Dawn Williams Boyd Inverts America's Racial Narrative @ Fort Gansevoort

Dawn Williams Boyd
Abduction, 2025
Assorted fabrics and cotton embroidery floss
45 x 67.5 inches

text by Hank Manning

In FEAR at Fort Gansevoort, Dawn Williams Boyd inverts American history, imagining a parallel universe where Black oppressors imported white slaves and have maintained an economy predicated on race-based exploitation for centuries. Her cloth paintings, made with textiles imported from Africa, all closely resemble canonical American ephemera, including historical photographs and advertisements. Maintaining this color-inverting framework, the gallery, for its third solo exhibition with Boyd, has painted its typically white walls black. 

The exhibition quickly succeeds in making us hyperaware of our racial biases. The scenes depicted—enslaved people chained together on ships, hooded horsemen celebrating lynchings, peaceful protestors attacked by police and civilians—are so ingrained in our memories that we instinctively assign roles before noticing Boyd has reversed them. Even knowing the artist’s intent, standing before these explicit works, our minds still resist the uncanny world she constructs. 

 

Dawn Williams Boyd
Brainwashed, 2025
Assorted fabrics and cotton embroidery floss
66 x 43.5 inches

 

In addition to these violent scenes, Boyd highlights the psychological violence that racism perpetuates in relation to the commercialization of cultural tropes. In a piece titled Brainwashed, a young Black girl, holding a black bar of soap, asks a white slave, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy Soap?” We are directly confronted with the immediate qualities we assign to the colors black and white, as well as how these perceptions affect one’s feelings of self-worth, particularly when learned at a young age.

Dawn Williams Boyd
Cultural Appropriation, 2025
Assorted fabrics and cotton embroidery floss
47 x 58 inches

More than 150 years after the de jure end of slavery in America, economic and social inequalities persist. In keeping with this reality, Boyd’s textile works generally proceed chronologically through history, but they offer no hint of progress toward integration or equality; the racial divide remains unambiguous. She further underscores the role of seemingly benevolent industries, like entertainment and medicine, in perpetuating racial inequality. We see white subjects forced into society’s most exploited roles, from dancing in banana skirts in service of the hegemonic class (at a Prohibition era nightclub in Harlem), to being the subjects of gruesome gynecological research (imitating the work of Marion Sims, the “father of gynecology” who performed studies on enslaved Black women). In the real world, Black patients disproportionately lack access to the advances their exploitation made possible.

Dawn Williams Boyd
The Lost Cause Mythos, 2025
Assorted fabrics and cotton embroidery floss
56 x 70.5 inches

In The Lost Cause Mythos, a reframed Gone With the Wind features a white mammy serving a Black Scarlett O’Hara. Boyd addresses the power of art in shaping and reinforcing societal myths, however, she refuses to entertain the “happy slave” stereotype, instead portraying a despondent attendant. White characters lose their individuality; in settings from the beginning of the slave trade to the present day, men and women sport identical short blond hair and appear either nearly nude or in plain white garments. This homogenization dehumanizes them, treating them as props devoid of personality. Their Black counterparts, by contrast, have diverse hairstyles and elaborate clothing in a variety of colors, with red—here a symbol of power—especially prevalent.

Today, the US federal government and many state governments are attacking DEI initiatives, legal protections secured by the Civil Rights movement, and the honest teaching of American history, denigrating attempts to right historical wrongs as “reverse racism.” Boyd’s stark work puts these unsubstantiated claims into perspective. It asserts the degree to which most Americans underestimate the ongoing legacy of systemic racism and emphasizes the role of emotion in our material world. We see fear in the eyes of everyone, from those experiencing the horrors below deck on slave ships to a fragile ruling class who feels existentially entitled to their privilege and is terrified of losing it. 

Dawn Williams Boyd: FEAR is on view through January 24 at Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Avenue, New York

Criterion Collection and Dover Street Market launch Holiday Curation In Los Angeles and New York

This holiday season, Criterion steps out from the living room and into the city, partnering with Dover Street Market to transform film history into a tactile, immersive experience. For two days only, December 13–14, dedicated installation spaces at DSM New York and DSM Los Angeles will host a carefully curated selection from the Criterion Collection—inviting visitors to browse, discover, and linger among some of cinema’s most enduring works.

At the heart of the program is a reverence for authorship and atmosphere. Collector sets spanning the radical tenderness of Agnès Varda, the baroque spectacle of Fellini, the aching romanticism of Wong Kar Wai, and the existential weight of Bergman anchor the offering, alongside Criterion milestones and cult-defining epics like Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films. Single editions punctuate the selection with sharp contrasts: the icy ritualism of Eyes Wide Shut, the restless rebellion of Breathless, the intimate spectacle of Grey Gardens, and the cultural urgency of Do the Right Thing.

