk everywhere, and Los Angeles has one cafe [Figuero Cafe] that’s cosplaying European life, where you can sit down and watch the highway, and you have to walk down the block if you want to smoke your cigarette.

I moved into this apartment in June, and since then, all the places that I walk into where nobody knew me before, like the tabaccheria or my local bar where I go to use the wifi and steal the toilet paper, every single person that works at these places remembers my name. I see them do it with other people too. And I know for a fact that if my toilet exploded, I could run to the kebab place and one of the guys would help me. After seven years in LA, I never had that. And I feel like New York is the height of that level of people being in their own little moving silos.

BOWIE: This coterie of writers and writer-adjacent people that you portray in the book is so emblematic of a very particular corner of New York cool kid culture.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: There’s this mentality of you can only survive by making sure others don’t. Whereas here, you can only survive if everyone else does. Of course, I’m exaggerating and generalizing, and there are exceptions to everything. But being an outsider and never having been accepted into that particular group in New York has actually given me the freedom and obligation to share the truth about how unkind it is, and on no basis aside from the desire to maintain this arbitrary sense of I’m better than you-ness that usually comes from family lineage or private schooling or other forms of privilege. These seem like old-world traditions that should be outdated, considering how all of these industries are drowning. We should all be lifting each other up, like Rose, it’s time to let Jack on the raft with you, bitch.

BOWIE: You write from this very personal experience that sometimes problematizes your aspiration to be accepted in certain circles, which are known for a very controlled self-mythologizing and curation of identity, but you’re very steadfast in your honesty and self-deprecation. Most people’s approach to securing their place in those circles is one of hiding all that could be interpreted as unflattering.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: I try to be very fair with all of my characters. Val has this moment at the beginning of the book where she’s describing the feeling of coming from absence and having ascended to a certain level of wealth, and being embarrassed by it. Whenever she’s around the help, she wants the maids and the valet people to know that she’s still one of them at heart. I love the high and the low. I don’t like what’s in the middle as much, who does, you know? But there’s beauty and sadness in both, and I’m really lucky that I know both, because I can’t imagine coming from a purely privileged mentality. People who are less privileged are more generous with their money because they know what it’s like to be in need. Meanwhile, a lot of really wealthy people I know are so stingy, they make you Venmo them for a potato chip because they feel like money is all they have, so they don’t want to give it up.

BOWIE: It’s also worth mentioning that coming from outside of these worlds gives you a perspective that appeals to people outside of the shrinking, inbred readership that is desperately in need of new voices and ears.

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Exactly. If you’re already in the room and have been since you were a kid, you’re not going to notice the same things that someone who’s in that room for the first time would. Somebody did deliberately keep me out of the conversation. I will also say that it is in poor taste to be mean to people. It’s in poor taste to be mean to people who have never merited that behavior. It’s in poor taste to want to maintain the culture of bullying and exclusivity. If someone wants to say it’s in poor taste to write about Giancarlo’s legacy, I will say that his best friend, Catherine, and his husband, Giuseppe, are the ones who championed it and gave me the residency to do so.

BOWIE: What was it like at the residency?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: Oh my god. I didn’t have the residency with other artists. I was the first-ever director’s guest, as they called it, and they invited me to stay alone in the casetta where Giancarlo stayed. The main house was empty, and I would just go there to use the kitchen or connect to wifi. But it was in the middle of nowhere, in this old kind of castle.

Everyone warned me that it was haunted, and I kind of went out of my mind during that visit. Giuseppe would sometimes come for a day or two, or this construction guy would come and bring me croissants sometimes, but otherwise, I never saw anyone. I’d spend all day seeing weird, distorted faces in the mirrors while I was trying to work, and I’d drink a bottle of wine by myself just to get through it. I’d go to sleep as soon as it got dark at like 7 PM, and I’d wake up at dawn just to avoid the darkness.

I would open my Instagram—and my algorithm is gay as shit, it’s just beautiful girls doing makeup tutorials and animals—but while I was there, my algorithm got creepy. I would open my discover page, and it was all gory, weird fucking haunted shit. Maybe because my phone overheard me telling my friends and my mom how scared I was, but the book is way better because I was there to finish it.

BOWIE: What do you think Giancarlo saw in your work that wasn’t immediately apparent to his outer circle?

HAČIĆ-VLAHOVIĆ: He always rooted for the underdogs. At one point, he said he was only going to publish unsigned authors, and it made everyone go crazy. He just saw the beauty that other people overlooked and took what others considered lowbrow and turned it highbrow. That’s why there’s a rat in this book that potentially represents his spirit. A rat is overlooked because you have to look down to see it; it’s a powerful survivor. It’s the coolest animal there is, and Giancarlo would see the beauty in a rat. And I’ve always looked down. Like, I love the Duomo, but what about all the pigeons shitting around it? They’re the ones making it special.

Give Me Danger was published by Clash Books. All photographs were taken at the November 4 launch at LULLABY bar in New York

 
 

The Choreography of Posting Online: Read an Interview of Maya Man

 

Photo by Charlotte Ercoli

 

interview by Emma Grimes

Maya Man is a New York-based digital artist whose work probes the changing landscape of identity, femininity, and authenticity in online and offline culture. Through websites, code, and generative AI projects, she explores how we perform ourselves in digital environments.

One of her signature projects is Glance Back, a browser extension that randomly takes a photo of users on their computers every day. Created in 2018, the project archives what Man calls “the moments shared between you and your computer,” turning everyday encounters with our devices into a digital diary. She is also the creator of FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT, a coffee-table book that compiles her generative artworks styled after the glossy and aesthetically pleasing graphics and phrases commonly found on Instagram.

Central to her practice are questions of authenticity and performance: what does it mean to perform and post on the internet today? Is performance inherently corrosive or just another facet of human expression? For Man, she tackles these questions with thoughtful nuance.

Her latest project, StarQuest, is a solo-exhibition currently on view at Feral File. Drawing on her own childhood as a competitive dancer, Man uses generative AI to restage the choreography and interpersonal dramas of the cult reality series Dance Moms.

EMMA GRIMES: You’re interested in how we perform ourselves online. Where did that fascination begin?

MAYA MAN: I’ve been interested in self-presentation online for as long as I can remember. I have always felt uncomfortable about posting, but continued to post anyway. I started to realize when I was younger—in middle school and high school—how dramatically what I was consuming online affected my sense of self.

GRIMES: Which artists have most shaped your approach?

MAN: I’m really influenced by a few different movements. The first are artists who have used the computer as a tool, including Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar. Also, the net.art movement in the ’90s and the early 2000s, when a lot of artists were creating websites as art objects and thinking about what it meant to be able to distribute work in a networked way. I am very moved by the work of Olia Lialina, JODI, and Auriea Harvey. One artist I really admire is Lynn Hershman Leeson, who was making work in the ’60s and ’70s about the performance of identity. And artists like Ann Hirsch or Molly Soda, who also were thinking about performing gender online. Cory Arcangel’s work has been important for me because he shares an interest in both pop culture and code. I’ve always felt that I exist between these two worlds. There are artists who write code and use software as a medium that I resonate with, but a lot of the work—these are generalizations—tends to be more abstract or geometric, or more formally driven. Then there’s artists who are really thinking about performance online that I feel conceptually tied to, but less often they’re writing custom code or as interested in using generative tools.

GRIMES: What does a typical day in your studio look like?

MAN: A realistic day in my life. (laughs) If I’m being really honest, I work best at night. If I’m really working on something, I’m likely making it between the hours of 8 PM and 3 AM. I always wish I was different, but that’s how I am. I come to the studio quite religiously, almost every day. I am very lucky to have this beautiful, large space in SoHo, but I spend most of my time in one corner on my computer with my monitor. It’s a lot of clicking around, and it’s different every day. I could be in the early days of researching a work, I’m asking myself, what’s the best way to build it or what tools make sense for this system, etc. More recently, I’ve been working on an AI-video-based work that required a lot of research before deciding on the right methodology. There’s a lot of research, there’s the studio work, and there’s a lot of administrative work too. And it almost all happens on my laptop. 

GRIMES: How do you think of authenticity? Do you think we’re ever not performing?

MAN: My philosophy of authenticity is that it doesn’t exist in the way people wish it did. I don’t believe it’s possible to perform in a way that’s authentic. People will say, I just post for myself, which is a lie. They say that because they feel it’s morally better to be that way, and I really disagree with that. It’s okay to feel like you’re performing and even want to perform a bit. That’s not evil. It’s a condition of living. I’ve adopted a [Erving] Goffman-esque philosophy of performance online. Everything is a performance. Goffman was writing before the internet, so he is talking about socializing in general, which I also think is true. It’s been kind of freeing for me to subscribe to this notion that authenticity does not exist.

GRIMES: How has your relationship with social media shifted over the years?

MAN: I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past year. There’s a general sentiment that social media has gotten a lot worse. I call it the “LinkedIn-ification” of Instagram. My relationship with social media is really quite professional at this point. That wasn’t true when I was twelve. I was just posting whatever. Posting feels like such a large and weighted act now.

GRIMES: In your essay about the story behind your recent lecture and video performance on Dance Moms, you compared the choreography of competitive dance to posting on social media. Can you expand on that?

