A Preview of the Creative Incubator Inside the New Museum’s Expansion

DEMO 2025 offers a glimpse inside the work of NEW INC, which helps tech savvy creatives craft immersive VR art, community hubs, and everything in between.

Image courtesy of Nathalie Basoski

text by Karly Quadros

Now I’ve been known to get down to some strange tunes, but it’s not every day that I find myself strapped into a pair of headphones listening intently to a rock. 

I’m seated at one of four wooden desks arranged in a square around a sapling in the atrium of WSA at 180 Maiden Lane. The building is all elbows, intricate metal scaffolding from floor to ceiling and a tangle of indoor foliage overhead. To my left, I’m flanked by an enormous man with an enormous coffee with his eyes closed, communing with a craggy chunk of ore that’s over 2 billion years old. To my right is a little girl with a black ponytail, scribbling intently in a notebook, headphones twice the size of her head.

The sonic installation is from Bay Area and New York City musician and technologist Dan Gorelick. Rocks are the product of hundreds of millions of years of eruption, erosion, compression, and transformation – with his technological interventions, Gorelick has managed to squeeze all that time into just a few seconds of sound. 

He is one of 115 creatives who presented work and spoke as part of NEW INC’s DEMO 2025 festival, running now until June 22. Beginning in 2014, NEW INC has served as the New Museum’s “creative incubator” for everything from immersive art to innovative proposals for third spaces, providing around 80 artists and entrepreneurs working with new media each year with creative and professional mentorship. Now, with a permanent space on the way in the New Museum’s futuristic new digs on the Bowery, designed by OMA and Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, DEMO 2025 was a peek inside NEW INC’s next chapter.

Things these days are fraught for emerging artists and creatives working at the porous boundary between art, design, and technology – and heaven forbid the work have any components that are socially, environmentally, or politically-oriented. As the Trump administration takes ruthless aim at the curatorial independence of museums and other cultural institutions, opportunities for exhibition, funding, or mentorship have diminished, whether out of actual lack of resources or fear of retaliation. Meanwhile, the future roles of museums as more than white rooms full of aging paintings has been called into question.

“It’s core to the ethos that artists are thinking about the real world impact of what they’re making, and they’re thinking from the onset about the audience in the reach of their projects,” said Salome Asega, director of NEW INC and DEMO 2025.

Asega, herself an artist, was a NEW INC fellow in 2016 where she received mentorship for her collective nonprofit PWRPLNT, a space for young creatives engaging digital tools, social justice, and innovative storytelling. Her team received mentorship and the assistance they needed to formalize the project including help developing a fundraising strategy and mentors to join the advisory board. 

Other artists found a home in NEW INC with work that was too unconventional for traditional art world channels.

“[My brother and I] were raised in and culturally came up in the art world. We speak the same vocabulary and look at similar references,” said Sam Rolfes of Team Rolfes, a DEMO 2025 presenter. “But because that ground was largely infertile for the kind of things we were trying to do, we had to find and create new spaces.” 

Five years later, in a full circle moment, Asega became the director of NEW INC. She grew the incubator’s showcase from a small day in which fellows would display their work for a select group of curators, investors, and philanthropists into a three day festival with installations for the public lasting the entire month. And, of course, admission is free.

“There were never really wide funding opportunities for some of the ideas in our programs,” said Asega. “This has always been us creative problem solving with our members. Even in this moment we’ll continue to do that. We’ll continue to think and dream up new opportunities for sustainability.”

Other presenters from the festival include a kinetic sculpture from MORKANA, a rice cooker symphony by Trevor Van De Velde, plans for an innovative relief hub for NYC gig workers by architect Elsa Ponce, an augmented reality app documenting Black life in Pittsburgh by Adrian Jones, and radical screenprinting from Secret Riso Project. In between interactive installations, viewers were able to catch Collina Strada creator Hillary Taymour talking with writer Kimberly Drew about integrating environmental advocacy and brand strategy or cultural critic Whitney Mallett discussing digital brainrot aesthetics with David Lisbon, curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum, and Bri Griffin, community designer at Rhizome.

“We’ve always been a program that has embraced the new, the unknown, the not yet named,” said Asega.

NEW INC’s DEMO 2025 showcase installations are on display at WSA at 180 Maiden Lane now until June 22.

Prada’s Architectural Meditation in Osaka

Prada Mode, Osaka
Courtesy of Prada

text by Andrea Riano


At a time when fashion’s cultural events are so often reduced to surface-level branding, Prada Mode’s second edition in Japan is a serious meditation on how architecture can reimagine the ecosystem of an island. In the heart of Osaka, the brand collaborates with architect Kazuyo Sejima, inviting guests to participate in a critical dialogue, exclusive performances, and an immersive exhibition.

Open to the public through June 15th, Prada Mode Osaka takes place in Umekita Park, a rare oasis nestled between Osaka’s glass towers and directly connected to the country’s busiest train station. This is the twelfth edition of the brand’s cultural journey, which has landed everywhere from Miami to Hong Kong and now, for the second time, in Japan. This particular edition is curated by Pritzker Prize-winning architect and head of SANAA, Kazuyo Sejima, a frequent collaborator of Prada.

Prada Mode, Osaka
Courtesy of Prada

In 2008, the Fukutake Foundation, which manages the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, invited Sejima to reimagine and shape the built environment of the small Seto island of Inujima. At Prada Mode, the architect shares this ongoing work through models, videos, and other materials at a SANAA-designed pavilion in the park. In the days leading up to Prada Mode Osaka, Inujima Project offered a private preview of Inujima, introducing the history of the island, Sejima’s projects there over the past 17 years, and her vision for its future. During the Inujima Project, Prada and the architect unveiled a permanent pavilion at Inujima Life Garden, designed by Sejima and donated to the island by Prada.

“On Inujima, a tiny island rich in nature, visitors will encounter and experience symbiosis - a landscape that combines history, architecture, art, and daily life. In Osaka, a city with historical ties to Inujima, this experience will be shared and expanded to reach a wider audience. At this edition of Prada Mode, Symbiosis will take shape through conversations and discoveries, creating a new landscape that continues to grow with the participation of all,” says Kazuyo Sejima.

Kazuyo Sejima at Prada Mode, Osaka
Courtesy of Prada

The programming reflects that same ethos. The week-long schedule is a soft collision of art, intellect, and experimental sound curated by Craig Richards, featuring performances by Nik Bärtsch, Reggie Watts, and C.A.R. (Choosing Acronyms Randomly), the latter being an incredible post-punk performance. Guests lounged on floor cushions, sipped Prada-branded negronis and olives, while watching film screenings by Bêka & Lemoine and a dance piece by choreographer Wayne McGregor, joined by composer Keiichiro Shibuya. Shibuya also presented “ANDROID MARIA,” a newly created android developed with a team of leading developers, produced and presented by ATAK.

“It’s not about promotion here. It’s about architecture, music, ideas. The curation is unique. Prada genuinely wants to support culture.” says Shibuya, who is known for challenging the boundaries between humans and technology through his compositions and collaborations with artists and scientists, such as his Android Orchestra. 

Indeed, Prada Mode has never really been about fashion, instead, it's about the contexts that shape it: cities, people, materials, and memory. In Osaka, that vision reaches a new level of clarity.

Prada Mode, Osaka
Courtesy of Prada

Prada Mode is on view through June 15th at Umekita Park, Ofukacho, Kita Ward, Osaka, 530-0011

Is Diskokina VR Theater? A Rave? Fine Art? Team Rolfes Says All of the Above.

The art world got a dose of hyper-digital club theater from the minds behind Team Rolfes and Club Cringe.


text by Karly Quadros
images by Janice Chung


There’s no getting around it: there’s a lot going on in Diskokina.