The films and merchandise will remain available throughout December, extending the invitation to revisit, rewatch, and reframe the season through the language of film.

timo fahler’s TERMINAL CLASSIC Meditates on Personal Upheaval & Collective Uncertainty @ Sebastian Gladstone Gallery

 

timo fahler, SKYBEARER, 2025, Steel, stained glass, lead, found object, 62" H x 42" W x 4" D

 

text by Caia Cupolo

timo fahler’s TERMINAL CLASSIC is a series of eight sculptural wall works that combine images from ancient Maya culture with symbols of America power, meditating on memory, the weight of ancestry, personal upheaval and collective uncertainty. Its title refers to the period between 250-900 CE, when many of the great Maya city-states in the southern lowlands experienced a socio-political collapse and abandonment that is often referred to as the Maya Collapse. Created while the artist was moving from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, these works mark a major life change as his family expanded and emigrated.

fahler’s “SKYBEARER” in stained glass is set behind rusting window bars. This is one of the four deities responsible for holding up the sky, separating it from Earth, and making mortal life possible. His incarceration might explain what has gone so terribly wrong with the cosmic order.

In “IDYLLIC, IDEALIC, IDEA LICK, I’D EEL LICK, I DEAL ICK,” the White House is presented “like a stage prop or an empty shell, holding only the idea of something.” It serves as a potent symbol of the crumbling face of American capitalism, particularly in juxtaposition with “FLAG,” which is seen directly ahead when you enter the gallery. This buckling discarded bedspring that sat in the artist’s studio for months revealed itself as an American flag when fahler discovered that it was composed of thirteen rows. It was the very last piece he created before leaving Los Angeles.

 

timo fahler, flag, 2025, Steel, stained glass, lead, found object, 73" H x 50" w x 8" D

 

Because fahler is of mixed heritage, his work often touches on what it feels like to be caught between his Mexican and American cultures. This inner conflict is further articulated by the delicate friction between fragile, colorful glass held by rough, industrial materials, like rusted steel fences, metal bed springs, and rebar. This skillful balance of strength and fragility gives the work an almost animist sense of emotional stability.

When the light hits the stained glass, it casts vivid, colorful shadows on the wall, creating an ethereal extension to the work that is constantly transforming as the day passes. In effect, these shadows act as a performative counterpart to works that are initially perceived as purely visual. Within the changing environment, the integrity of the work and the narrative it portrays persist.

TERMINAL CLASSIC is on view through December 13 @ Sebastian Gladstone Gallery 36 White Street, New York

Autre Magazine Presents Performa Biennial's Grand Finale with Mother Daughter Holy Spirit In New York

Last weekend, Autre magazine presented the grand finale closing event for the 20th anniversary of the Performa Biennial, co-hosted with trans rights fundraiser Mother Daughter Holy Spirit. A highlight of the evening was a special and rare performance from house legend Crystal Waters who performed her iconic track, “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless).” A very special thanks to Staud for the support. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Tehching Hsieh Made Time His Medium

Tehching Hsieh
One-Year Performance 1978-1979 (Cage Piece)
Photo: Cheng Wei Kuong

text by Hank Manning

After driving past horse farms on the way to Beacon, a suburb an hour north of New York City, I entered the Dia to join a sea of guests from around the world. We had come to see the oeuvre of Tehching Hsieh, a performance artist who completed six durational pieces between 1978 and 1999 and has since declared himself no longer an artist. However, the exhibition, which he helped design for its two-year run that began in October, is as much a work of art in its entirety as any of its particulars on display. 

For his first one-year performance, Hsieh lived in a small cell in his studio, furnished with a bed and sink, pledging to abstain from speaking, reading, and writing entirely. A friend helped him daily by supplying food and cleaning his waste, as well as taking a daily portrait photograph; all 365 now hang in chronological order. We also see the cell that was Hsieh’s home, still furnished with the material goods he had: paper towels, toothpaste, a glass, mattress, gray blanket, bucket, and a change of clothes labeled with his name. 

Installation view. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York

Next, in Time Clock Piece, Hsieh took even more photos—one every hour, on the hour, again for an entire year. The next exhibition space takes the form of a square with the same proportions as the first. These self-portraits are also hung in chronological order, underneath punch cards he stamped for each. Posed next to a clock, they serve as evidence that he rarely slept more than fifty minutes at a time, although Hsieh does list the occasional instances when he failed to clock in due to sleeping through his alarm. 