MAN: I’m very excited to talk about this. It feels like a strange homecoming for me, almost, because I grew up as a competition dancer. I grew up in central Pennsylvania. Dance Moms takes place in Pennsylvania. I realized that the mechanics of the competition dance ecosystem, training in the studio, performing at competitions, then being ranked and judged, are very quantified. You’re getting data as feedback. It’s such a perfect analogy for what it feels like to perform on social media. I’ve been thinking about Instagram etiquette as a type of choreography that you learn by being on the platform. There’s what to do and what not to do. Everyone accepts that and mostly operates within those boundaries. Those who are the best at it have the most followers and likes. They understand the system. They’re able to execute a certain choreography of posting that’s rewarded in that system. 

Man in her studio

GRIMES: I’m sure you came across the Harper’s piece a couple years ago by Barrett Swanson about the TikTok clubhouses—

MAN: Yes, that piece was so major for me. I remember reading it so vividly.

GRIMES: He wrote that we’re “cheerfully indentured” to posting online. Obviously, this was published a couple years ago because I thought, well, we’re definitely still indentured, but I don’t know if it’s so cheerful.

MAN: I think the sentiment has changed radically post-pandemic. I don’t feel like it’s very cheerful. It feels quite obligatory and business-oriented.

GRIMES: You’ve written about John Berger’s idea of the “surveyor” and the “surveyed,” which reminds me of a moment from The D’Amelio Show when Quen Blackwell, another creator, was discussing the camera and said, “It’s a third person that’s not existed to any other generation.”

MAN: I thought that moment was shocking in the show. The Berger quote is like “a woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself,” which implies this third person. And Quen, on The D’Amelio Show, just perfectly articulated that. That’s what social media platforms online create—this sense of a third person that isn’t anyone so specific, but it’s this implication of surveillance, that people are seeing you. I used to feel like there was something wrong with me because I felt like that all the time. Reading [Berger] and others has helped me figure out how to operate within that structure rather than try to escape it fully.

GRIMES: It’s a new condition to being online, but I also wonder if it’s also a new way of being human and of perceiving ourselves, of constantly being fragmented as a person.

MAN: Do you know the book series The Confessions of a Shopaholic? This has stuck with me since I read it when I was probably twelve. There’s a way the protagonist talks, like she’s shopping in a store and says things like, “Imagine, I get this red jacket and everyone will see me wearing my red jacket and will think, oh, there goes the woman with the red jacket.” This process of latching onto something and imagining others associating it with you, and that association strengthening your character or positive perception in other people’s eyes. Posting is all about that. It’s like, Oh, what if I posted this photo of a ribbon on the ground on the sidewalk? Then everyone’s gonna think, she’s the kind of person who would post this photo. I find it fascinating. It’s so much of what identity actually is. So much of what I would tell someone about my identity are things external to me, things that I have decided to attach to myself. For example, the artists I mentioned at the beginning of this interview. I want people to understand that I identify with them, and this will create this collage of me. But, it’s all very malleable. 

GRIMES: Do you think it’s possible to disrupt the self-surveillance that these systems—social media, competitive dance, even the experience of growing up as a girl—produce?

MAN: This has been an experience—a very feminine-coded experience—that young girls have known for a very long time. Social media exacerbates that feeling of being watched, but it’s not necessarily the source of it. The source is the way that gender is performed and conditioned in culture. I don’t have delusions about escaping it or ending it. But there’s a certain level of awareness of it that was freeing for me. Also, I think there’s a tendency for artists’ work to be read in a black-and-white way. I’m making work about competition dance culture because I have criticism of it. At the same time, being a competition dancer shaped me in a million positive ways. It taught me so much about friendship, discipline, and being in public and performing in a way that was valuable to me. It’s complicated. 

GRIMES: You recently debuted your piece and performance-lecture, StarQuest, in New York City. Can you talk about the project and that experience?

StarQuest, my new competition dance-focused series produced with generative AI, just had its first public premiere as a one-night installation and performance lecture co-presented by Triple Canopy and Feral File at Gibney, a dance studio downtown. It was my dream way to introduce this work, as both a site-specific installation and performance-lecture that walks through the piece’s many different elements: AI-generated video, competition dance, online performance, and the instability of “reality” today. The performance-lecture aspect was important to me because it requires the attention and presence of an audience which is difficult to capture sometimes when making browser-based work. It mixes a traditional lecture format, with choreographed slides, with staging and movement. I perform the TikTok dance renegade three times in it. 

GRIMES: Lastly, what keeps you inspired every day?

MAN: Every day, I walk to my studio in SoHo from my apartment in Chinatown. I walk past a lot of tourist shops, and they have all these keychains, colorful shirts, and snow globes. They’re all just about loving New York. They’re about someone visiting New York and thinking, Wow, it’s New York, and then buying that to take home with them. It’s a bunch of mass-produced, cheap objects that represent something very endearing to me, which is loving and being so happy to be in New York City, and wanting to express that through an object. I find it very moving.

A Place To Call Home: An Interview Of Gallerist & Editor Oyinkansola Dada

An image of Oyinkansola Dada at the launch of DADA gallery.

Sahara Longe: Deceit, 2025 | Green and purple nude, 2025

interview by Lola Titilayo
photography by Adedamola

Sitting at the intersection of art, culture and fashion, Oyinkansola Dada is a multidimensional creative force. Trained as a lawyer but driven by a deep commitment to storytelling and cultural awareness, she has become one of the most dynamic connectors of artists across the African diaspora. As the founder of Dada Gallery, DADA Magazine, and the style-driven cultural phenomenon Lagos Is Burning, she has built a community that uplifts emerging voices while redefining how contemporary African creativity is seen and celebrated. With the recent opening of her first permanent gallery space in Lagos, Dada continues to shape the continent’s cultural landscape; promoting authenticity and creating spaces where African art and identity can thrive globally.

LOLA TITILAYO: You began your journey as a corporate lawyer in London and later made the bold decision to transition into the art world by opening a physical gallery space in Lagos. Can you walk us through that journey? What inspired you to take this leap?

OYINKANSOLA DADA: I just felt like it was the right time to do so, and for the past couple of years, I've been essentially experimenting, trying to figure out how to position myself within the art world. A lot of galleries open so quickly, and they shut down quite quickly as well, and I think that’s because they haven’t really given themselves ample time to figure out what type of programming they want to represent: what type of works they want to show, what kind of artists, what their voice is. For me, the seven years of balancing both careers has given me the opportunity to really figure out where I want us to be, and it happened at the perfect time. It was just a gut instinct to make this leap now.

The conversation pit at DADA gallery, Lagos.

Yagazie Emezi: Homecoming 2024

TITILAYO: You’ve spoken about using art as a way to build community and connect people around the world. What does “community” mean to you in the context of your gallery, especially operating between London and Lagos? And how do you see your role as a connector?

DADA: For me, it’s really about creating a space where people can come in and not just engage with art, but also engage with like-minded people. This will be reflected in the quality of programming we put on and in the types of shows that we do. We’re going to have a library in the space as well; it’s not a huge one, but it’s something that encourages people to stay. Even in the way we’ve built the gallery, we have a conversation pit that really encourages people to sit down and take a minute.

Combining all of this, I really want to create a sense of home when people come into the space, because we don’t have many third spaces in Nigeria, and it’s nice to have somewhere where you’re seeing thought-provoking art that makes you feel excited to be there.

We have the gallery, and we also have the art club; these are ways in which we engage this idea of community. With the art club, we’re going to keep doing different events across the world, not just in Lagos; it’ll also be in London and New York, activating different spaces. For me, it’s about connecting people who are interested in artists from the Black diaspora and people who are interested in new ideas.

Artwork in the background by yagazi emezi

Yagazie Emezi: Homecoming 2024

TITILAYO: Many galleries focus purely on commercial activity, but yours places a strong emphasis on African art and diasporic creative practices. How do you balance the commercial realities of running a gallery with the mission-driven side of elevating underrepresented artists and stories.

DADA: They’re not separate things. We still primarily show a lot of paintings and sculptures; we show a lot of art that you can sell, so there’s still commercial viability. A good gallery has a balance of that, but also has space for things that are more experimental, things you can’t quite make money from but that add to the gallery’s reputation and still bring people into the space. You might not necessarily make any money from it, but there are other ways to make money as well, which I think galleries should explore. There are ways of working with brands or different partners that don’t always rely on the individual collector. How do we look at art outside of the individual collector? How do we capture mass audiences?

TITILAYO: What were some of the key challenges you faced when opening a physical space in Lagos, and conversely, what advantages do you see for artists and collectors in Nigeria that are unique?

DADA: As with everything that has to do with Nigeria, there’s a lot of chasing, a lot of back and forth; doing business here is not always straightforward. At the same time, there’s a lot of opportunity because we can focus on nurturing talent and bringing high-quality art into the ecosystem. It’s about centering Lagos as a place for convergence and community, bringing international artists to Lagos, which I think is important, while also creating a platform where they can exchange ideas with people in the city. I think that creates a nice synergy, because the city is not only learning, but it’s taking and giving at the same time. Being able to create that is really special.

That’s also what informed our inaugural exhibition, which brings together artists from the Black diaspora, Brazil, Austria, the United Kingdom, and America. Bringing all these artists together, artists who otherwise might not have met or who have never even been to Lagos, there’s something really powerful about that. We’re really activating the city in that way.