Drawing from the ‘more is more’ digital aesthetics that have mostly closely come to be associated with hyperpop – cyberpunk slickness, glitchy heaven-or-hell graphics, a sweet chirpy virtual companion named Kina – the show is one part club night, one part live theater, and one part mo-cap freak out. The brainchild of Team Rolfes and Club Cringe, the show – which features a rotating cast of musical guests and has previously included GFOTY, Frost Children, and umru – found its home in late night clubs and experimental music festivals across Europe, but last Wednesday at 8 pm the collective found themselves not in an industrial nightclub or a warehouse rave but the glittering glass atrium of WSA at 180 Maiden Lane in the heart of New York’s Financial District.

On June 4 and 5, Diskokina performed two nights of their immersive club theater for a mix of club kids and fine art lovers as the closing programming of a showcase for talent nurtured by the New Museum’s art and technology incubator NEW INC. The night was hosted by upbeat “AI” avatar Kina (voiced and performed by Maya Filmeridis whose facial expressions were captured in real time) and comedian Lauren Servideo. The show was a triptych of shorter narratives performed by 321 Rule featuring Team Rolfes and rapper Lil Mariko; Passage Live A/V by Kevin Parker He and DJ Bobby Beethoven; and Club Cringe featuring godmother of 2010s electroclash Uffie, Mother Cell, DJ Wallh4x, DJ Trick, and 502 Bad Gateway Studio.

“We had historically always been doing our work outside the art world, working in music or fashion, doing what we could because the art world in the US is fraught,” said Sam Rolfes, co-founder of Team Rolfes. “The stuff we wanted to do, working with musicians and combining all these different things, there wasn’t a support network for that. I think that this New Museum showcase is an important inflection point where that is starting to change.”

Rolfes, along with his brother and creative partner Andy, has been active in the music and fashion world for years, designing the album packaging for Lady Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica and directing music videos for Gaga, PC Music OG Danny L Harle, cyborg pop producer Arca, and new wave innovator Danny Elfman. They’ve collaborated with brands like Nike, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Kenzo, but their style is unmistakable. There’s an element of the digital uncanny and distortion, nods to early PlayStation graphics and gauche social media overdrive, but also a carnivalesque playfulness that hints at the queer potentiality of digital spaces.

Diskokina’s onstage vibe falls somewhere between a sweaty Gen Z club night and a competitive gaming tournament. The stage is flanked by computers and wires, exposing the hardware that goes into the cutting edge projections onscreen, which are generated in real-time from musical performers that are strapped into motion capture suits. Ultimately, the audience is seeing performers twice: once onstage and again in the world of the screen where coders manipulate their avatars in an act of VR puppetry. The onscreen narratives are, of course, dystopian: a far flung future where memories are the most valuable currency sought after by ruthless bounty hunters or maybe a suspiciously contemporary moment where AI aesthetics are everywhere and corporations are tracking your every move.

“Theater, narrative, music –the tech unites it. It’s very front and center because it’s experimental and wild, but what we’re really aiming for is the story, the sound, or the emotion,” said Rolfes.

Mixed reality performances shot into the public consciousness during Covid when lockdown orders threw the live music and theater worlds into a tailspin. Travis Scott held a record breaking mixed reality performance in Fortnight with over 27 million views, while Billie Eilish mounted similar largely digital performances. At the time, Meta was going all-in on virtual reality, but it was smaller artists like Panther Modern (aka Brady Keehn of Sextile) and Reggie Watts who were experimenting with the artistic potential of virtual club spaces. Even after in-person concerts and dancing resumed and the public’s interest turned elsewhere, the idea of AR and live performance has lingered whether it’s Rosalía’s heavily mediated Motomami stage show or Magdalena Bay’s live show promoting Mercurial World in which they and the audience teach an AI named Chaeri how to be human.

Rolfes points to even older inspirations though. Max Headroom, the “digital” news anchor from a British sci-fi TV film who satirized the commercialization of everyday life, seems to be an obvious inspiration. The fact that the character leapt out of the world of fiction and into commercials as an official spokesman for Coke only added to the reality warp (as did the first successful TV hack in late 1987 in which a full minute of a Chicago Dr. Who broadcast was interrupted by someone sporting a Max Headroom mask.) Rolfes said he hopes to bring the same kind of mischievously satirical energy to the NEW INC showcase.

After all, tech is a tool, neither positive nor negative, although it’s often caught up in the same whirlwinds of speculative capital that Diskokina so sharply satirizes. For Rolfes, it’s all about finding new ways to use it.

“It’s not just tech demos. There’s a real need to hack it, to do something beyond what Microsoft or whatever company designed the tool might’ve intended,” Rolfes said. For now, he and the rest of the Diskokina team will be jamming the signal, one show at a time.

A Defining Moment in Luxury Fashion: Jonathan Anderson Appointed Sole Creative Director at Dior

One of the most undeniable visionary designers in history, Jonathan Anderson was just tapped as the first sole creative director at Dior since Christian Dior himself. To understand this new era for the designer and this iconic luxury house, we’re looking back at Anderson's origins, tracing his artistic growth, and exploring his key influences.

Photo by Oliver Kupper

The fashion world in 2025 looks increasingly like an elaborate game of musical chairs, with creative directors joining, defining, and leaving major fashion houses at breakneck speed. While few truly new faces have emerged (Julian Klausner’s appointment at Dries Van Noten in January being a notable exception), the same familiar faces are leaping from house to house, most recently with Demna Gvsalia departing Balenciaga for Gucci and Glenn Martins taking over for John Galliano at Maison Margiela. This reluctance to introduce fresh talent, though disappointing to those hoping for a more dynamic industry, isn’t surprising given brands’ desire to protect profits by relying on familiar names. However, seeing tenured creative directors adapt their aesthetics to new brands is rather engaging, hinting at potential revivals for houses in need of revision.

One exception to the rule is Jonathan Anderson, whose distinctive vision and forward-thinking approach to design turned Loewe into a critical and commercial darling. Now as he departs the Spanish-brand after more than a decade to take over at Dior, we’ll delve into his journey: from his early life to launching his own label, his pivotal role in Loewe’s revival, and his upcoming tenure at Dior, exploring what his time with the luxury house might bring.

Jonathan Anderson was raised just outside of Magherafelt, a small town in Northern Ireland, during the final decades of the Troubles, a time when conflict seeped into everyday life. Although his family home was not directly exposed to violence, the weight of tension, fear, and division was always present. Armored vehicles in the streets, news of bombings, segregated communities, and a sense of uncertainty shaped the backdrop of his childhood. Living through such a politically charged and emotionally fraught environment gave the young designer a heightened sensitivity to contrast, conflict, and identity.

As a child, Anderson turned inward, developing an early fascination with objects, theater, and the power of imagination used as tools of escapism from a reality that felt brittle and divided. He has spoken about feeling like an outsider, not only because of the surrounding political unrest but also because of his own queer identity in a conservative landscape, feelings that later translated into his designs.

In his adult work, we see this reflected not in political statements, but in his aesthetic of disruption and fluidity: clothing that refuses fixed categories, silhouettes that question proportion, and a deep love for craft and heritage. Anderson tried to reassemble something fragile and broken into something beautiful and whole.

Jonathan Anderson’s love for fashion started was initially triggered by an obsession with James Dean, dressing like him, even taking up smoking to better resemble Hollywood’s original bad boy. Later on, while Hedi Slimane was in his prime at Dior with his signature skinny suit, Anderson worked at a department store that put everything which was too small to sell on the discount rack. Now with affordable access to the aesthetic, in lieu of donning the “real thing,” the aspiring young designer started going out regularly to gay nightclubs in Dublin. After notoriously being rejected from Central Saint Martins, he went to the only university that accepted him—London College of Fashion, joining a menswear course.

Struggling to launch his menswear brand, JW Anderson, Jonathan felt like an outsider, due mostly to the fact that he wasn’t considered a real craftsman like McQueen or Galliano, and by not qualifying for a top art school. Recognizing his own talent and potential, Anderson persisted in a system that wasn’t for him, he kept full confidence in his ideas, knowing even from the ripe age of twenty that one day he’d be one of the greatest in the industry.