Seemingly tired of spending too much time in his studio, Hsieh proceeded to the opposite extreme—he attempted to spend an entire year outdoors. Daily maps document his walks around lower Manhattan. He also penned the times and locations he ate, defecated, and slept. (To my surprise, he seems to have returned to typical eight-hour nights.) To survive the harsher environment, he had heavier clothes than his prior prison-like attire and carried a few new items, including an “I ❤︎ NY” plastic shopping bag, a radio, and a Swiss Army knife, all now on display. Again, Hsieh gives full disclosure: police detained him for fifteen hours—unfortunately indoors—after getting into a street fight.

Hsieh’s fourth year-long performance was his most collaborative—he spent the entire year attached by an eight-foot rope to fellow artist Linda Montano. The two, staying close together but avoiding touch, were not a couple and had not met prior. Their daily photos show mundane activities—sleeping, cooking, typing. A few days are labeled “Fight.”

The next two rooms take up an equal amount of space in the museum as the previous four. For his final year-long performance, Hsieh declared that he would neither make, look at, read, nor discuss art. Then, for thirteen years straight, he would make art but not publicly reveal it. At the end of this final performance, he released only one piece, which looks like a ransom note reading: “I kept myself alive.” Whatever else he did to occupy his time, the exhibition provides no hints: the two rooms are nearly entirely unadorned. Walking through these open rooms after looking so carefully at each day’s record in the previous four inspires a sense of awe. We imagine the freedom Hsieh may have experienced in contrast to the passage of time in our own lives. 

Installation view. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York

The exhibition is constructed like a scale model of Hsieh’s life experiences. We see photographs taken from every day of his first four strenuous pieces, experiencing time at an accelerated rate, but at the same consistent intervals he charted his progress. Beginning each with a shaved head, his hair is almost the only discernible change over the spans of the first two projects, while the latter two show a vast number of environments. The small spaces between each room even estimate the “life time” (rather than “art time”) of less than one year Hsieh passed between each piece.

“Why did he do this?” a six-year-old girl asked aloud what we were all wondering. Walking through and imagining myself attempting and failing any similar feat in a fraction of the time, I perceived the work as effective social commentary. After all, no matter how much I assume Hsieh suffered, many people’s real-life situations are even more perilous, as they live in prison cells or unhoused involuntarily and indefinitely.

 

Tehching Hsieh
One Year Performance 1981–1982 (Outdoor Piece)

 

Alternatively, it is easy to see Hsieh as a trendsetter. Today, online influencers gain followings through any number of stunts, from, like Hsieh, living in intentionally difficult situations, to the more inane, like counting up to a million or eating dangerous quantities of food. Hsieh likewise often welcomed audiences. While living in his cell, he opened his studio for six-hour periods, allowing anyone to come and see him in person. Living outdoors and then with Montano, he advertised public meetups via flyer. 

But Hsieh claims neither of those ambitions. He says he struggled when he first moved to New York, undocumented, spending six years feeling like he just went back and forth between his home and the restaurants where he worked. He asked and answered himself: “What am I looking for? I am already in the piece.” Art comes from life, and life’s most basic and important element is time.

Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999 is on view at Dia, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York

Vaginal Davis’s Magnificent Product Chronicles Five Decades of Her Playful Defiance @ MoMA PS1

Magnificent Production by Vaginal Davis, MoMA PS1, 2025. Photo: Isabella Bernabeo.

text and photographs by Isabella Bernabeo

Magnificent Product marks Vaginal Davis’s first major US institutional show, presenting art from her early Los Angeles projects to her more recent Berlin-based creations. Organized thematically instead of chronologically, the works take viewers on a journey filled with vivid colors, humor, and emotion.

Magnificent Production by Vaginal Davis, MoMA PS1, 2025. Photo: Isabella Bernabeo.

The exhibition begins in a light mint-green room titled Naked on my Ozgod: Fausthaus – Anal Deep Throat. This square room features green sheer curtains along every wall, with hundreds of photos from Davis’s early Los Angeles years covering the walls behind the fabric. Visitors are invited to slowly peel away the fabric from the wall to get an intimate view into Davis’s personal life before seducing them into the next room. This section is inspired by one of her first art exhibitions, originally held at the Pio Pico Library in Los Angeles. 