A painting of a black woman by Sahara Longe

Sahara Longe: Green and purple nude, 2025

TITILAYO: In July, DADA gallery collaborated with Gabriel Moses on his Saleh exhibition tour. Could you tell us how that project came about, what made it special, and how it reflects in your broader vision for art and culture?

DADA: So we did a tour with him that was called DADA. What we do with the club is, for artists that I like and that I know people are interested in, I reach out to them and ask them to host us. We create a space for people to not only meet each other but also to meet the artist. In terms of why I chose him for the art club, it was because Gabriel Moses is such an incredible artist, and he’s doing some of the most culturally relevant work. For such a young artist, the breadth of his work is huge, and I thought it would be great to have people experience that.

TITILAYO: Looking ahead, what are you most excited for and how do you see the gallery evolving in the coming years?

DADA: I’m most excited to just have the permanent physical space. It’s so powerful; there’s so much you can do. Although the pop-up model was freeing, it was also limiting at the same time. There’s nothing like having a place to call home, to continue doing your program, and to really contribute to the city. I’m very excited to host some incredible artists in Lagos and help nurture talent in the city as well. I’m also very excited about the kind of programming we can do; the vision is so broad that the sky is the limit for what we can do with the Lagos space. I’m very excited for new beginnings and the next chapter, ready to go headfirst and see what we can do. 

TITILAYO: For emerging artists or creative entrepreneurs who might be debating a big pivot like the one you took; from a stable profession into the art-world risk, what advice would you give them? What mindset, habits, or strategies helped you navigate that transition successfully?

DADA: Take your time. I think it’s very important to be practical in terms of money and your plan. For me, because I was able to experiment and test out ideas while I had a stable full-time job, it really gave me a lot of data that I could use. Not everyone can do that, but if you can start while you’re still working, that’s very good because then you know what you’re getting into.

Being patient and actually committing the time, everything takes sacrifices. You have to be ready to do that and be patient with yourself as well. There were times when I was working and I just felt like I was doing nothing or felt like I wasn’t doing enough, but that’s part of the process, really. When it’s time, you’ll know, but you really need to not be afraid. Listen to yourself, really.

TITILAYO: To wrap up, who are some artists you’re currently excited about or inspired by?

DADA: There are some really incredible artists, both in Africa and outside of Africa, that we’re excited to work with. The artist for the opening exhibition, Sahara Longe, is an incredible painter I’ve been following for years, so we’re really honored to have her. Silvanah Mendes, Larissa de Souza, these are artists we’ve announced for the exhibition. We’re looking forward to discovering new talent, as well as working with already established artists.

set of three artworks by Taylor Simmons

Taylor Simmons. | Holding, 2023 | Patron, 2023 | Black man fashion, 2023.

Rebirth on an Island: On Light, Time, and Space with Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori: Radiance at Sean Kelly, New York, October 31 – December 20, 2025, Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

interview by Alper Kurtul

Tokyo’s energy, New York’s boundless creativity, and Miyako Island’s quiet, almost womb-like protective nature. Japanese artist Mariko Mori redefines light, time, and space as she moves between these different worlds. Her latest project, Radiance, brings together ancient stone spirituality and advanced technology to make the invisible visible. Her self-designed home, Yuputira, which she dedicates to the sun god, is not merely a living space for her; it is the architecture of becoming one with nature. Ahead of her upcoming retrospective, Mori shares with us both the source of her creativity and the enduring meaning of silence in the contemporary world.

ALPER KURTUL: I’d love to begin with Radiance. It’s such a luminous project, both visually and conceptually. Radiance brings together ancient stone spirituality and advanced materials. What first drew you to connect the sacred and the scientific in one visual language?

MARIKO MORI: Yes, these ancient stones, which we can call divine stones, are believed to be landing stones of nature gods, or sometimes the gods themselves live within them. This tradition started during the Jōmon era, probably around 1500 BC, but it developed further during the Kofun period, between the 5th and 7th centuries. Even today, people still worship these divine stones.

Instead of focusing on the physicality of the stone, I wanted to interpret the existence of this divine stone, making the invisible visible. To do that, I used a medium that could project the feeling of the stone’s metaphysical aspect rather than its physical one.

Mariko Mori, Unity VIII, 2024

KURTUL: I was also reading about Yuputira. How does inhabiting a space you designed change your daily relationship with light and creation?

MORI: Yes, it was my dream for about fifteen years. It truly was a dream come true, something I had long envisioned. Producing it was such a joy because it was like bringing a wish into reality. I also enjoyed collaborating with different craftsmen. It was exciting to use technology to create forms that were not possible fifty years ago. It was worth the wait because now we have 3D printing and new tools. I probably made around 30 different models of the house. It was really fun to do.

At first, I felt a little pressure to produce truly great work from that studio, but I began to enjoy being there because it represented my vision of heaven on Earth, together with nature, a feeling of oneness with it. Every day, you witness the passage of time, moment to moment, as nature changes, the sea’s low tide and high tide, the sky’s shifting colors. It is endlessly changing, never the same.

The beauty of nature made a huge impact on me and really opened my mind toward it. I do feel quite isolated because it is remote, like living in my own bubble, but I also feel protected and nurtured by nature. I love it there and never want to leave, but I have to work, so I cannot stay for long periods. I go back and forth and try to spend as much time as I can. It is really like heaven on Earth for me.

KURTUL: It feels like an inspirational place for you, and also a very personal one. Is that feeling of being nurtured a source of inspiration? 

MORI: Yes, very much so. The village I belong to is quite far away, but still part of that community, and it has a beautiful sacred site that I often visit. It is very powerful. The island itself is deeply rooted in this culture, with around 500 sacred sites where about 70,000 people live. The rituals have been passed down since the 13th century and continue today.

 

Mariko Mori, Oshito Stone III, 2025

 

KURTUL: I also love how you ground your architectural works in mythology. Yuputira was inspired by the island’s sun god, and I’m curious about how that divine symbolism shapes the way you perceive time, solitude, and renewal in your life as an artist.

MORI: Yes, it is my way to honor the local culture. Unfortunately, even though some areas continue to perform these rituals, the village I belong to no longer practices them. I was afraid this important tradition might disappear, because those names are preserved in songs. During the rituals, people would pray and sing these songs, but since no one performs them anymore, they risk being lost.

Therefore, I wanted to honor the local sun god, which is why I named the house Yuputira. The meaning is also important: yupu means indulgence or richness, and tira means sun. So, it means “rich sun,” symbolizing the sun that gives harvest. People were wishing for abundance from the sun, which I believe is why they named it that way. I wanted this place to receive the energy of the sun and evoke a feeling of fulfillment.

I also designed the openings of the windows to directly respond to the sun’s path. I wanted this architecture to honor the sun.

 

Mariko Mori, Kamitate Stone I, 2025

 

KURTUL: The stones in Radiance feel alive. They seem to hold something ancient but almost futuristic as well. What kind of presence or silence do you think stones still carry in a world ruled by technology?

MORI: When you stand in front of these sacred stones, you feel a very heavy physical presence. But I imagined that these stones are full of light, perhaps connected to the world of light and receiving the light within. That was my imagination when I visited many sacred sites. It felt universal to all divine stones.

It was my way to visualize the metaphysical feeling of the stone. I was able to do that through new technology. Even though the material is physical, I try to transform something that you cannot see within the real stone.

KURTUL: You also have a major retrospective coming up. What excites you most about seeing your work interpreted through Alexandra Munroe and Mami Kataoka, through these two distinct curatorial lenses?

MORI: Alexandra Munroe has a very deep understanding of Japanese contemporary art history, and not only of the philosophical background of Japan, such as Buddhism and Shintoism, but also of the international art community through the Guggenheim. That balance is very exciting.

Mami, coming from Japan, has more insight from within and a deep knowledge of contemporary art from around the world, both Western and Eastern. They are in the same field but have different strengths. I feel very privileged to have these two strong curators bringing together this retrospective. I am very excited about it. Through them, I hope to reach not only the art world but also a broader audience.

KURTUL: The collaboration between the Mori Art Museum and the Guggenheim feels like a genuine dialogue between East and West. What do you hope this partnership communicates about Japanese spirituality in a global art context?

MORI: I cannot really speak for them, as we are still developing and collaborating. The structure of the exhibition is mostly complete, but we still have to work on the details. I am looking forward to having more conversations with them. It is truly joyful work.

 

Mariko Mori, Love II, 2025

 

KURTUL: Your trajectory from the futuristic to the spiritual is fascinating. What inner or creative shift led you from posthuman cyborg imagery to meditative installations?

MORI: When I was producing Esoteric Cosmos, I visited all the sites and photographed the backdrops myself. At that time, Photoshop did not exist; there was no AI or digital editing. I had to travel physically with a photographer to capture the backgrounds. I visited the Painted Desert in Arizona, the Dead Sea in Israel, and Turpan in China, seeking landscapes that matched my vision.

While visiting these places, I was confronted with vast, powerful, and overwhelming nature, especially in the Painted Desert. At the same time, Esoteric Cosmos was about the iconography of esoteric Buddhism, so I was studying Buddhism deeply. Both experiences—the philosophical study and the direct encounter with immense nature—happened in parallel and opened my mind. They led me to a deeper exploration of Buddhism and to the spiritual dimension that began to inform my later works.