Founded in 2008, JW Anderson quickly stood out for its bold, gender-fluid designs and intellectual approach to fashion, but it was still considered a niche market and was known mostly in fashion circles in London. The true turning point came in 2013, when Jonathan Anderson’s breakthrough womenswear collections led to a minority investment by LVMH and his appointment as creative director of Loewe, a moment that catapulted him into a global spotlight overnight.

Jonathan Anderson’s first collection for Loewe in 2014 made a big splash in the fashion industry and was widely discussed by many fashion critics who were struck by his decision to completely reset the brand’s aesthetic while still honoring its heritage. Quickly, young and relatively unknown Anderson, was considered a groundbreaking designer, praised for his modern, playful, intellectual vision grounded in minimalism, craft, and originality. Anderson positioned Loewe as a leader in artistic luxury and for the following eleven years he kept confirming his status as one of the most distinct and intelligent designers ever.

With each season at Loewe, Anderson continued producing visionary clothing and accessories that became signature, viral pieces, while enhancing Loewe’s market presence and financial performance with each collection.

After many speculations and rumors, in March it was finally announced that Anderson would be leaving Loewe stating: “While my chapter draws to a close, Loewe’s story will continue for many years to come, and I will look on with pride, watching it continue to grow, the amazing Spanish brand I once called home.”

Sidney Toledano, adviser to LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault considers Anderson “to be amongst the very best,” stating, “What he has contributed to Loewe goes beyond creativity. He has built a rich and eclectic world with strong foundations in craft which will enable the house to thrive long after his departure.”

Leaving Loewe on a high note, Jonathan Anderson’s next move quickly became a speculation amongst the fashion crowd. Following Kim Jones’s departure from Dior in January and persistent rumors surrounding Maria Grazia Chiuri’s potential exit after nine years, many began to suspect that Anderson would soon take the reins at the French house. In fashion, rumors often become reality, and by mid-April, it was confirmed that Anderson would indeed be joining Dior, though initially only as the creative director of menswear. Many considered this role to belittle Anderson’s ability to make womenswear and a missed opportunity for his talent to be translated into Haute Couture. However, just three days ago, Dior officially announced that Jonathan Anderson would become the sole creative director of the entire house.  

Anderson’s appointment marks the first time a sole creative director has been employed at Dior since Christian Dior himself. A decision so rare that it makes Jonathan Anderson the first non-founder designer in history to control all creative fronts in the history of fashion. For LVMH, it’s a major risk and privilege—demanding not just fashion talent, but a deep understanding of cultural storytelling, stamina, and longevity.

This leads us to consider why such an unprecedented opportunity was given specifically to Jonathan Anderson. By now, we know his talent is undeniable: he managed to produce sixteen collections a year across his label, a collaboration with Uniqlo, and his work at Loewe. He was critically acclaimed for honoring Loewe’s heritage while elevating the brand’s relevancy and commercial success through his strong artistic vision. He is also known for his professionalism and humanity in the workplace, a vital quality in today’s fashion industry. But when a role of this significance is given to a single designer, with so much at stake, we’re left to think; perhaps there’s something deeper at play?

Perhaps it’s his ability to not just design clothes but to shape the cultural and emotional language of a house as iconic as Dior.

Jonathan grew up in the shadow of conflict, and while the influence may not be overt, the butterfly effect of those early experiences can be felt in the tension, nuance, and depth that define his work today. Christian Dior grew up during World War I and later witnessed the devastation of World War II, which directly preceded the launch of his legendary “New Look” in 1947. Dior’s signature designs, such as soft shoulders, cinched waists, and full skirts were more than elegance, but a response to the austerity he had experienced. He was expressing his desire to escape and dive into a world of harmony and balance. Dior designed so he could restore beauty from the ruins, he created a sense of femininity, dignity, and hope for a world that longed to be renewed. Despite their differing origins of both history and location, Anderson’s and Dior’s creative aspirations might be driven by the same place of grief and devastation; a consummate aptitude for sartorially sublimating humanity’s darkest moments.

For the future of Dior with Anderson, we can safely predict that the brand is poised for a bold new chapter; a yet-to-be-seen approach to design through the lens of modern artistry.

Although the demand for a designer to produce eighteen collections per year, two of them being haute couture is controversial, the prospect of the Dior house operating under a cohesive artistic vision is intriguing. Anderson is unlikely to continue his signature gender-neutral approach, and his interplay between menswear and womenswear will definitely be highly anticipated in the coming fashion weeks. What remains to be seen is whether Anderson will opt to steer Dior away from romanticism, suiting, and streetwear, leaning potentially into a more radical direction that aims not only to sell but to change the fashion landscape.  

Watch Jonathan Anderson’s final collection as Creative Director at Loewe, via Vogue Runway

Cartier Champions Women Entrepreneurs at Expo 2025

courtesy of Cartier

At Expo 2025 Osaka, Cartier made a bold and enduring statement about the future—not through products, but through purpose. The Maison’s long-standing commitment to empowering women found tangible expression in two landmark moments: the inauguration of the Women’s Pavilion and the 2025 edition of the Cartier Women’s Initiative (CWI) Impact Awards. Together, these initiatives underscore Cartier’s belief that when women thrive, humanity thrives.

The Women’s Pavilion, co-created by Cartier with the Japanese government and Expo 2025 organizers, is more than an architectural feat—it’s a cultural and social force. Designed by architect Yuko Nagayama and envisioned as a space of global dialogue, the Pavilion serves as a living platform for discussing gender equality, showcasing innovation, and amplifying women’s contributions across sectors. Events like the WA Dialogues brought together leaders from UN Women, grassroots organizations, and the private sector to explore systemic change, while art performances and ceremonial design wove together tradition and contemporary thought.

A centerpiece of the Pavilion’s launch was the message from Cartier’s leadership. “Women’s empowerment is the beating heart of our collective future,” declared Cyrille Vigneron, Chairman of Cartier Culture and Philanthropy. This ethos permeated every facet of the Pavilion—from the cymatics-inspired stage, to the reuse of its materials in future environmental projects, ensuring that its legacy continues beyond the Expo.

The spirit of the Pavilion found its most poignant expression in the 2025 Impact Awards, a celebration of nine extraordinary women entrepreneurs whose businesses are improving lives, preserving the planet, and creating economic opportunities around the world. Selected from a pool of over 330 past fellows, these women represent the power of scaling local solutions into global movements.

Each awardee received $100,000 in funding and joined a year-long fellowship designed to support impact measurement, leadership development, and strategic growth. But beyond the numbers lies a powerful narrative of resilience and innovation. From Ireland to Rwanda, India to Jordan, these women are solving critical challenges—from menstrual health to clean energy, emergency response systems to education for refugee children.

courtesy of Cartier

For example, Kristin Kagetsu’s Saathi produces biodegradable sanitary pads from banana fiber, reaching over 114,000 women and cutting down plastic waste. In East Africa, Caitlin Dolkart’s Flare has reduced ambulance wait times from hours to minutes. And in Armenia, Mariam Torosyan’s Safe YOU app now supports survivors of gender-based violence in five countries with AI-powered emergency services and financial empowerment tools.

These aren’t isolated successes; they’re proof points in Cartier’s larger vision of business as a vehicle for social transformation.

The Impact Awards Week, set against the backdrop of the Women’s Pavilion and the broader Expo, brought together 180 global changemakers for panels, workshops, performances, and shared meals. The week was as much about forging new connections as it was about celebrating achievement.

Events like the emotionally resonant “Letter to Our Younger Selves” video, or the keynote by Sandi Toksvig OBE, reminded audiences that leadership is not only a matter of innovation but of courage. June Miyachi, President & CEO of Cartier Japan, underscored this in her opening remarks: “The Women’s Pavilion is a space for the elevation of voices, of ideas, of perspectives—and a reminder that lasting equality is within our reach when we choose to build it together.”

The week closed with a performance choreographed to the theme “Forces for Good”—a fitting end to a program that wove together cultural celebration and civic urgency.

The Cartier Women’s Initiative continues to evolve. Applications for the 2026 edition are already underway, with plans to spotlight 30 entrepreneurs across ten award categories, including a new Science & Technology Pioneer Award. As the Initiative grows, so does Cartier’s investment in fostering a global network of visionary women.