In the next space, HAG, Davis reconstructs her old Sunset Boulevard apartment in Los Angeles, the site where she produced many iconic zines, such as Shrimp, Yes, Ms. Davis, and Sucker. The dimly lit room glows pink and includes a walk-in box in the center. Inside, its walls display drawings and figurines of a woman’s head, possibly self-portraits. The slanted floor creates a warped, unbalanced environment that meshes reality with fantasy, just like the work it supports. 

Magnificent Production by Vaginal Davis, MoMA PS1, 2025. Photo: Isabella Bernabeo.

Another engaging room in Davis’s collection is HOFPFISTEREI, where visitors are encouraged to interact with her artwork. A table and four chairs occupy the room’s center, surrounded by piles of Davis’s zines, writings, and creations. A photocopier stands nearby for visitors to print out copies to take home. 

Davis also utilizes a screening room, which resembles the Cinerama Dome movie theater that operated on Sunset Boulevard from 1963 until 2021. Here you can watch low-fi videos she created during the 1980s, showcasing her range of personas as an artist, queer activist, self-proclaimed “Blacktress,” and more. These recordings, much like the earlier photos, give visitors a detailed and in-depth view into Davis’s life; they’re a testament to how interconnected her art is with her identity. 

Magnificent Production by Vaginal Davis, MoMA PS1, 2025. Photo: Isabella Bernabeo.

Another striking installment is from her Wicked Pavilion collection, displaying a reimagined version of Davis’s teenage bedroom. However, instead of her in the rotating bed, a large phallic sculpture sits in the space. The room is completely pink, from the walls to the rug to the curtains. A miniature desk sits in the right corner, topped with two lamps, a pile of jewelry, and an array of colored nail polish, hinting that Davis’s has relished dressing up as the showstopper she is since her youth. 

Along the ceiling, dozens of images are hung from a clothesline. These photos are of Davis’s muses, such as actor Michael Pitt or actress Isabella Rossellini. While visitors take a look around the bedroom, they listen to a mix of the song, “A Love Like Ours,” from the 1944 film Two Girls and a Sailor, interviews that Davis herself conducted for LA Weekly in 1996, and a voice message from Davis’s own secret admirer, creating a fully-immersive experience.   

Magnificent Production by Vaginal Davis, MoMA PS1, 2025. Photo: Isabella Bernabeo.

Across all of these works, Davis’s playfulness and defiance shine through. Magnificent Product is a living experience that can be overwhelming at times, yet each room offers a sense of freedom. Davis commands her viewers’ attention—and she intends it that way. 

Magnificent Product is on view through  March 2 @ MoMA PS1 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens

Gibney Dance Company Performs Work by Choreographer Johan Inger in Its Annual Up Close Series

text by Caia Cupolo
photography by Hannah Mayfield

The Gibney Company has returned to New York Live Arts with its annual Up Close series, where the company collaborates with choreographers to revive past works and showcase new ones. This year’s series features Swedish choreographer Johan Inger’s Rain Dogs (2011) and Bliss (2016), as well as a world premiere of When It Was. Inger is an internationally renowned choreographer who got his start after dancing for Nederlands Dans Theater in the ’90s. Since then, he has created works for major companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance, Gauthier Dance Company, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and now the Gibney Company.

The program was a journey through Inger’s emotionally charged theatrical style, moving through works of distinct tone and mood. The set for the opening piece, Rain Dogs, was minimal, with a few radios in the upstage right corner. One soloist, Graham Feeny, began the piece holding a radio. He performed a brief solo, composed of many gestural moves and interactions with his prop. This vignette set the tone for the rest of the performance through the contrast between his solemn stares at the radio and playful gestures. It is a raw and tender reflection on solitude and the search for identity, rendered through facial expressions and gesticulations that could only be read in an intimate setting like New York Live Arts. The rest of the dancers entered the stage, moving from a tight vertical line to an explosive, passionate constellation, cued by the soloist’s clicking of the radio. The latter half of the piece was accompanied by black debris floating down from the ceiling like snowfall.

This high-spirited piece was beautifully contrasted by the world premiere of When It Was, a tender duet set to Samuel Barber’s melancholic Adagio for Strings. As an elegy, the piece captured the quiet strength and eventual fragility of partnership, using breathtaking lifts and moments of sustained balance to question identity and dependence. The technical precision required for such vulnerable, slow-tempo movement was impeccably executed, bridging the program’s more visceral works with quiet reflection.

The evening culminated with Bliss, an audience favorite set to Keith Jarrett’s iconic Köln Concert. The piece is an ode to sheer, ecstatic joy. The choreography matched the music’s soaring, free spirit with expansive, loose, and brightly colored costuming. The work evolved from a communal drift into an explosive, unified dance party, demonstrating the company’s ability to shift from internalized drama to luminous, communal exuberance. The curtain call was succeeded by a celebration of Gibney dancer Jie-Hung Connie Shiau’s last performance with the company. She gave everything to the dance in Bliss and was sent off with a standing ovation.