KURTUL: The parallel between your study of Buddhism and your encounters with nature really opened my mind, too. Your installations also evoke strong emotional responses. What role does emptiness play in how you design these environments? I feel like your installations make people feel rather than just observe.

MORI: When you are full, you cannot conceive. But when you are empty, you have limitless space. When your mind is full of many things, it becomes a closed world. But when your mind is empty, you are suddenly connected to the whole world. You open up to limitless space and endless time. That is the symbolism of void and emptiness that I learned from Buddhist philosophy.

That is why, in Yuputira, I have quite empty rooms. They open up to unlimited possibilities.

KURTUL: You divide your time between such diverse energies, like Tokyo, New York, and Miyako Island. How do these environments feed or challenge your spiritual and creative practice?

MORI: I would say New York and Miyako Island are complete opposites. It is almost like going from hot to cold, two extremes. In New York, there is so much energy from people. The people are very engaging, and that creates an amazing kind of energy, intellectually and culturally, with people from all over the world. It is a very dynamic mix, and it is wonderful.

Since I first came to New York in 1992, I have always been encouraged to do what seems impossible. There is no other place in the world that inspires you to challenge yourself in that way. I love this attitude of pushing limits.

Meanwhile, in Miyako Island, I feel nurtured by nature, almost like being in a mother’s womb, very protected. In New York, it is like being whipped, and in Miyako Island, it is like being soothed with sugar. They are opposites, but for me, it is a necessary balance. New York expects you to give — to have energy, ideas, and creativity to share. Miyako Island gives that energy back. I feel completely recharged there and ready to return to New York.

KURTUL: Yes, and decharged here in New York as well.
MORI: Yes. I am also encouraged by the people in New York. I dream here, and then I go back to Miyako Island to execute those dreams.

KURTUL: Finally, Radiance feels like both a culmination and a new beginning. If Radiance marks a turning point before the retrospective, what do you feel you are radiating toward next, both personally and artistically?

MORI: I would like to project hope. We hear so much news about uncertainty in society, and people may develop fear, but we must always keep hope and project the future. I hope this exhibition encourages people to project light toward the future. I wish that when people come to see the exhibition, they find their own inner light to carry forward.

In Dialogue with the Present: Read an Interview of Designer Ying Gao

Mirrors collection menswear and womenswear

All Mirrors Collection. Photography by Malina Corpadean.

interview by Lola Titilayo

What happens when couture meets code? Montréal-based fashion designer Ying Gao is recognized for consistently pushing the boundaries of fashion through her exploration of fabric manipulation, interactivity, and technology. The use of unconventional materials to make wearable art is prominent in her work, as evidenced in her All Mirrors 2024 collection, made of soft mirrors and 18-karat gold finishing. In 2023, her In Camera collection experimented with reactivity in fashion design by coming to life when photographed. Even as early as 2017, she made waves with interactive fingerprint technology that only recognizes strangers in her Possible Tomorrows collection. The infusion of technology in her work adds a sense of movement and interaction that captivates audiences, and each collection has a special story to tell.

From fashion design to lecturing at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Ying Gao has had an incredibly extensive career already. She also served as head of the fashion, jewelry, and accessories design program at HEAD Genève from 2013 to 2015 and has presented her creative work in over 100 exhibitions around the world with 16 official collections.

LOLA TITILAYO: You’ve developed a unique practice at the intersection of fashion, technology, and philosophy. Could you share how your journey began; where you come from, and how your experiences and background have influenced your fascination with design and innovation?

YING GAO: My path has always been shaped by displacement, between countries, languages, and systems of thought. I grew up between Switzerland and China, between different structures and imagination, in places where order mattered as much as invention. When I discovered fashion, I didn’t see it as an industry, but as a medium for reflection—a way to question materiality and identity. Technology entered naturally, not as a tool of progress but as a means to disturb perception. Montréal, where I live and work now, offers the right distance from the fashion capitals and the freedom to think differently. Here, experimentation is not only tolerated; it is expected.

TITILAYO: Let’s dive into your new work, Charlotte and Everybody Else [2025]. This collection explores faces that don’t exist in the real world, yet seem real enough to deceive recognition systems. What draws you to this boundary between the real and the artificial?

GAO: This work began with a simple question: What if we could create a face that belongs to no one, yet seems entirely plausible? A face that could trick not only a machine, but our own empathy. We live surrounded by systems that authenticate, verify, and categorize. Charlotte and Everybody Else is a reversal of that process; it fabricates illusion until illusion becomes credible. What attracts me is the tension between intimacy and fiction. These faces are ghosts of data, assembled by an algorithm, yet they awaken something human. They are both mirror and mask. I am interested in that brief moment of uncertainty, when recognition collapses, when the image stops being someone and becomes everyone.

Collection exploring facial recognition systems

Charlotte and Everybody Else. Photography byVincent René Lortie

TITILAYO: This piece is both a critique and a product of algorithmic potential; is technology an ally to you? An adversary, or something in between?

GAO: Technology is neither an ally nor an adversary. It is a medium, a mirror of our collective anxieties and desires. I treat it as a collaborator that resists simplification. It amplifies fragility, exposes our need for control, and sometimes reveals the absurdity of our own systems. When it fails, it becomes poetic. I am interested in this instability, where the machine is not simply an extension of human intention, but an autonomous presence capable of contradiction and failures.

TITILAYO: Fashion often revolves around the idea of creativity and self-expression, while algorithms are more rigid. How do you reconcile these opposing impulses in your work?

GAO: I don’t see them as opposites. Both fashion and algorithms rely on structure, rules, and patterns. What differs is intention. In my work, I let the algorithm introduce resistance into the creative process. It becomes a partner that generates complexity rather than predictability. The garment, in turn, negotiates between intuition and logic. The result is rather a tension.

TITILAYO: Can you talk about the specific technologies used in this project? For example, how do the faces ripple in response to the authentication system?

GAO: The project combines an identification protocol with a responsive surface system. Actuators and translucent composites translate digital uncertainty into physical movement. When the authentication process detects an anomaly, the signal triggers a subtle ripple across the facial surface, a gesture both mechanical and algorithmic. The movement is minimal, but it reveals the system’s doubt, materializing the space between data and uncertainty. The faces do not imitate life; they render visible the fragility of verification itself.

TITILAYO: In your 2024 collection, All Mirrors, you reference Umberto Eco’s idea that “mirrors provide both an impression of virtuality and an impression of reality.” How did you interpret that duality in your work?

GAO: A mirror is always ambiguous; it confirms presence while creating distance. In All Mirrors, I wanted to design garments that behave like mirrors: reflective but porous, tangible yet elusive. They don’t simply return an image; they question it. What you see is never exactly what is there. For me, that duality echoes the way we navigate identity today, oscillating between visibility and erasure, reality and simulation.

 
Mirrors collection menswear

All Mirrors Collection. Photography by Malina Corpadean.

 

TITILAYO: Still on your All Mirrors collection, how do you balance texture, motion, and functionality in your designs?

GAO: These elements form an “ensemble” rather than a hierarchy. Texture is what seduces, motion introduces time, functionality brings everything back to the body. I work with materials that retain a memory of movement, such as soft robotics, as well as reflective and flexible composites. The challenge is to create garments that remain unstable; tactile yet unpredictable.

TITILAYO: To what extent does being based in Montréal shape your perspective on design and technology in your work?

GAO: Being based in Montréal matters deeply. It is not a neutral location; it’s a city between languages, between speeds. I live and think in French, then in English, and in Chinese. This gives a different rhythm to the way I approach design. The French language carries nuance and delay. To me, it resists immediacy. That affects how I build a project, how I let an idea unfold. Montréal is a bilingual city, but for me, it remains profoundly francophone in its sensibility: curious, critical, open, and slightly detached from global acceleration. It’s not a city of excess; it’s a city of negotiation, of hybrid systems. That context allows me to work in the pauses and the intervals. It keeps me alert, and perhaps a little out of step, which I value.

TITILAYO: You’re also a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. How has teaching influenced your creative practice, and what subjects do you focus on with your students?

GAO: Teaching keeps me in dialogue with the present. My students move through an excess of images and information, yet they search for meaning within it. Watching how they make sense of this noise forces me to question my own pace. It’s a reciprocal process; their way of seeing redefines mine, and that exchange keeps the work intellectually alive. I teach fashion design in a broad sense, less about trend or style, more about influence and context. We talk about literature, film, and politics as much as about garments, because fashion is always a reflection of its time, its fears, and its desires. What I try to transmit is curiosity and a certain freedom of thought. I want them to see beyond their screens, to connect form with meaning. Teaching reminds me that fashion design should be a social act before it becomes an aesthetic one.

TITILAYO: Do the students inform or challenge your creative process?

GAO: Absolutely. My students question a lot of things, influences, function, intention, meaning. Their curiosity obliges me to revisit my own assumptions. They bring a freshness and urgency that prevents the work from becoming complacent. Their intuition often points to what matters most: how a garment can provoke reflection rather than please.

TITILAYO: What do you envision the future of fashion and technology to look like?

GAO: I imagine a future that is less about spectacle and more about consciousness. Technology will continue to evolve, but the true innovation will come from our ability to use it with restraint. Fashion will not disappear; it will transform into a form of awareness. I see garments as quiet interfaces, capable of remembering, hesitating. The most radical gesture might be simplicity, the ability of a piece to reveal its intelligence without showing it.