In a luxury industry too often focused on surface, Cartier’s alignment with structural change feels not only authentic but necessary. The Maison’s efforts remind us that the future of luxury lies in long-term thinking, cross-sector collaboration, and a profound respect for human potential.

At Expo 2025, Cartier didn’t just stage an event—it illuminated a movement. And in doing so, it offered a blueprint for how heritage brands can lead with meaning, beauty, and impact.

David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition @ Louis Vuitton Foundation

A truly unmissable exhibition that offers a rare personal experience in a dynamic dialogue between the artist, his art, and the admirer.

David Hockney
"Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age
Post-Photographique" 2007
Oil on 50 canvases (36 x 48" each)
457.2 x 1219.2 cm (180 x 480 Inches)
© David Hockney
Photo Credit: Prudence Cuming Associates
Tate, U.K

In the largest exhibition of one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries to date, David Hockney takes over the entirety of the Louis Vuitton Foundation building. This truly monumental exhibit encompasses over 400 works, including a wide variety of media, from traditional oil and acrylic paintings, ink, pencil, and charcoal drawings, as well as digital works on photographic, computer, iPhone, and iPad devices, alongside immersive photo and video installations. Hockney himself curated and was deeply involved in every aspect of the exhibition's design, personally overseeing the sequencing of each room. With the artist creating his own retrospective, visitors get to have a rare, intimate insight into Hockney’s creative universe and process, revealing the evolution of his art over the past three-quarters of a century. The exhibition is an explosion of vibrant, relatable, joyful, and deeply immersive works, radiating the artist’s characteristic joie de vivre and effortlessly infecting viewers with a ray of emotions.

The exhibition unfolds across eleven rooms within the foundation, each thoughtfully organized by theme, period, and medium. This thematic progression aims to provide viewers with a profound and multifaceted understanding of Hockney’s diverse artistic universe. The journey commences with an impactful introduction, showcasing Hockney’s most iconic pieces, including A Bigger Splash (1967), Portrait of an Artist (1972), and Portrait of My Father (1955). This deliberate choice to open the exhibition with such emblematic and grand works strongly establishes Hockney’s primal artistic direction throughout his extensive and prolific career.

 

David Hockney
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972
Acrylic on canvas
213.36 x 304.8 cm (84 x 120 Inches)
© David Hockney
Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

 

The following room features four large paintings that mirror one another, all interconnected by a profound theme exploring human communication—both with others and with oneself. Two almost identical paintings face each other: Pictured Gathering with Mirror (2018) and Pictures at an Exhibition from the same year. Both depict an exact replica of twenty-five figures seated and standing in various positions. In the former, they face a mirror, while in the latter, they face a vibrant exhibition. This visual dialogue creates a compelling interplay of reflection and perception, drawing viewers into Hockney’s intricate world and capturing their attention at the start of the journey.

 

Installation views David Hockney 25, galerie 4
© David Hockney © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage

 

The foundation’s first floor is entirely dedicated to David Hockney’s time spent in Normandy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, he completed 220 works solely on his iPad in 2020, all under the sentimental title Do Remember, They Can’t Cancel the Spring. Overflowing with hope and a renewed admiration for life, Hockney discovered an infinite number of subjects in his surroundings, celebrating the subtle nuances of change, the shifting seasons, the mundane, painting plants in all their varied states. By embracing the iPad, he allowed himself to revisit the same motifs, continually and rapidly renewing his artistic output, while also being able to document his entire creative progression from a blank screen to a finished work of art. While the medium of art painted on an iPad is often subject to criticism, the preceding display of Hockney’s previous works affirms his skill and clear artistic vision. This daring embrace of new technology, particularly at the age of eighty-two at the time, is truly admirable, indicating his fearless willingness to experiment with practices often associated with younger artists.

 

David Hockney
"27th March 2020, No. 1"
iPad painting printed on paper, mounted on 5 panels
Exhibition Proof 2
364.09 x 521.4 cm (143.343 x 205.276 Inches)
© David Hockney

 

The next section transitions to showcase Hockney’s dialogue with other painters, displaying his respect for those who inspired him. He pays homage to artists such as Fra Angelico, Cézanne, Picasso, and Van Gogh, reinterpreting their works with his own vision and aesthetic. As seen in A Bigger Card Players (2015), where he directly references Cézanne’s Card Players (1890-1895), Hockney creates a powerful mise en abyme by incorporating the same work in the background, alongside Pearblossom Hwy, which is positioned in the same room. The interior wall depicted in the image echoes the very room we are in, creating yet another mise en abyme, this time for the viewer themselves. The understanding of the painters who preceded him, and their contributions to the art world and to Hockney himself, allows us not only to admire Hockney for his deep respect for these grand artists but to perceive art in its totality from a much broader perspective.


As we approach the end of the exhibition, we discover Hockney’s passion and love for opera. In 1975, the artist was commissioned by the Glyndebourne Festival to design the sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and since then, opera and set design have remained deeply close to his heart. In this installation, we discovered his latest creation, Hockney Paints the Stage, a musical and visual reinterpretation of his drawings and sets for various operas. This room truly adds another dimension to the exhibition, not only through the overflowing operatic scores of Mozart, Wagner, and Stravinsky, but also by firmly establishing Hockney’s comprehensive artistic background. Within this 360-degree, light-filled room, one truly realizes the depth and sustaining love for life that Hockney has and can communicate, and by this point, you can feel it too.

 

Installation views "David Hockney 25", galerie 10
Hockney Paints the Stage, 2025
Creation of David Hockney & Lightroom
Conception 59 Productions
Installation views "David Hockney 25", galerie 10
© David Hockney © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage

 

Leaving the opera room, filled with emotion, the exhibition climaxes in a more intimate space that unveils David Hockney’s most recent works, painted in London, where the artist has resided since July 2023. These particularly enigmatic paintings draw inspiration from Edvard Munch and William Blake, exemplified by After Munch: Less is Known than People Think (2023) and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think (2024), directly inspired by Blake’s illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy. The title appears three times within the painting, feels like a deliberate mantra, beautifully combined with a landscape depicting the abiding cycle of night and day, perfectly aligning with the artist’s profound notion that “it is the now that is eternal.”

Hockney concludes the exhibition with his latest self-portrait, a deliberate choice that felt like the perfect finale to such a comprehensive, personal exhibition. In this portrait, he portrays himself drawing outdoors, holding a cigarette, adorned in colorful attire and his signature framed glasses, gazing directly at the viewer. It can be viewed like his own personal valediction, a way of saying goodbye and a heartfelt “thank you for being here, and I hope you understood.”

 

David Hockney
"May Blossom on the Roman Road" 2009
Oil on 8 canvases (36 x 48" each)
182.88 x 487.7 x 0 cm (72 x 192 x 0 Inches)
© David Hockney
Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt

 

David Hockney 25 is on view through August 31 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation 8, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi Bois de Boulogne, 75116

Read Our Interview of Ireland Wisdom On the Erotic Gaze & the Art of Looking →

Portrait by Austin Sandhaus

In this intimate conversation between gallerist Carlye Packer and painter Ireland Wisdom, what begins as a reflection on their creative partnership unfolds into a meditation on intimacy, eroticism, play, and mortality. Wisdom, whose portraits are painted from live models in prolonged silence are charged with a psychic intensity. She speaks with Packer candidly about her relationship to the body, desire, and the mythic tradition of being seen—and of seeing. As they revisit their early collaborations and look closer at Wisdom’s new Dance Macabre series, the dialogue dances between the sacred and the scandalous, from Goya to Dorian Gray to Georges Bataille. As friends and colleagues, they muse about works that are made like someone chasing the moment before it is lost. Whether you are a sitter or simply a viewer, you are invited to enter that entanglement with her. Read more.

Inside Five Must-See New York Gallery Shows This Spring

Find everything from queer intimacy to infinity rooms to domestic Americana on paper this season in New York’s galleries.