Ultimately, Gibney’s Up Close performance of Inger’s works is a triumph of the contemporary repertory model. The dancers exhibit a technical mastery that allows them to embody radically different choreographic languages. The Up Close series has featured works by Yin Yue and Rena Butler in the past; now, it presents the humanistic storytelling of Inger. The series confirms that when art is presented without distance, the result is a deeper, more meaningful connection.

Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room Is an Unchanging Link to Nature in an Ever-changing City.

Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977. © The Estate of Walter De Maria. Photo-John Cliett, Courtesy Dia Art Foundation

text by Isabella Bernabeo

I buzz myself in and start to walk up a narrow, rickety old staircase inside an old New York City building located at 141 Wooster Street. A pungent smell greets me as soon as I hit the second floor and turn to enter the exhibit. That’s when I see it. Mounds of dirt thrown inside an apartment’s meant-to-be living room. It’s an unusual sight, and it causes me to think, what am I supposed to make of this?  

Built in 1977, The New York Earth Room has been hidden behind a Soho door for nearly half a century. Walter de Maria installed the piece on the second story of German art dealer Heiner Friedrich’s gallery and apartment building, where it still lies to this day. 

The exhibition contains a white room filled with 250 cubic yards of unsterilized dirt, 22 inches deep, across 3,600 square feet. Originally, the exhibit was intended to last only three months, but it remained on display indefinitely. 

The New York Earth Room wouldn’t be what it is if it were placed in a small town in the middle of the rural Midwest. It’s the fact that it is installed in such a fast-paced city that makes the experience special, especially in the middle of Soho, where materialism and consumerism are practically the only things on visitors’ minds.  

This artwork forces its visitors to slow down and take in their surroundings. The dirt is slow and unwavering, offering a relaxing getaway from the bustle of activity outside. Yet, it is also quite surprising and provocative to witness so much dirt thrown inside a room, where it is so quiet that all one can hear is their own breath.   

The space is not just for tourists. New Yorkers who love hiking and camping also find meaning here. The piece provides locals with an escape from the city’s constant chaos. It is very much a sanctuary space. Spaces like this are hard to find without taking the Metro-North upstate.

As such, it fits perfectly in the city’s melting pot. It proves that anyone can belong. 

Maria himself never commented on the meaning of this piece, wanting each person to create their own connection. However, it’s notable that the Earth Room was installed only a few years after the United States Environmental Protection Agency was formed. And just a few years prior to that, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was released. This was a time when environmental awareness was exponentially on the rise. I’d like to think that this piece has been preserved to represent humanity’s obligation to care for our own Earth.  

This context adds to the artwork’s significance. However, this wasn’t Maria’s first or even second Earth Room installation.

Maria had actually built the first Earth Room in Munich, Germany, in 1968, and the second one was made in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1974, both of which were temporary exhibits that were dismantled after a few months. 

Maria died in 2013, and since then, Bill Dilworth has been the face of The New York Earth Room through the Dia Art Foundation, founded in 1974 by Friedrich. Dilworth cares for and maintains the exhibit by constantly watering, raking, and weeding the dirt, and even cleaning mold off the walls. 

Visitors can see The Earth Room Wednesday through Sunday between the hours of 12:00-3:00 pm and 3:30-6:00 pm for free. People can ring the bell to be buzzed into the apartment and make their way to the second floor for viewing. Photography is not permitted.

Reborn with Dario Vitale: Versace's SS26 Collection Preview

The harshness of Medusa’s gaze transforms into a smile. Vitale blends Gianni’s bold use of color and desire for imagery with today’s rationality.

text by Alper Kurtul
photographs by Alec Charlip

Versace’s Spring/Summer 2026 preview took place in New York at the Tea Room of the Prince George Ballroom, located within the historic Prince George Hotel complex between Madison and Fifth Avenue. This century-old structure, with its Beaux Arts-inspired elegance, has been transformed into an event venue, and it is said that the women’s tea room, which opens onto the ballroom, and other former common areas have been restored and adapted for contemporary use. 

The first thing felt upon entering the hall was the reality of a changing of the guard. Donatella Versace’s departure from creative management after nearly thirty years and the arrival of Dario Vitale, who worked for many years at Miu Miu building products and images, signified not just a change in name but a shift in perspective. The news that this transition was confirmed in March and that Vitale took over in April marked a turning point in terms of the brand’s future and potential strategic directions. Every detail seen while walking around the room signaled the tone of this new era. 