In camera collection piece

In Camera collection. Photography by Maude Arsenault

2526 collection, tech wear

2526 collection. Photography by Maude Arsenault

Looking Would Create A Cord: An Interview of Abbey Meaker

A window into the redolent chambers of Abbey Meaker’s MOTHERHOUSE


interview by Summer Bowie

they pass through doors but do not leave
they see through the windows but do not look
looking would create a cord
and the outside would pull
— Abbey Meaker


In the summer of 2012, I visited the decommissioned St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, with the polymathic visual artist and writer Abbey Meaker for the first and only time, to bear witness to her documenting the space. Upon entering, I knew nothing of the premises or its history, except that it was the former residence of her grandfather and great-uncle, whom she had never known. The air had an inexplicable weight to it, as though it were filled with lead particulates, and it felt like my heart was being held in a vice. I later read numerous violent testimonies from the children who lived there and about those who were disappeared, like Abbey’s great uncle. We also visited the nearby Mount Saint Mary’s Convent, which had a wholly inverse energy. Its private chapel bathed in natural light felt like an ebullient sanctuary. Still, what connected the two spaces, which had undergone minimal modifications since the late 1800s, were the former living quarters in each. A haunting chiaroscuro was created by the sunlight’s dauntless efforts to break through the shutters, curtains, and blinds that covered each window, all of which remained after the buildings had become inoperative and left in dire states of disrepair. Thirteen years later, Meaker has curated the resulting images into a book of photographs called MOTHERHOUSE that serves as an uncannily vivid portrait of what it felt like to occupy these illusory spaces.

SUMMER BOWIE: I’d like to start with your earliest memories of learning about the orphanage and the convent.

ABBEY MEAKER: I have a vague, nebulous memory of my mom telling me about her dad when I was about ten and we were living in the house she grew up in. We were driving by the orphanage where he grew up, so she pointed it out to me, and it had a really powerful presence. From there, I just became obsessed with it. For years, every time I drove by, I would stare at it. Or if I went to the beach, you could cut through the back of what was then the Catholic Diocese, and the orphanage part of the building was vacant. So, you could sneak through the backyard, but it sprawled across many acres directly to the lake. I even tried breaking into it a couple of times. 

BOWIE: So, you had never even heard about your grandfather until you were around ten years old?

MEAKER: My mom never talked about him much. The man I thought of as my grandfather was my step-grandfather. My biological grandfather, Arthur, I knew virtually nothing about because he died when my mom was seven. There’s this lore about his brother, Gilbert, who was sick, and my grandfather broke him out of the orphanage in the middle of the night and carried him on his back all the way to his dad’s house in Richmond—twenty miles maybe. But by the time he got there, Gilbert was dead. Over the years, though, there were changes in the story about whether he was already dead and Arthur wanted to bring his body home, or if he had died on the way. 

BOWIE: With that little known, it would almost seem like he just never even existed.

MEAKER: There’s no images of him. There’s no birth or death certificate. He exists only in these stories, in these memories. 

BOWIE: So, when did you finally manage to get into the orphanage?

MEAKER: In 2012, I heard that Burlington College [a small liberal arts school where Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane, was president at the time] facilitated the purchase of the Catholic Diocese building. As soon as I heard that the school was there, I enrolled and gained access for the first time. 

BOWIE: How did the series evolve over time?

MEAKER: Firstly, the school was operating in a 1950s addition to the original structure. When the orphanage closed, a lot was removed, but a lot was left behind. Students weren’t allowed in there, but a photography professor would sneak me in a few times a week over the course of about three years. At first, I was just consuming the empty spaces and the light, and discovering this place that I had been yearning to see for so long. I was just running around haphazardly taking photos, which is why a lot of them are underexposed.

BOWIE: One of the things I immediately noticed about the work, once I saw it in print, is how counterintuitively they become more cinematic when you take them off the screen. Can you talk about that visceral quality of each room, the way you walk in a room and can immediately hear its score and imagine how people once occupied the space?

MEAKER: There’s a really pronounced absence. Paradoxically, that absence creates a sense of presence due to the large number of people who passed through there over the hundred years it was in operation. That presence still makes it feel full. I do remember vividly crossing the threshold from the ’50s addition into the original structure, and it felt like I was entering a portal—which is overused, but there was a distinct shift in feeling. The air felt really voluminous. It just felt extremely thick. 

BOWIE: It was thick. I’ve never felt anything like that before, where your lungs feel like they’re working a lot harder than they should be. I could actually feel my heart tightening. It was very, very strange.

MEAKER: I’ve had so many conversations with people who were staunchly convinced that my knowledge of the history and the abuse that took place there was informing my perception of the space. But then, people would go in with no knowledge and feel something. 

BOWIE: I didn’t know anything about it when I walked in, and I felt it immediately—and I’ve never been someone who felt particularly sensitive to things like that. What I love about the way you photographed the space is that you’re great at capturing those fleeting moments when the light is filtered through the windows in the most spectacular ways. How many hours were you spending there at a time to find those moments?

MEAKER: It’s interesting that you put it that way because that’s kind of how I describe my practice overall. Whether it’s an interior space with a history or in the natural environment, I find photos in a very intuitive way. I’ll walk around observing, and then I’m drawn to something. Initially, I was moving at such a fast pace because I could only be in there very briefly, so I would try to consume as much as possible. But then over time, I became more or less acclimated to it. I would spend two to four hours at a time there and just wander around. I would make sure I was there when the light was stronger to make sure that I had those moments. I’d walk into a room and it would just be like that.

BOWIE: Do you remember approximately when you wrote the poem about the windows, and can you describe the role that windows and mirrors play in these structures?

MEAKER: I wrote the poem about a year ago when I went to the convent. Eight or nine years had passed between my last visit to the orphanage and my time at the convent, and I was reminded of the feeling of being in this space with so many windows, yet the outside world felt so far away. When I thought of it in the context of the convent, I was considering the allure of the outside and the difficulty one might face in remaining committed to the inside. I was an outsider who’s not religious at all putting myself in the position of what I imagined the nuns there to be. I thought that they probably wouldn’t have been able to look deeply at the outside because they would be pulled.

BOWIE: I’m curious about the nun figure, who is wholly absent and yet deeply imbued in all of these images. What does she mean to you?

MEAKER: When I was at the orphanage, the nuns struck me as these uncanny figures because they were meant to be caregivers, but many of them were also monstrous and abusive. There are lists of nuns that were part of that order, the Sisters of Providence, but there’s no way of knowing who was abusive and who was kind. They were just very mysterious to me. So, I went digging in the University of Vermont Collections to find portraits of nuns that either lived there or at the convent and that wasn’t documented, so I found the portraits that I liked and projected them on the walls of the rooms where they lived, and they became these huge spectral images, and then I rephotographed them. I was so intrigued and repelled by their monstrous quality. I felt afraid.

BOWIE: As a specter within the space, it feels like everything but their image lives there. It makes sense to add that visual component to accompany the energy that’s left behind. 

MEAKER: In that context, knowing the history does inform the atmosphere. 

BOWIE: There’s something about these images where what initially seems almost too banal to draw your attention reveals itself to be layered with feelings and questions. Do these details reveal themselves to you slowly, or do you feel like they pull you in pretty immediately?

MEAKER: The atmosphere there was just so incredibly strong. Every corner was filled with it. I’m always curious if what I feel gets translated in the images, and in these, it clearly is, because everyone who’s looked at these seemingly banal, empty rooms feels they’re very full of something. 

 
 

BOWIE: Sometimes it’ll be a peculiar detail that feels out of place, like one curtain that is reaching for another in a very strange way. Other times, it’s the oddly perfect geometry of things. It speaks to the way that even the architecture mirrors the fastidiousness of the religion. These Catholic orphanages and convents became centralized institutions of both service and power to many cities and towns throughout New England, Canada, and the entire British Commonwealth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. What do families like yours, who have been rooted in Burlington for multiple generations, share with others from around the world whose ancestors occupied similar spaces? 

MEAKER: The curious thing about this project is that I don’t know a lot about my history. There’s a lot of lore, but nothing concrete. Part of my attraction to the orphanage was a desire to feel a connection to this unknowable family and history. At the book release celebration, a friend asked me, “So how long has your family lived in Vermont?” and I’m like, “I don’t know.” It’s strange to say that because part of the story is that my mom’s father’s grandmother was an illegally adopted Abenaki child. [The Abenaki are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the US.]

BOWIE: There are so many stories of displacement and disappearance. There’s a shared ambiguity amongst families from so many parts of the world, but even for those who know their stories, the epigenetic trauma remains.

MEAKER: If it’s true about my great, great-grandmother, then that really opened the door to all of it. My mom had a daughter when she was sixteen, whom I only learned about two years ago. My father also had a child taken away from him, whom I learned about when I was fourteen. 

BOWIE: Is it fair to say that even your family, which is not religious, was so culturally affected by the religion that major life decisions, major ruptures in the family, were still very much instigated by the shame that Christianity imposes?

MEAKER: I had never heard the word God until I was around six and a babysitter told me about this God figure. I had no idea what she was talking about. But it was because of religion and the shame of her teenage pregnancy that my mom was hidden away during her pregnancy, and then her daughter was adopted. She returned home as if nothing had happened, and no one knew. Her mom, who died ten years ago, knew. And when she had told me, I was then the only person who knew. 