 

Jim Shaw
Study for “The Bride Stripped Bare” (2016)
Pencil on paper

 

text by Kim Shveka

Jim Shaw, Drawings
Gagosian
On view through June 14

For over thirty years, American artist Jim Shaw has mined the depths of Americana, popular culture, personal memory, and dream logic to create a body of work as chaotic as it is compelling. Now on view at Gagosian, Drawings is an exhibition of works on paper made between 2012 and 2024, showing Shaw’s intellectual inspirations in his artistic journey. Known for his ability to weave together the threads of America’s subconscious through surreal and symbolic visual language, Shaw here turns to the intimacy of graphite and ink, using sketch-like drawings to offer a direct window into his thinking; raw and unfiltered. These drawings are freely associated with references drawn from the artist’s mind and memory, as he imagines and recalls scenes from his own life and the collective American memory, translating the images in his mind’s eye onto paper. Jim Shaw’s “Drawings” is a deeply personal and evocative exploration of identity, nostalgia, and American culture.

 

Sam Moyer
Boca (2025)
Marble, acrylic on plaster-coated canvas

 

Sam Moyer, Subject to Change
Sean Kelly
On view through June 14

Multidisciplinary artist Sam Moyer is known for her distinctive approach to merging abstraction and materiality, often redefining conventional sculptural forms through her innovative use of natural elements. Her work blurs the lines between painting and sculpture, creating wall-mounted pieces that highlight variations in surface and light.
Now showing at Sean Kelly Gallery, Sam Moyer’s fourth solo exhibition features a dynamic body of new work. The exhibition showcases Moyer's fondness for inconsistency and contradictions across a variety of artworks. Featuring Moyer’s latest stone paintings from 2024, which combine reclaimed stone and painted canvas, alongside oil on panel paintings and handmade paper. In these new works, Moyer meditates on life's inherent dualities; decay and growth, loss and perspective, endings and emergent beginnings; capturing a moment of balance during trying times. The palette draws inspiration from Claude Monet’s late paintings, interpreting his shift towards purity of color and light as an investigation of essential visual language, ultimately reflecting Moyer's continued exploration of color and light as the core building blocks of abstraction.

 

Salman Toor
Cross Street (2025)
Oil on panel
© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farwad Owrang

 

Salman Toor, Wish Maker
Luhring Augustine
On view through June 21

Salman Toor is renowned for his evocative figurative works that explore vulnerability within contemporary public and private life, particularly in the context of queer, diasporic identity. His paintings delve into the opportunities, anxieties, and humor inherent in the search for selfhood and the immigrant experience. Now showing at Luhring Augustine, Wish Maker, Toor’s first major New York presentation since his pivotal 2020 Whitney Museum show, spans both gallery locations, featuring paintings at Luhring Augustine Chelsea and a dedicated presentation of works on paper at Luhring Augustine Tribeca. Toor's new paintings, drawings, and etchings place imaginary yet relatable figures in diverse settings, examining the complexities of our paradoxical times. His work vibrates between heartening and harrowing, often employing a distinctive viridescent palette that illuminates both beauty and violence, liberation and entrapment, reflecting how perception shifts with perspective. Toor skillfully fuses art historical references with contemporary concerns, creating a rich compilation of traditions, popular culture, and lived experience.

Installation view, Atsuko Tanaka, Yayoi Kusama, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, May 8 - June 14, 2025.
Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, Photo: Steven Probert.

Atsuko Tanaka and Yayoi Kusama
Paula Cooper Gallery
On view through June 14

Atsuko Tanaka, Yayoi Kusama, is an exhibition that brings together the groundbreaking works of two of Japan’s most innovative and influential artists. The exhibition presents a diverse selection of Tanaka’s works on canvas and paper, alongside early pieces by Kusama in various media, highlighting the parallel yet distinct artistic concerns of these pioneering figures.

Both Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) and Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) matured in post-World War II Japan, a period of profound societal transformation that spurred radical shifts in the arts. Tanaka, a key female member of the Gutai movement, is known for vibrant works like her iconic “Electric Dress” (1956), where circles and lines dynamically interact. Kusama, active in 1960s New York, explored hypnotic repetition, creating immersive works evoking hallucination and boundlessness. Both shared a broadened approach to artmaking, incorporating textiles, sensory environments, and performance, developing personal abstract languages with repeated motifs in large, enveloping scales. The exhibition includes Tanaka's early drawings and paintings, Kusama’s pioneering “Infinity Nets,” rare collages, photographs, and historical films.


Dozie Kanu. Chair [ iii ] (Dark), 2022
Poured concrete, steel, rims
35.9 x 16.5 x 20.5 in. 91.4 x 41.9 x 52.1 cm.
Courtesy of anonymous gallery, New York, NY

the chair by the window is an old friend featuring work from Jane Dickson, Kamil Dossar, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Dozie Kanu, Mike Kelley, Carolyn Lazard, Klara Liden, Elliot Reed, Josef Strau
Anonymous Gallery
On view through June 14

The chair by the window is an old friend explores the emotional layers of domestic space. It focuses on how our homes can feel safe and familiar, but also confining or heavy with memory. The objects we live with become more than decoration, they carry personal meaning, reflecting who we are, who we were, and who we might want to be. Some artworks, such as Nan Goldin’s My Bed, Hotel La Louisiane, seem to capture the trace of a moment that has just passed, preserving an atmosphere of intimacy and lingering presence. Others, like Elliot Reed’s leaning umbrellas, convey a sense of stillness and resistance to functionality, evoking suspension rather than resolution. Across the exhibition, everyday materials such as wires, fabric, and furniture are reimagined as vessels of emotion and meaning. Through these transformations, the works articulate themes of care, closeness, imbalance, and quiet shifts, drawing attention to the subtle psychological states embedded within domestic objects and spaces. In this way, the exhibition invites us to think about what ‘home’ really means. Is it a space where we can rest, or does it sometimes hold us back? As life outside moves faster and becomes more overwhelming, our interiors can become places where comfort and loneliness exist at the same time. They are both a retreat and a mirror of our inner world.

Islands Within: Read Our Interview of Kilo Kish On the Occasion of Her New EP 'Negotiations' →

Despite the ever-shifting expectations of digital culture, American artist of sound and screen Kilo Kish continues to carve out a space entirely her own—one that defies genre, challenges structure, and insists on emotional honesty. With her latest EP Negotiations, Kish turns her gaze inward and outward, interrogating the increasingly blurred boundaries between human and machine, performance and authenticity, burnout and resilience. Through textured soundscapes, fragmented narratives, and a visual aesthetic that’s both nostalgic and hypothetical, she invites us into a world where self-care is a form of resistance.

How do we nourish the spirit while navigating systems that rarely pause for breath? Kish speaks candidly about the emotional labor behind her output, the philosophies that anchor her worldview, and the freedom she’s found in embracing multiplicity—of identity, of media, and of meaning. What emerges is a portrait of an artist in motion: reflective, adaptive, and uncompromising in her pursuit of truth through art. Read more.

The Weight of Lightness: Miya Ando’s “Mono no aware” at Saint Laurent Rive Droite, Los Angeles

In a city so often obsessed with permanence—ageless faces, endless summers, architecture designed to defy time—Mono no aware, Miya Ando’s luminous exhibition at Saint Laurent Rive Droite in Los Angeles, arrives like a soft exhale. Curated with elegant restraint by Anthony Vaccarello, the exhibition runs from April 8 through May 28, 2025, and offers visitors a meditative encounter with the ineffable: beauty that doesn’t last, and thus becomes more precious.

Ando, a Japanese-American artist based in New York, brings to Los Angeles a body of work that is both austere and poetic. Her materials—steel, redwood, washi paper, glass—are not chosen for comfort or ease. These are tough, elemental substances, but in her hands, they seem to sigh. Steel oxidizes. Wood is scorched. Silver nitrate glistens briefly before tarnishing into shadow. Every piece seems to exist in the act of becoming something else, caught in a slow dance between creation and decay.