Vitale’s background in the Prada school is evident in the rational structure and material discipline characteristic of Mrs. Prada. However, here, instead of harsh minimalism, an exuberance that winks at Gianni’s legacy has been chosen. The door opened by the Versace Embodied project had already paved the way for this direction. A line starting with a bronze relief of Medusa merges with the present through black-and-white portraits documenting the youth of Southern Italy, Collier Schorr’s intimate drawings, and Eileen Myles’ search for raw expression. Vitale’s softened use of Medusa in the preview gains a joy that flirts with pop art. This narrative becomes a manifesto on how the house’s codes have been updated. 

 
 

The silhouette language rises above a powerful and controlled nostalgia. It returns with high-waisted pants, prominent shoulders, pleated fabrics, and layered stylization, reminiscent of Miami in the ’80s and ’90s. Suits that look like they jumped out of Don Johnson’s Miami Vice screen but fit today’s urban body stand out. Printed denim and silk pieces adorned with Marilyn Monroe portraits and Warhol-inspired Pop prints take center stage. This is both a direct reference to Gianni Versace’s 1991 Spring/Summer collection and a contemporary echo of the brand’s longstanding dialogue with photography, prints, and identity politics. On the accessories side, gold-toned surfaces and Greek key motifs create a vibrant exchange between antiquity and pop culture, while each silk blend fabric used on the prints is finished by hand. This craftsmanship is particularly evident in the undergarments, where hand-applied paint transitions and micro print transfers on the fabric layers make each piece unique. The human face motifs, inspired by archival portraits, are not printed but hand-painted directly onto the fabric, giving every garment a slightly different expression that feels intimate and alive, as if each carried the touch of its maker (except for Marilyn Monroe, some of the faces that may seem like celebrities actually belong to random people, which subtly forces the viewer to look closer and question what feels familiar). The mannequins used in the exhibition are original models from the Gianni Versace era, handmade in the Milan workshop in the 1980s. These mannequins perfectly reflect the Italian tailoring standards of the period and Gianni’s sense of form. With their handcrafted surfaces, the garments’ lines are displayed as if on a sculpture rather than a mechanical display; the warmth of the human body is preserved in the way the clothes are presented. Thus, the material of the past is transported to today’s stage, and the weight of craftsmanship combines with the energy of modern colors and forms to become a narrative of dynamic confidence.

In footwear, the first hints of the Onitsuka Tiger collaboration are visible as the signature move of the new era. Tai Chi-inspired, low-profile models and a loafer interpretation offer a taste of tailoring, where Japanese production precision meets Italian leather. This collaboration was a separate headline in the news flow of Vitale’s debut season and looks set to become a key file for sneaker enthusiasts in the coming season. The emphasis on Versace partnering with a sports shoe brand for the first time in the sneaker field clearly opens the brand’s door to the street. 

Versace is reestablishing the relationship between myth and the body. The sculptural coldness of the gods gives way to a warmth closer to the human scale. The harshness of Medusa’s gaze transforms into a smile. Vitale blends Gianni’s bold colors and love of imagery with today’s clear sense of rationality. The styling feels fluid, mixing tailored pieces with soft layers that add movement and depth. Each look carries the energy of spontaneity, turning maximalism into something quietly human. This approach strengthens the brand’s relationship with the city and manages to remain wearable even in a hub of intensity like New York. The preview proves that grandeur can be conveyed not through ostentation but through measured assertiveness. Therefore, the expression of rebirth encompasses not only the new creative director but also the brand’s return to itself to find a fresh direction.

Designing Motherhood Is a Spotlight on the Designs That Shape Women's Health

DialPak Contraceptive Dispenser, ca. 2001
Invented by David P. Wagner in 1964
Photo: Erik Gould

Fisher-Price Nursery Monitor, 1983
Photo: Erik Gould

text by Hank Manning

Everyone is born, but the tools that facilitate (or prevent) this process are generally neglected by museums, the very institutions meant to chronicle the human experience. Our male-dominated society has placed more value on the female form—one of the more common sights at most art museums—than the wellbeing of women. Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, at the Museum of Arts and Design, inverts this to consider how objects, from IUDs to forceps to cradles, have supported, and at times threatened, the wellbeing of mothers and their children. It highlights, furthermore, how disparity of access to these tools has reinforced racial and economic inequality.

The exhibition occupies the museum’s entire fourth floor. Walking clockwise from the elevators around the perimeter, the objects generally follow the timeline of motherhood, from conception to postpartum. Immediately apparent is the sheer multitude of items designed for each stage. 