BOWIE: It’s an interesting juxtaposition to the way we live now. There is such an extensive digital footprint of everyone and every tiny thing that they’ve done in their life. Every mundane little detail is recorded. 

MEAKER: There’s a real absence of records. My mom throws everything away. She doesn’t keep anything. 

BOWIE: Sounds liberating to a certain degree. 

MEAKER: Yeah, but in the absence of things, there’s also an absence of empathy and curiosity and passion.

BOWIE: That’s so fascinating. There’s an austerity to that, which has its own connection to Catholicism.

MEAKER: You think of a monastic little bedroom with one chair.

 
 

BOWIE: You’ve talked about the connection between this series and many others that you’ve taken in nature, sharing the capacity of making you feel transported in some way. Where are you currently going to find that feeling?

MEAKER: The woods. It’s the fifth year that every fall and winter, I go to the floodplains when the trees are bare, and I’m still not finished with that. There’s something about the floodplains that feels different from other forests. The river comes in, takes things away, and provides nutrients. There’s a real alive quality there that I’m engaging with. 

MOTHERHOUSE was published by Another Earth an independent publisher of artist books, tapes, and ephemera.

Masterpieces Everywhere: What to Expect From Clément Delépine’s Third & Final Act As Director of Art Basel Paris

Clément Delépine
Director, Art Basel Paris
Photography by Inès Manai for Art Basel. Courtesy of Art Basel.

interview by Summer Bowie

For those of us who are insatiable art enthusiasts, arranging one’s art fair agenda is an art unto itself. It not only requires a close study of all that is on offer throughout the week and the precise timing of transport in between, but a realistic expectation of energetic reserves and proper meal planning. With that in mind, it’s difficult to imagine how one might ever go about organizing an annual program of this magnitude. Art Basel Paris Director Clément Delépine is a master architect of the art fair if there ever were one. Having cut his teeth as co-director of Paris Internationale starting in 2016, he has spent the past decade refining this rarefied practice that is a perplexing combination of curation, commerce, civic diplomacy, and social design. Aside from the 206 exhibitors at the Grand Palais, this year’s fair includes 67 events comprising performances, talks, satellite exhibitions, and guided tours in collaboration with 9 official institutional partners within the City of Light. As the drone of chatter about the declining global economy beats like a rolling snare drum, attracting a broad and diverse audience while striking the right balance of education, entertainment, and alimentation seems an impossible feat. And yet, Art Basel Paris is once again one of the most anticipated events of the art world calendar. 

BOWIE: I want to start all the way at the beginning of your art career because you truly worked your way from the bottom. You started as an intern at the Swiss Institute, then moved up the ladder to eventually become the artistic director. And then, you became co-director of Paris Internationale before your current position as director of Art Basel Paris. Have you always had this blind ambition, or did it all happen more organically?

DELEPINE: Ever since I was a child I knew that I was destined for this. (laughs) No, I’ve been very lucky because I didn’t study art history—I was just responding to different opportunities. I moved to New York to escape a PhD program that I wasn’t disciplined enough to carry through. And then, I was offered an internship at the Swiss Institute. Eventually, the gallery manager was fired and I was asked to replace him, so my mom helped me with 5,000 euros to pay for a visa. From there, it all just accumulated. I met the right people, and back then in New York, you could invent yourself completely, and chances were given.

BOWIE: Was it the opportunity to direct Paris Internationale that brought you back to Paris?

DELEPINE: Well, not really. The real reason I moved back to Paris was because my wife and I wanted to have a child. I was born and raised in Paris, and I spent a lot of time in Zurich, but nonetheless, Paris was my hometown. When I was growing up it was a very hostile city, but since then it changed a lot. I came back to Paris from New York in 2016. And just by chance, I met a couple of gallerist friends from Galerie Gregor Staiger in Zurich. They had founded Paris Internationale the year before with Silvia Ammon who needed an accomplice, so to speak, and they offered me the job as co-director of the fair. At that point, I had been a curator of a non-profit and I had been an artistic director of a commercial gallery, but I was slightly afraid that working for a fair would be confusing—that it would give the impression that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, which in fact was the case. However, I decided to embrace the opportunity and it was very satisfying. So, I ended up doing that for five years, and ever since, the city started to feel very open and international and cosmopolitan again, so it felt like the right context.

Installation view of Alex Da Corte’s performance Kermit The Frog, Even, Fridericianum, Kassel, 2024.
Courtesy of the artist and Fridericianum, Kassel
The project will take place at Place Vendôme in Paris

BOWIE: The timing of that is very interesting too because it marks the beginning of the first Trump administration and also of Brexit. You got out of this mess that I’m in at just the right time. (laughs) But also since Brexit, there’s been this major surge in international galleries opening outposts in Paris. How would you characterize the current art scene there now?

DELEPINE: It’s a very vibrant dynamic, I have to say. Brexit was really the entry point for the European Union asserting its own art economy. Italy just passed a lower VAT rate [Italy’s value added tax was at 22% before Brexit]. It just went down to 5.5%. It has been 5% in France for some time now, so it was very helpful for the French market. Acquisitions were always the most important market within the EU and for the art market globally, so it’s very active. There is a much bigger community of galleries, and an unparalleled institutional landscape of public museums and private foundations. When I was in New York, the Paris scene was perceived as very dusty, but since 2016, there’s been a lot of new dynamics. These things work in cycles, of course, but back then, London was the economic center and the epicenter was Berlin. Now it seems like Paris combines those things, which is a good alignment of the stars for us. The gallery scene in Paris has many heavy hitters now like David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth, who opened at great scale, and they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t trust that the French model could sustain it. So, It’s good energy at the moment.

BOWIE: Has the increase in art galleries led to a rise in artists working in Paris?

DELEPINE: I would say yes, but it’s a perfectly subjective question. What I can say is that my Instagram feed is full of young artists in search of sublets or apartments, and it really gives me Berlin vibes from the mid aughts, which is quite encouraging. Real estate is expensive, though. Paris is not extremely affordable, but it seems cheaper than other European capitals—London and Zurich, for instance. You can still find studio apartments, and it’s a very small, dense city. Plus, it’s very central. From here you can reach pretty much anywhere in the world.

BOWIE: Can you describe one recent artwork that made a profound impression on you?

DELEPINE: I just came back from Uzbekistan, where I went to attend the Bukhara Biennial that Diana Campbell curated, and her curatorial premise was to bring artists and artisans from Uzbekistan who emphasize the healing and transformational power of art. I attended a performance called the Bukhara Peace Agency Sozandas conceived by Anna Lublina, who’s a theater director. It was storytelling coupled with traditional Uzbek dance and song. This was in the context of an art biennial, which is meant to bring the work of these artists and artisans into the global art dialogue, but it was equally made for an audience of locals. There were many families and kids running everywhere next to a 13th century mosque. It was profoundly beautiful.

BOWIE: I want to turn now to Art Basel Paris to ask you about some of the successes of the inaugural edition that visitors can expect again and what will be different?

Art Basel Paris
Courtesy of Art Basel

DELEPINE: The inaugural edition at the Grand Palais was a success in the sense that it was one of the most anticipated events on the art fair calendar last year. We were also the first event to follow the Olympics, so the Grand Palais had been closed for five years. This meant that we had to plan for it while essentially blindfolded, because the renovation got delayed and we couldn’t access the building—first due to the Olympics, and then because of Chanel. So, it was a real leap of faith. The day before the opening while standing from the balcony to see what came together with the team was a very moving moment, and all of that is coming back.

There are slight changes on the floor plan because we mapped out the directory more precisely. Some galleries have moved, we’ve reinforced the signage and the experience in terms of food and beverage, the restaurant au Grand Palais is open, so there are more quality options to choose from, and we’ve created a new reception to welcome guests in a more fluid and breathable fashion. We’ve also reinforced the partner program, which is the institutional component of the fair. That takes place across nine sites throughout the city, and we’ve turned Avenue Winston Churchill, which separates the Grand Palais from the Petit Palais into a pedestrian space. Then, there is the conversations program, which will feature a full day of conversations curated by Edward Enninful, among many others. It's extremely abundant and, I hope, generous.

BOWIE: Nearly a third of this year’s exhibitors are either French or operate within the country. Why was it so important to maintain such a high ratio of French representation?

DELEPINE: Because it’s important to be anchored within the French scene. In terms of narrative, it needs to say something different than Art Basel or Art Basel Miami or Hong Kong or Doha, and it needs to serve a different purpose. When you cater to the same audience five times a year, you have to offer something different. Besides the Grand Palais, which is highly recognizable, I want the visitors to look at the floor plan and immediately know that they’re not in Basel. On the one hand, it’s a commitment to the city, and on the other hand, it’s a promise made to our visitors that it’s worth coming to Paris.

BOWIE: The art fair fatigue is a very real thing, so there’s a lot to be said for a site-specific offering. The fair also brings together galleries from forty-one different countries. Last year, we saw work from Lambda Lambda Lambda, which is the only contemporary art gallery from Kosovo with international recognition. Can you talk about your approach to diversity and balance when curating the exhibitors list?