It is this delicate tension—between the enduring and the fleeting, the seen and the sensed—that defines Mono no aware. The title, a Japanese philosophical term, loosely translates to “the pathos of things.” But it's not sorrow in the Western sense; it’s a tender, almost reverent awareness of the impermanence of all things. The falling cherry blossom, the shifting moonlight, the flicker of memory—Ando translates these moments not as loss but as sublime presence.

This exhibition is less a gallery show than a sensorial field. Ando’s paintings, with their subtle gradations and vaporous textures, resemble atmospheres more than images. One large piece—steel treated with silver nitrate—glows as if lit from within, a silver dusk caught in mid-fade. Stand before it long enough and you may find yourself breathing slower, drawn into its quietude. The light changes as you move. It is not just the painting that shimmers, but your own perception, altered.

Nearby, sculptures made of redwood anchor the space with a different kind of gravity. Ando uses the traditional Japanese shou-sugi-ban technique to char the surface of the wood, preserving it through fire. The result is a deep, inky black that isn’t void but presence. The carbonized surface absorbs light instead of reflecting it. Touch, were it allowed, would surely reveal unexpected warmth beneath the charcoal. These works feel ancient and future-facing at once—artifacts of a time out of time.

Silkscreen prints—subtler, perhaps quieter still—offer a more intimate scale, drawing viewers close. They echo the motifs of moonlight, fog, and celestial transience that recur throughout Ando’s work. There is a consistent language at play, not in symbols or icons, but in atmosphere. What binds the pieces together is not a narrative, but a rhythm, a kind of visual breath.

Ando’s training is as multidisciplinary as her art. With a background in East Asian calligraphy and metal patination, she bridges traditions with innovation. Her American upbringing meets her Japanese lineage in a hybrid that never feels forced. Instead, her work pulses with the complexity of in-between identities—cultural, material, temporal. The result is a deeply personal, spiritual vision, one that invites viewers not just to look, but to dwell in a different register of time.

Vaccarello’s curatorial touch is light but essential. The space at Saint Laurent Rive Droite—typically known for its sleek fashion displays and curated chaos—has been transformed into a vessel for contemplation. The works are given room to breathe, and the minimalist setting amplifies their quiet power. The collaboration between the house of Saint Laurent and Ando is more than aesthetic alignment—it’s an act of mutual recognition. Both traffic in forms of elegance that resist explanation, both seek out the sacred in style and silence.

It is tempting to categorize Mono no aware as environmental art or spiritual abstraction. But to do so would be to contain it too tightly. What Ando offers here isn’t doctrine—it’s sensation. It’s the way silver catches dusk. The scent of scorched wood. The hush that falls when you realize something beautiful is slipping away. And yet, Mono no aware does not mourn. It honors. In every oxidized panel, every blackened beam, every fading gradient, there is a kind of stillness that feels like acceptance. Not resignation, but reverence.

In a world constantly refreshing itself, where we swipe and scroll in pursuit of the next, the now, the new, Miya Ando’s work asks us to pause. To notice. To feel, just for a moment, the immensity of impermanence. And maybe, in doing so, to find a strange and fragile peace.

Mother Daughter Holy Spirit Throws a Star-Studded Trans Rights Fundraiser

photography by Fernando Palafox
text by Karly Quadros

Last weekend, Mother Daughter Holy Spirit closed out their three-part fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project with a celebrity-filled bash at Gitano NYC. The party was a veritable who’s who of New York City’s queer underground and nightlife royalty, brining together everyone from film stars Chloë Sevigny and Naomi Watts (and her daughter, model Kai Schreiber) to cult favorites Julio Torres and Richie Shazam to art world darling Tourmaline and supermodel Alex Consani.

“It’s funny, we called Holy Spirit the final event, and that’s how we planned it. But being there, in the energy of it all, it didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like a beginning,” said co-founder John Mollet.

The night’s events rounded out a flurry of fundraising events as trans rights are increasingly under attack under this administration. Mother Daughter Holy Spirit, which was co-founded by John Mollet and Bobbi Salvör Menuez, began with a runway show featuring Alex Consani, Richie Shazam, and more stomping the runway in clothing from the likes of Vaquera, Willie Chavaria, and Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen. Next came a pop-up boutique and online store stocked with garments donated from celebrities like Chloë Sevigny and Hari Nef, with some custom artist t-shirts peppered in for good measure.

Holy Spirit was the group’s largest event yet, scaling up from 200 attendees to over 600 dancing the night away in view of the East River. The crowd was largely trans, a mishmash of underground art legends, it girls, theater kids, and militant leftists all dancing under glittering chandeliers and palm trees. Christeene confronted the crowd with her raw, transgressive drag, while Juliana Huxtable and Fashion bumped pounding dance tunes all night long.

“[Gitano] was an unexpected choice for a crowd that often piles into dark and dank Brooklyn warehouses, but we wanted it to feel glamorous, elevated, even a bit reminiscent of the days when the queers and the artists and the yuppies all partied together at Studio 54 — a New York Moment, but this time, with a special focus on celebrating trans people as culture makers, change makers, and invaluable members of our world,” said head of production Lio Mehil.

So far, Mother Daughter Holy Spirit has raised over $50,000 in funds for trans-led grassroots organizations across the country, with additional closet and t-shirt sales scheduled in the coming weeks. In a time when the need for resources and material support for the trans community is more essential than ever, trans joy and self-expression were front and center at Holy Spirit.

“I’m not a trans person, and maybe this sounds selfish, but I truly believe my world, our world, becomes better when trans people have full equality. The trans people I’ve known throughout my life have brought forward a kind of strength, empathy, and clarity that the world desperately needs… I envision a society that seeks trans wisdom more deliberately and more often. I feel so deeply grateful to be part of a project that says to trans people: you are seen, appreciated, and loved,” said Mollet.

Explore the party with exclusive photography from Fernando Palafox.

High Fashion Goes Hi-Fi With L'Atelier Sonore by Valentino and Terraforma In New York

Lea Bertucci at L’Atelier Sonore at Valentino’s Midtown Manhattan location

text by Karly Quadros

In his 2012 book How Music Works, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne argues that over time, music and its technologies evolve to suit the spaces where people do their listening: the church organ’s bellows fill the cavernous chapel, the finely tuned bedroom pop of the 2010s nestles comfortably in one’s headphones. 

Lately, the fashion world has been dabbling in its own new experiments with music, style, and space, enlisting the help of sonic curators that inspire their own fervent devotion across the globe, like Terraforma and NTS Radio. 

Fashion and music have always been tightly bonded from the songs that soundtrack runway shows to the musicians sporting the latest collections. Early hints to the trend came when pioneering LA radio station Dublab released a capsule collection with Carhartt for their twenty-five year anniversary last year. Similarly, Crocs and the ominously lit Hör Berlin released a collaborative shoe in 2022; Adidas announced a collaboration with the collective the year after, featuring a broadcast from Adidas’ flagship store in Berlin with DJs Soyklo, Carmen Electro, Baugruppe90, and DJ Soulseek. Krakow’s own avant music festival Unsound has designed shirts in collaboration with Polish streetwear brand MISBHV and hosted a party with them in an abandoned railway station last year.

As the ways audiences discover music together continues to evolve in the digital age, so does the fashion world’s flirtation with musical communities and experiences that are more specific, intimate, and curated. 

On May 15, Valentino unveiled an intimate listening room at their Madison Avenue location in Midtown Manhattan, dubbed L’Atelier Sonore. The heavily curtained room lit with oranges and pinks was outfitted with sloping couches and an impressive sound system in the front, constructed by Francesco Lupia in collaboration with Terraforma, a collective that runs the cult classive Milanese experimental music festival of the same name. Lupia worked with impiallacciatura, a wood technique historically associated with Renaissance-era interiors. The result was something that felt opulent but modern.

“The idea was to build a sonic living room — intimate, soft, intentionally domestic. We were inspired by the Parisian salons of the early 20th century, spaces where literature, art, music, and conversation naturally converged,” said Ruggero Pietromarchi, one of Terraforma’s founders.