These inventions have provided some women with the freedom to delay, prevent, or end a pregnancy. A schematic banner shows dozens of patents issued for contraceptives. Older band and ring designs have gradually shrunk and evolved into T-shaped inserts. Tools to procure abortions have also shrunk, from a foot-pump connected to two jars circa 1960 to Mifepristone tablets, in an unassuming white box, today.

Installation view. Photo: Jenna Bascom

Designs for commercial products consider both style and utility. The wooden Tripp Trapp chair features a minimalist form in the shape of an italicized L. The Resus-A-Cradle, created by a midwife, with the appearance of a mummy’s sarcophagus, positions a newborn’s body for easy breathing. Some stroller innovations have sought ease of use, like the six-pound aluminum-framed “Umbrella” stroller, while others, in hot pink and baby blue, sell as eye candy. 

Installation view. Photo: Jenna Bascom

In the center of the exhibition, mannequins adorn clothes for “temporary bodies.” Corsets and girdles, popular from the 15th century onwards, reshaped pregnant women’s bodies to conform to beauty standards without concern for comfort or safety. The Page Boy skirt defied norms, in a society that still considered pregnancy something to hide, upon its 1938 release by allowing wearers to freely adjust for and reveal the curves of their growing waists. Since the 1960s, elastic clothing, like the velvet unitard Bumpsuit, has become popular. Today, pregnant women hold a wide variety of jobs: a US Army maternity uniform, with a camouflage green shirt and pants, looks hardly different from any other military outfit, except for its looser midsection. These outfits, always visible in our peripheral vision, suggest a model of progress for the other sections: designs should make mothers’ lives more comfortable and accessible. 

Deborah Willis
I Made Space for a Good Man, 2009
Lithograph

Photographs evoke mothers’ attitudes towards their rites of passage. Intimate stills show tender love as well as fatigue experienced caring for newborns. In three self-portraits titled I Made Space for a Good Man, Deborah Willis reclaims a spiteful comment that she took up the space of a “good man” by working as a professor while pregnant, declaring that she made space in her body for a “good man,” her son and fellow artist Hank Willis Thomas. 

Birth control pills, cesarean sections, baby formula, and many other innovations have saved countless lives, but access remains unequal. Over time, the universal experience of birth has become less natural and more varied. A National Call for Birth Justice and Accountability, on display, decries that the US suffers the highest rate of maternal death of any developed nation, with women of color disproportionately falling victim at a ratio of nearly 4:1 as compared to white mothers. Relatedly, medical bills reveal that childbirth in the US costs more on average than any other country. Barriers are not only economic but also political. In fourteen languages, green posters featuring the face of the Statue of Liberty describe abortions as “legal, safe, and available.”

By focusing on the designs that shape reproductive health, we recognize them as central to our shared human story.

Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births is on view through March 15 at the Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York

Sixties Surreal Reconceives Postwar Social Upheavals @ Whitney Museum of Art in New York

text by Caia Cupolo

photography by Matthew Carasella

Women walking by Peter Saul's Saigon painting

Installation view of Sixties Surreal (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026). Peter Saul, Saigon, 1967. Photograph by Matthew Carasella

When you step off the elevator onto the 5th floor at the Whitney Museum, you enter a scene of three life-size camels against a bright orange-red wall. This feels almost misplaced  as a leading work in the exhibition, but it’s only at the end  when viewers find their way to a didactic that describes the illogical nature of camels—from four stomachs to a dislocating jaw—but they still exist. Reality is strange.


Sixties Surreal, currently on view at the Whitney Museum of Art, is a compelling argument that Surrealism was far from dead in the era of Pop Art. An argument that takes form in the shape of sculptures made from “junk,” otherworldly paintings, and haunting photographs. The curatorial team brilliantly positioned this collection not as a nostalgic look back, but as a critical examination of how the classic movement, built on Freudian theory, mutated into a politically-charged, media-saturated, and truly American force during the decade of cultural upheaval.


The exhibition’s core power lies in its unflinching focus on the era’s social and political injustices. This is exemplified in Noah Purifoy’s “Untitled (66 Signs of Neon),” made following the Watts Rebellion. Purifoy walked the streets of litter and so-called junk, where he aimed to give new life to these found objects. Taking the objects out of a negative context to put into his art brings a new, empowering meaning and reclaiming of the events. The rubble that made its way into the piece has a darkness that emulates a haunting past, but is put into a new environment surrounded by stamped symbols and words. Surrealism emerged as the ultimate tool for protesting the unspoken contracts of the era.