DELEPINE: Absolutely. The fair aims to celebrate excellence within each segment of the market. It’s important to identify the leading voices within each community and to serve wide and emerging audiences. I want the visitors of Art Basel Paris to be confronted with galleries that frame the conversations, whether they take place at the very forefront of the avant-garde or in the most well-known art galleries. The last Venice Biennale theme was Foreigners Everywhere, and if the fair had a theme I would want it to be titled Masterpieces Everywhere. Whether that be a masterpiece from an emerging artist or Pablo Picasso, we have to look beyond any specific geography or market. Earlier this year, I visited the Islamic Arts Biennial in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which was all about challenging the notion that the West is the art world’s center of gravity. The canon should not be exempt from Western influence, but the rest of the world should not be belittled by it either. Ultimately, you serve the French scene when you position it on the same foothold as the excellency of the international scene; you create context.

BOWIE: You’ve always championed multidisciplinary dialogues as well. This fair in particular, embraces the blurring of lines between art and fashion. What do these disciplines gain from one another?

DELEPINE: These disciplines have often flirted with one another without always holding hands in public. But clearly, the inter-penetration, so to speak, has been made more obvious. I’m thinking of several fashion designers who are important art collectors, like Hedi Slimane, Jonathan Anderson, Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jacqemus. All of these designers collect art, their collections are inspired by art, and they collaborate actively with artists. Of course, Miu Miu is a partner of the public program, and Mrs. Prada has been known for championing artists and commissioning films by woman filmmakers.

Then, of course, there’s people like Helmut Lang or Martin Margiela, who transitioned from being fashion designers to visual artists and weren’t initially taken seriously as visual, conceptual artists. I never understood why a creative genius should have to be segmented, but I think those times are over, and these creative fields are much more porous. This is something we have to be attuned to because the people buying art also buy fashion, and are interested in things like sneakers or Labubus and other cultural signifiers. With an event of our caliber, we always have to question how we can continue to make the fair desirable for a younger generation of collectors.

BOWIE: Those Helmut Lang mattress sculptures are just incredible. And they’re actually a very logical continuation of his practice, considering that the mattress is a textile, and they’re often punctured, or perhaps impaled, by metal poles. So, it wasn’t a huge leap from threading a needle through fabric.

DELEPINE: I agree. If you consider Eckhaus Latta, for instance, they have been shown at MoMA PS1 and the Whitney Museum in what are considered very art-sanctioned exhibitions, so it means something.

BOWIE: And this will be the second year that the fair is officially partnering with Miu Miu. How did that come about and why not a French brand?

DELEPINE: I’m quite stacked, you know, with French brands. No, I’m joking. You know, Vuitton is an important partner inside the Grand Palais, so is Guerlain, but it’s not necessarily about France in this case. The commitment of Mrs. Prada and Miu Miu is unquestionable. They are, in my opinion equally credible interlocutors in fashion and in the visual arts. We’ve organized something at Palais d'Iéna, which is the location that they’ve used for their Paris runway show for a long time, and with fashion week taking place just three weeks before, it felt like a natural dialogue because it makes Art Basel visible to the Miu Miu audience, many of whom probably would not have set foot in the Grand Palais had it not been for this collaboration. It’s also an acknowledgement of the work that Miu Miu and Mrs. Prada are doing for the arts, so it’s a match made in heaven for us.

Art Basel Paris - Public Program
Courtesy of Art Basel

BOWIE: When discussing markets within just about any industry lately, the word uncertainty rings like a mantra. In the US, we’re seeing many emerging and mid-size galleries closing their doors. How are you feeling about the global art market these days?

DELEPINE: I mean, the numbers are low for everyone, and the art market, just like any asset, is not immune to the situation. The uncertainty is being fueled by the tariffs and the wars raging on, which leads to the rising cost of transporting premium goods. Certainly, things have been much better, but things have been way worse as well. It’s not the nineties, it’s not 2008, and it’s different from 2014. It’s a new cycle and a definitive generational shift. Some big names, like Tim Blum are sunsetting their galleries, and some are questioning how to reconfigure. There are also very young, energetic, and ambitious galleries that are seizing opportunities to establish themselves as new players. One could say the market is in crisis, but one has to remember that the etymology of the word ‘crisis’ is decision. So, now is the time to make important decisions. We’re definitely moving past the COVID phase and the fruits that it bore, and some of the galleries didn’t make investments following COVID, which proved unwise. It seems to me like the market is now finding a new temple. So, I’m not pessimistic, which is rare considering that I’m French. (laughs) This should be acknowledged. When I was in Bukhara, when I was in Saudi Arabia, wherever I travel, people are so excited about the Paris show. The feedback from the VIP reps is really important, and all the art advisors tell me that their biggest clients are coming and that everyone wants to be there. As a fair, it’s important that we craft a platform for commerce and transaction, but the galleries are equally, if not more interested in the new audiences we can bring to the event and in that respect, I think we are prepared to fulfill their expectations.

BOWIE: I was speaking to a young art advisor who used to intern for me, and she was saying that the one thing she’s seeing is that there are new opportunities for young collectors who normally wouldn’t have access to certain artists or works. So, this transitional period is providing new opportunities for people who are just starting their collections.

DELEPINE: It’s true. Sometimes the polar dynamics shift. Sometimes, a gallery is sufficiently empowered to prioritize its collectors because they have thirty people on the waitlist, so they can tell a collector to buy two and give one to a museum. These are tactics that have been well documented. And sometimes, the collectors take power back. It’s an important balance. Some collectors feel like they’ve been barred from accessing a certain caliber of works, but they shouldn’t be resentful. That’s the way market goes—offer and demand. Au contraire, they should take the opportunity to get their hands on works that were inaccessible to them only a few months ago.

BOWIE: I’m curious about the Premise sector, which is less about the commercial core of the fair and more about unusual, unexpected juxtapositions, or neglected histories. What can we expect to see there?

DELEPINE: The Premise sector is all about storytelling. In French we have a term called passeur, which doesn’t have an English equivalent, but it has to do with the dissemination of knowledge. So, this sector is configured in a way that encourages you to slow down. The booths are smaller and you can really focus on what you are looking at. You can expect to see the works of Hector Hyppolite, for instance. He’s a Haitian painter who has been overlooked and rediscovered as one of the very first heroes of Black portraiture. The Gallery of Everything is going to present a solo of his works with all the paintings that once belonged to André Breton and some of the works that were shown at the Centre Pompidou in the context of corps noir earlier this year. On the other end of the sector, we have a Robert Barry presentation staged by Martine Aboucaya that includes some of his rare immaterial works from 1969 and refers to his performance in the ’70s when he buried radioactive waste in Central Park. I find this quite interesting in an age when we’ve long felt like the nuclear threat is far behind us, and yet, it’s sadly relevant. Pauline Pavec will show the work of Marie Bracquemond, an impressionist painter whose career was interrupted because her husband who was also a painter forbade her from painting because he felt threatened by her success.

BOWIE: What is your best advice for navigating the Grand Palais so that you can see it all and pace yourself?

DELEPINE: Come at the very first minute, stay until the security kicks you out, hydrate yourself and not only with champagne. The fair is a very nice scale. It’s 206 exhibitors, but it’s 195 booths. You can do the booths without rushing or leaving the fair with a headache. Enjoy the setting, pause every now and then to remember where you are, look up at the sky through the glass ceiling. It’s a great experience. Last year on opening day, it was such a bright blue sky, beautiful sun, the energy was buzzing, you know, it was wonderful. A fair can be intimidating, but one should never feel embarrassed to ask questions. Because ultimately, even though gallerists can be tired after eight hours standing in high heels having had little to eat, if you show interest in the work, there’s nothing more exciting for an art dealer than to celebrate the work of the artist that they represent.

BOWIE: My last question for you has to do with your current career transition. Your new appointment at Lafayette Anticipations will be your first time directing a museum. How are you preparing for yet another new role in the art world?

DELEPINE: Well, I’ve dreamed for a long time of running an institution and everything is moving so fast, I really haven’t had much time to prepare. (laughs) I want to be respectful of the history, the legacy, and to bring my vision and my new ideas. But honestly, it’s still a little too early to prepare. I mean, I still have so much to do with the fair that this is a question for October 31st. Right now, I’m fully dedicated and committed to the show at Grand Palais.

Art Basel Paris takes place October 22-26 @ Grand Palais Avenue Winston Churchill 75008, Paris

Ugo Rondinone
The project will take place at Parvis de l’Institut de France in Paris

Lullabies During Office Hours: An Interview of Jenny Fax

 
 

interview by Kim Shveka
photographs by Jasmin Avner

In this SS26 collection, ten models exist together in a small office space, engaging in mundane actions, terrestrial to their own little planet, all marooned in their own thoughts. We are invited in as foreigners to the scene, drifting among the models yet sensing an unmistakable barrier between us and them. The experience is filled with dissonances, but the biggest anomaly is the clothing, which portrays a colorful childhood within the somber, 9-to-5, depressing atmosphere. This is the tableau of Taiwanese designer Jen-Fang Shueh’s fashion brand, Jenny Fax. Surrounded by smoke and the sound of Taiwanese lullabies, I met Jen for an interview.

 
 

KIM SHVEKA: From the soft lullaby-like music, the smoke, and of course the outfits—this presentation paints a clear picture of childhood. How does this correlate with the office setting?

JEN-FANG SHUEH: I’m very difficult. There’s always chaos in my mind. I don’t know how I decided to finally mix those up together. I always mix my memories with new things I see.