Over the course of the day, a small but impressive lineup of selectors took to the decks, spinning records The Loft-style, unmixed, from start to finish. There was downtown icon and New Age pioneer Laraaji, DJ and archival tape label Minimal Wave founder Veronica Vasicka, and Queens-based Nowadays resident Physical Therapy. Vibes were lush and meditative while not taking itself too seriously. Case and point? At one point, a “Careless Whisper” cover from unsung jazz hero Nancy Wilson was trotted out.

“Given the constant acceleration in our society, there’s a growing need for contemplative spaces and shared rituals. Listening requires stillness — it’s a focused, reflective act. The space was designed with that in mind: small, intimate, and free of distraction, to support attention and presence,” said Lupia.

Meanwhile in London, another fashion world plunge into hi-fi sounds was unfolding. Golden Sounds, a joint effort from Ugg and beloved Internet radio station NTS, filled two full days with programming. Panels, led by Saffron Records on Friday May 16 and NTS Radio on Saturday May 17, focused on everything from the basics of how to DJ to building your own sound system. Deep listening sets were curated, largely around South London’s jazz, R&B, and electronic scenes and featured artists like Goya Gumbani, dexter in the newsagent, Errol, and Alex Rita. There was a particular focus on sounds from London’s African and Caribbean diaspora communities: baile funk, hip hop, and soul.

For those used to going to the club for a specific producer for a particular energy, the historic importance of sound systems might not be readily apparent. Sound systems were a central feature of early dance music culture in Jamaica and the UK – often, the sound system itself was more of a draw than any one DJ or emcee. In ‘90s rave culture too, collectives and promotions would advertise on flyers the truly awesome power of their custom sound systems, often with flashy technobabble that had little to do with the actual mechanics of audio technology itself. For those that know and care about the cultural lineage of people dancing together in space, a sound system is the mothership, a monument to hedonistic release but also to the care, intention, and work that goes into bringing people together.

“It’s not just about what you hear, but how you inhabit the space while listening,” said Pietromarchi.

Golden Sounds’ events, held in an open air stone courtyard, were less cloistered than L’Atelier Sonore at Valentino but sought to capture a similar audience and atmosphere. After all, what else inspires the same devotion, obsession, and sense of exclusivity than underground music? DJs guard their rare white labels with a fervence verging on feverishness. In-the-know music fans are happy that artist broke into the mainstream but also know they used to be better (but really, how i’m feeling now will always be superior to brat.) The status, the symbols, the devotion to the archive – it’s attractive for fashion brands like Valentino and Ugg to seek out the kinds of audiences cultivated by Terraforma and NTS Radio particularly for their discerning taste and dedication.

Hi-fi spaces like these split the difference between deep listening on one’s headphones and a dance night out on the town. The question is, is having the time and access to such spaces becoming a luxury in and of itself? Like the historic sound systems from decades past, communities centered around music will persevere sometimes in resistance to and sometimes in tandem with larger cultural forces like fashion. In the meantime, it’s clear that, in a time like ours, the need for spaces that encourage deep, active listening are greater than ever before.

When asked if time and space to pause and listen had become a luxury, Pietromarchi answered honestly: “Yes — unfortunately, it often is. But I don’t believe it should be. Listening is a basic, vital act. That’s what spaces like L’Atelier Sonore try to offer: a kind of pause that isn’t passive, but active. A moment to re-centre.”

L'Atelier Sonore, an immersive listening room, is open daily through August at Valentino Madison Avenue.

The turntable at Valentino’s L’Atelier Sonore

Everything Has to Come At the Right Moment: Read Our Interview of Designer Francisco Costa →

From Calvin Klein to sustainable skincare, the maternal gaze is a guiding principle for Brazil’s prodigal son.

 
 

Francisco Costa’s path from the rarefied world of high fashion to the heart of the Amazon is a story of return—both to his geographical roots and to a practice that prioritizes community care by design. Born in the small town of Guarani, Brazil, Costa was raised by a visionary mother who ran a garment factory that empowered hundreds of local women and modeled what would now be considered a quietly radical form of sustainability.

Shortly after losing his mother during his adolescence, the budding young designer moved to New York to study fashion at FIT. An early and formative experience working for a Seventh Avenue garment manufacturer who held licenses for major designers, including Oscar de la Renta, led to Costa eventually working directly under de la Renta, becoming part of his atelier and learning the foundations of luxury design and craftsmanship. This apprenticeship was pivotal—it exposed Costa to the world of refined, couture-level design and helped him develop the precision and discipline that would later define his own minimalist aesthetic.

In the late 1990s, Costa moved to Gucci, where he worked under Tom Ford. This period helped sharpen his sense of modernity, sex appeal, and branding. Best known for his decade-long tenure as the Women’s Creative Director at Calvin Klein, Costa became a defining voice in modern reductionism—an editor of excess, who found beauty in restraint. But even then, his instinct was to reuse, reimagine, and reconnect with materials in deeply personal ways. All along the way, his mother’s ethics of care and resourcefulness continue to shape Costa’s worldview.

With the founding of Costa Brazil, he turned his attention from clothing the body to nurturing it. A pivotal trip to the western Amazon introduced him to Indigenous communities and powerful natural ingredients like breu, a sacred resin with antimicrobial and spiritual properties. Guided by partnerships with organizations like Conservation International, Costa built a brand that honors the land, its protectors, and the rituals that sustain both.

In every sense, Costa Brazil is an extension of its founder’s ethos: pure, considered, and deeply connected to place. Read more.

A Conversation with Artist Karice Mitchell →

Karice Mitchell
Sensation (Diptych), 2025
Archival inkjet print, custom frame, sandblasted glass

“I love using familiarity as a way to ask unfamiliar questions,” says Karice Mitchell.

Drawing from Players magazine, often dubbed “the Black Playboy,” Mitchell’s photo-based works explore the no man’s land between exposure and illegibility, frankness and mystery, modesty and obscenity. Through her closely cropped diptychs, triptychs, and modified images sourced from the pages of this landmark magazine of Black erotica, she explores the self-definition, personal expression, and resilience of Black women. Economy of Pleasure, her latest show at Silke Lindner and her first solo exhibition in the U.S., hones in on the early 2000s: the era of the video vixen, digital downloads, and lower back tattoos. Sand blasted over intimate images of a woman’s shoulder, a hoop earring, a pristine pump and a French pedicure are words pulled from the magazine’s pages and models’ nommes de guerre: angel, sensation, paradise.

After a frustrating moment of censorship when she was commissioned to do a public work of art in her native Vancouver, British Columbia in 2023, Mitchell returned more committed than ever to her project exploring the representations of Black women in adult media. While it may seem salacious, the work itself is deeply sensitive and interior. There is recognition between women who have worked to claim their bodies as their own through ink, jewelry, donning clothing, or shedding it. The work is seductive but withholding. Notably missing are the Players models’ faces — rather than exposing these women to judgment and interrogation once again, Mitchell’s work gives the audience only glimpses of a personality and a life lived. Her work is an interrogation, a negotiation, and a reclamation. The rest is on the viewer. Read more.

Walk a Mile in Women's History Museum's Shoes →

Image courtesy of Company Gallery

It was February 2024, and one model at the Women’s History Museum show couldn’t stop falling over. Determined, she trundled down the runway only to trip once again. The culprits were obvious: two enormous, cumbersome brown boxing gloves attached to the toes of classic stiletto. “Take them off!” cried members of the audience, a mixture of fashion insiders and queer iconoclasts. Still, the model made it to the end and hoisted the gloves in her hand, triumphant. K.O.

Unlike most New York footwear, the shoes of Women’s History Museum are not designed with functionality as a priority. In a city where pedestrians reign supreme and comfort is a must, the shoes of fashion label/art duo/vintage store curators Amanda McGowan and Mattie Rivkah Barringer are here to tell a story. Whether they’re white wedding heels bedazzled with a clatter of bones and colorful pills or gold boxing slippers rendered into precarious platforms by two wooden pillars, the shoes of Women’s History Museum exist in the sweet spot between strength and softness, power and precarity, barbarity and beauty.