SHVEKA: Can you let us into your childhood memories?

SHUEH: I grew up with three siblings, so we didn’t have a lot of clothes. There were so many limits when I was younger, but now I can become free.  

 
 

SHVEKA: What value did you want to add by us walking amongst the models, and being a part of the installation?


SHUEH: Maybe it's kind of sneaking around, getting to have a peek. I think people always love to do that. The feeling of getting to travel is someone’s private space, in their daily life—it gives an exciting feeling.

SHVEKA: How has being Taiwanese living in Europe affected your creation?

SHUEH: I left Taiwan when I was nineteen, so I’ve been a foreigner for most of my life actually. Even when I go back there, I still feel like a stranger, I’m a stranger everywhere. I often don’t know where my creations come from, it’s all the chaos of living in so many different places.  

SHVEKA: How do you decide what parts of your own life you want to expose through your fashion?

SHUEH: I’m trying not to decide— I prefer it to come naturally.

Making Things You Can Feel: An Interview of Larry Bell

Larry Bell with Pacific Red II. Photography by Matthew Millman, San Francisco 

introduction by Isabella Bernabeo
interview by Bill Powers

For over six decades, Larry Bell has skillfully molded contemporary art in America. Born in Chicago in 1939, Bell moved to the West Coast to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, the historic precursor to CalArts. 

There, Bell became a member of Los Angeles’s Cool School, a rebellious group of artists, largely represented by Walter Hopps and Irving Blum of Ferus Gallery in the 1950s and ’60s, who brought modern-day avant-garde to the West Coast. Alongside Ed Ruscha and Robert Irwin, Bell is one of the last living members of the School. As a foundational figure in the Light and Space movement, Southern California’s take on Minimalism, which often employed industrial materials and aerospace technology to explore the ways that volume, light and scale play with our sense of perception, Bell made innovative work that experimented with the interconnections of glass and light and their relations to reflection and illusion. 

His most notable works involve his creation of semi-transparent cubes made out of vacuum-coated glass to form an immersive experience as the art melts into space. Recently, six of Bell’s cubes have been installed in Madison Square Park, where they will be on view until March 15, 2026. Improvisations in the Park carries on Bell’s legacy, but with a twist. Instead of their typical white cube environment, they have been placed outside to interact with the constantly changing elements, causing a new perception almost every hour. 

This idea, related to the flexibility of perception, is also highlighted in Bell’s recent series of collage works, Irresponsible Iridescence, on view now at the Judd Foundation in New York. These collages poured out of Bell after the passing of his wife two years ago, sharing a more emotional side of his work with audiences. They also subtly allude to the close friendship between Bell and the late Donald Judd. It was Bell who convinced Judd to build this now-historic organization in Marfa, Texas, rather than El Rosario, Mexico, impacting American art history forever.  

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

BILL POWERS: How does your work operate differently when it’s outside?

LARRY BELL: I’m just finding out for myself because the Madison Square Park project is the first installation I’ve done with rocks and trees and grass around. I’ve had work outside in courtyards and walled-in areas and next to swimming pools, but never in a jungle like this with squirrels hopping along and birds shitting on them.

POWERS: In Rose Macaulay’s book, The Pleasure of Ruins (1953), she says that a man-made object only knows its worth when it is left to battle it out in the elements without custodianship.

BELL: Everything has its time of being and a right to patina. Some people don’t like to see a patina on a sculpture because they think it alters the work somehow. I’m from a different point of view.

POWERS: In the same vein, I don’t think I’ve seen a Marcel Duchamp where the glass hasn’t cracked by now. That doesn't mean MoMA is throwing them away.

BELL: You know Marcel Duchamp came to visit my studio in 1962. He came with Richard Hamilton and the surrealist painter William Copley.

POWERS: William Copley also had a short-lived gallery in Beverly Hills where he exhibited Man Ray and Joseph Cornell. I believe Duchamp was an unofficial advisor for the gallery.

BELL: I was maybe twenty-two years old and there was a knock on my front door in Venice. Now, I ignored it because only building inspectors would try that entrance. All my friends knew to come through the back. So, after twenty minutes of this gentle rapping on my front door, I look out through this peephole and see three guys outside who don’t look like building inspectors. I open up and instantly Copley puts his hand out and says, “Walter Hopps sent us to see you.” Now Walter was a dear friend of mine so I invited them inside.

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

POWERS: And did you recognize Marcel Duchamp?

BELL: See, the thing is, I was a bit deaf even back then. When Copley introduced the other guests I didn’t really catch the name and just figured they were rich collectors or something.

POWERS: Probably better not to know you had living legends visiting you.

BELL: So, I’m giving them a tour of my studio and Hamilton is explaining to the other two men how something was made.

POWERS: The fabrication of it?

BELL: Yes, but in fact he was incorrect in his assumption so I jumped in the conversation to clarify when Copley says, “Now Marcel didn’t you do this in a certain way,” I heard the name Marcel and finally put two and two together. I must have completely frozen up because they left a minute later. The studio visit was over. I couldn’t talk anymore. Duchamp was in town, I found out later, to discuss his Pasadena Museum show with Walter Hopps.

POWERS: And that was your last encounter?

BELL: No, a couple of years later, I did a show in New York at Sydney Janis—a group exhibition on 57th Street—and Duchamp invited me over for tea. His wife, Teeny, answered the door and said, “Marcel is waiting for you in the parlor.” I walked into this incredible little room and there he was: a Brancusi to my right, a Man Ray to my left, a Max Ernst over here. He greeted me warmly and then Teeny brought out a tray of milk and cookies.

POWERS: Wow, a couple of real bad boy artists, huh?

BELL: We chatted a while and then I asked him if he was doing any shows and when he had made the work. And Marcel said, “Ooh, when I was six or seven.” He was saying he started the work when he was six or seven years old.

POWERS: A joke about how all creativity springs from childhood.

BELL: I remember he smoked these little cigars, which he held between his ring finger and his middle finger. I smoked cigars back then too but I never saw anyone hold them like that.

Installation view Irresponsible Iridescence, September 29, 2025–January 31, 2026, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon ©️Judd Foundation. Art ©️Larry Bell. Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

POWERS: Was the Venice Beach Mafia a term you accepted being grouped into? Meaning the group of artists working in that area in the 1960s: you, Ken Price, Billy Al Bangston, Charles Arnoldi, Ed Ruscha.

BELL: I’ve actually never heard that term before but it sounds like the type of thing Judy Chicago might have called us.

POWERS: What is the rarest kind of light? Some might argue it’s the Northern Lights but I would say it’s the green flash at sunset.

BELL: I’ve seen that in Venice. More than once. At first I thought something was wrong with my eyes. I believe it’s related to the sunlight going through the water at eye level for a split second.

POWERS: Are there any colors you gravitate towards?

BELL: I like reds and blues. They do things to your eye. The blues are close to ultraviolet and the reds are close to infrared. You can’t see ultraviolet and you can’t see infrared either, but there are energies at work with those colors you can feel. I like the idea of making things that you can feel.

POWERS: Ellsworth Kelly has some color combinations like that, which dance in your eye and are almost impossible to photograph.

BELL: He was a friend of mine, Ellsworth. a gentleman.

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

POWERS: One of your art catalogues is named Time Machines. Is that after the book?

BELL: Have you ever read “The Invisible Man” by HG Wells? There’s a scientist named Griffin whom I feel a certain kinship with. In the story he develops a potion, which makes tissue invisible. The effect is that the body no longer absorbs light. It will pass through it. But no one from the establishment believes in his invention. He was met with ridicule and I empathize with the character. Anyway, before he tries out the potion on a person he feeds some to his landlady’s cat, which makes the animal invisible except for the pupils of its eyes. I had a large sculpture at my studio I’d just made and my daughter who was six years old walked into the center of it, and all I could see through the glass were the pupils of her eyes. So, I named the sculpture “The Dilemma of Griffin’s Cat.”

POWERS: You have said that glass does three things with light: absorb, transmit, and reflect. Which is most essential to activating your work?

BELL: I can say that the most tenuous of the three is absorbed light—that which penetrates and sticks with you.

POWERS: How did you come up with that pink carpet for your Dia Beacon piece?

BELL: It started because the building is an old factory. The room where my sculpture is situated is where they used to print the boxes for animal crackers. When they removed all the heavy machinery, there were big holes in the floor. So, I said, “We can’t do this project unless we have a pedestal or carpet underneath to level out the surface. Finally the curator agreed, and while we were sitting there she asks me, “What color are you going to make the carpet?” At that moment, her assistant was walking by wearing a pink sweater. I pointed at it and said, “THAT color!”

POWERS: Thank god the woman didn’t wear a gray turtleneck to work that day.

BELL: It was intuition and spontaneity and happenstance all rolled into one. I learned that from my teacher Robert Irwin: as an artist you have to trust yourself.

POWERS: You have a show opening at Judd Foundation in SoHo.

BELL: Don [Judd] was the first artist in New York to buy a work from me out of the studio.

Irresponsible Iridescense is on view through January 31 @ Judd Foundation 101 Spring St, New York

Improvisations in the Park is on view through March 15 @ Madison Square Park

Installation view Irresponsible Iridescence, September 29, 2025–January 31, 2026, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon ©️Judd Foundation. Art ©️Larry Bell. Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.