Vintage remains an essential reference point for the duo. They maintain a carefully curated secondhand designer shop on Canal Street, sort of a modern-day SEX, stocked with everything from ‘80s Vivienne Westwood and ‘90s Gaultier to Edwardian furs and linens. In a similar style to early Alexander McQueen, Barringer and McGowan mine fashion references of the past – Victorian riding boots, rocking horse platforms, 70s crocodile skin clogs – for highly stylized fashion performances that entice as much as they reject traditional categories of beauty. The result is something that feels entirely 2025 in all its shredded, everything-out-in-the-open glory. Throughout Women History Museum’s nine staged collections, they return to similar references: animal prints and pelts; competitive sports, particularly boxing; and New York City, with the coins and shattered glass that cover the sidewalks. The clothes bare skin and barb it too.

Shoes, in many ways, remain the ultimate fetish object. They’re exalted, often the most expensive part of an outfit, yet they spend most of the day in contact with the filthy sidewalk. They’re civilizing, often constricting, and conceal the foot, which remains almost as hidden from public life as the body’s most nether regions. Shoes have often been used to control women as with painful and restrictive footbinding practices, yet their erotic potential is undeniable, as with the long, sensuous lines created in the body with a clear plastic pleaser. It’s no wonder that they served as the basis for Women’s History Museum’s latest show at Company Gallery, on display until June 21. Autre caught up with Barringer and McGowan to talk stilettos, surrealism, and the seriously sinister parts of living – and walking – in New York City. Read more.

It's a Real Carnival at Jeffrey Deitch Right Now

Photo by Genevieve Hanson

On May 3, a cavalcade of artists, burlesque stars, magicians, drag queens, sword swallowers, latex fetishists, fan dancers, scenesters, and bright young things stepped right up for the night of all nights, the show of all shows, a spectacle to bring even the stodgiest gallerist to their knees: a carnival. Presiding over the whole thing was master of ceremonies/artist Joe Coleman, who curated the group show and contributed a variety of artifacts from his own personal Odditorium of historic circus curios.

The gallery was packed tight with art and packed even more tightly with people. A glimmering merry-go-round twirled next to a bulging, fleshy sculpture and ornate Coney Island mermaid costumes. The over forty artists invited to participate ranged from big chip favorites like Anne Imhof and Jane Dickson to cult favorites like Kembra Pfahler and Nadia Lee Cohen to contemporary favorites like Raúl de Nieves and Mickalene Thomas to historic figures like Weegee and Johnny Eck. Coleman, a lifelong devotee of the carnival and performing arts, made a point to include and celebrate the work of circus arts performers that have made up his own found family for decades. Read more.

Fondazione Prada Announces Film Fund To Sustain The Future Of Independent Cinema

Fondazione Prada is launching the Fondazione Prada Film Fund—a bold, €1.5 million annual commitment to champion the future of independent cinema. Debuting in Fall 2025 with an open call for submissions, the Fund is designed to support films of exceptional artistic ambition, deepening the institution’s two-decade engagement with the moving image.

Each year, a jury of seasoned professionals will select 10 to 12 feature films for support—regardless of origin, language, or genre. The only benchmarks: quality, originality, and a singular vision. The Fund’s purpose is clear—to offer meaningful support at key stages of filmmaking, from early development through post-production.

“Cinema is a laboratory of ideas and a site of cultural education,” says Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione Prada. “That’s why we’re committed to helping bring new works into the world—works that demand something of the viewer and open up new ways of seeing. This Fund continues our long-standing dialogue with the radical, the visionary, and the free.”

Rooted in editorial independence, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund works closely with an evolving team of producers, curators, and internationally recognized cinema experts. Its rigorous curatorial framework reflects the broader mission of Fondazione Prada: to generate unexpected encounters between disciplines and foster new creative languages.

With an eye toward inclusivity, the initiative is structured to embrace a wide range of filmmakers—from established auteurs to emerging voices to those working in experimental or research-based modes. By doing so, the Fund aims to enrich the vibrant, pluralistic landscape of contemporary cinema, not just with resources, but with faith in the power of the cinematic imagination.

Fondazione Prada Film Fund is a project developed by Paolo Moretti—curator of Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard program, director of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival from 2018 to 2022, head of the Cinema department at ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne), and Director of Cinémas du Grütli in Geneva—in collaboration with Rebecca De Pas, a member of the selection committee at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, art consultant for the Viennale, and co-director of FiDLab—an international coproduction platform—from 2009 to 2019.

A Peek Inside Miu Miu’s Exclusive NYC Installation

Tales and Tellers explored the state of modern femininity for Frieze New York 2025.

Image courtesy of Daniel Salemi/Miu Miu


text by Karly Quadros


Last Friday during Frieze, New York, Miu Miu convened a who’s who of the international fashion and art worlds for the second edition of Tales and Tellers, an immersive performance and installation exploring modern femininity through style, performance, and film. 

Partygoers ducked out of the rain and bluster into Chelsea’s Terminal Warehouse, a cavernous late-19th-century industrial space teeming with New York City history. It was once home to the infamous Tunnel Nightclub, founded by Peter Gatien who also owned the Limelight and Palladium, and was a beloved haunt of the Club Kids as well as New York’s iconic 90’s hip hop scene. Back in the day, the side rooms of the hangar were lavishly decorated according to theme – a Victorian library in one, an S&M dungeon in another – so it was fitting that Tales and Tellers, which brought Miu Miu’s fashion to life through staged tableauxs, found its home here.

Drawing on her longstanding collaboration with Miu Miu, Polish-born interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga used Miu Miu’s archive of short films by female directors as inspiration for the piece. Since 2011, the films – which have included the work of Janicza Bravo, Miranda July, Ava Duvernay, and Mati Diop, and have sometimes accompanied Miu Miu’s runway shows – have explored the authentic lives of women worldwide; mothers, daughters, performers, dreamers, lovers, skaters, and rebels buck social convention in their searches for identity. Miuccia Prada and Macuga first united all the films for Art Basel Paris in October 2024. The show was an unexpected hit, drawing 11,000 visitors over just five days. 

This second edition, convened by Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of the MACBA in Barcelona, was indebted to Miu Miu’s rich archive of fashion and curatorial efforts. The dim tunnel-like space was outfitted with screens from tiny mounted smartphones to hefty LED plinths, all playing one of the three dozen female-directed films commissioned by the fashion house. Guests trickled in, sipping champagne and leafing through the Truthless Times newspaper, a remnant from Macuga’s last installation with Miu Miu, Salt Looks like Sugar, which served as the backdrop for their Spring/Summer 2025 runway show. Notable attendees included Alexa Chung, Sara Paulson, Chase Sui Wonders, Paloma Elsesser, Ella Emhoff, Kiki Layne, Pauline Chalamet, and Cazzie David.

One by one, performers outfitted in archival Miu Miu began to roam the space as well. One performer shadow boxed in bejeweled tap shorts. Another in a red dress haltingly performed a standup comedy routine about, what else, but failed love, Plan B, and thoughts of death (one waiter carrying a tray of empty champagne flutes giggled, despite himself.) Several performers sang and danced, while yet another sculpted with Play-Doh in front of a stop motion animation, yet not every tableaux felt so joyous. One woman in a bell-shaped yellow coat, crept along the sidelines, a gas mask strapped to her face. Another in a grey wool skirt suit stared longingly at her screen from a cage. The entire performance culminated in an ecstatic dance party in the center of the room: women, moving and playing freely in a space once known as a haven for self-expression.

The dark, moody atmosphere of surveillance, punctuated by roving spotlights, evoked the troubled times we live in. After all, what feels more true to 2025 then trying to just go about your daily life – putting on makeup, working at the office, playing dress up – while something more sinister presses in? As one performer brandished newspapers and called out, fruitlessly, about “disrupting reality” and “digital malfunction,” the others continued their rituals of self, care, and creativity. This is the state of modern womanhood, after all. What else is there to do?

Image courtesy of Daniel Salemni/Miu Miu