Installation view of Sixties Surreal showing Camel VI, Camel VII and Camel VIII by Nancy Graves

Installation view of Sixties Surreal (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026). Nancy Graves, Camel VI, Camel VII and Camel VIII, 1968–1969. Photograph by Matthew Carasella

This strain of Surrealism is deeply intertwined with the proliferation of television. The medium didn’t just report the news of upheaval to the American public; it delivered the chaotic images of war and protest directly into their living rooms, fusing reality with performance. The curatorial choice to present the exhibit in highly contrasted environments—sudden walls of hot pink interrupting stark, institutional grey—serves the subject matter well. It forces a jarring, non-linear experience that mimics the sensory overload and fractured perception delivered by the blinking, often distorting, television screen. The consistent use of small, scattered screens looping avant-garde animated shorts throughout the galleries is a clever tactic, effectively tying the artwork to the rise of mass media and demonstrating how artists were already diagnosing the medium that would eventually dominate culture.


The consumerist boom could not be left out when discussing the post-World War II era. Martha Rosler’s “Kitchen I, or Hot Meat” was a piece that stood out in its portrayal of this phenomenon. Female body parts appear on appliances, leaving the greater message that women’s bodies were readily commodified and contorted to fit within their economically prescribed domestic roles. Rosler reminds us that the human body was not meant to fit onto an appliance, so women should not be forced to conform to any specific role. 


On a similar note of early feminism, Martha Edelheit’s “Flesh Wall with Table” is a breathtaking, large-scale repudiation of the male gaze. Edelhait depicts almost two dozen naked women lounging across the canvas. She did not use any models, opting instead to focus purely  on her perception. The women vary greatly in position, shape, and skin tone, most having non-flesh-colored skin, like shades of green and blue. As a female artist, there was a particular pride in painting female nudes, especially so many for such a large piece, when you consider how much of the canon is filled with nude women rendered by men. Lastly, near the center of the work, lies a white rectangle wherein a woman is painting. This is Edelheit including herself in the work, further empowering herself in the building of a utopia where women can relax.

Installation view of Sixties Surreal showing Claes Oldenburg's Soft Toilet sculpture and Alex Hay's Paper Bag sculpture

Installation view of Sixties Surreal (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 24, 2025–Jan 19, 2026). From left to right: Karl Wirsum, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, 1968; Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet, 1966; Alex Hay, Paper Bag, 1968; Lee Lozano, No Title, 1964. Photograph by Matthew Carasella

While the show occasionally leans into the obvious tropes of the era, its central thesis holds firm: Surrealism became the ultimate protest art of the 1960s. It provides a necessary historical correction, proving that the decade’s artistic legacy is not merely defined by Abstract Expressionism’s final bow or Pop Art’s slick surfaces, but by the messy, urgent, and deeply subconscious cries of the artists who tried to make sense of a world where domestic dreams were exposed by televised violence. It’s an essential, if disquieting, tour.

Sixties Surreal is on view through January 19, 2026 @ Whitney Museum of Art in New York 99 Gansevoort St, New York.

Ibadan Raised, NYC Made: A Short Film By Nigerian Filmmaker CeoJay

Ibadan Raised, NYC Made is an immersive short film by CEOJAY, blending the filmmaker’s cultural roots in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria with the ambition of New York City. This soulful elegy takes us on a journey into the Yoruba culture, from the talking drums to the traditional attire. Described by CEOJAY as “a love letter to home,” the film is a display of identity and cultural pride. text by Lola Titilayo

Living Vicariously Through Paintings: Read Our Interview of Alison Blickle →

In Alison Blickle’s work, viewers are invited to witness a glimpse of a world just as realized off the canvas as it is on it. The figures at the heart of her painting—sometimes based on elaborate photoshoots, sometimes an amalgam of disparate body parts from various sources—are characters who signal larger narratives reflecting our modern world, or concocted visions that live outside of time. Her latest collection, Future Ruins, on view at the Kravets Wehby Gallery, invites attendees to inspect a future that infuses a nostalgic melancholy for nature with a glimmer of the beauty still accessible in her perhaps pessimistic view of what lies ahead. 

Blickle has effectively been painting her whole life, but went on to study Political Economy when plagued with the feeling that “it felt too impractical to pursue as a career.” After working for Diane Feinstein for six months, her realization that “whatever your job is is what your life is” would send her back to get her MFA at Hunter College and embark on the creative path that sees her work on display in New York City now, over a decade later. As we prepare to discuss her new collection, she reflects to me how she first made the leap into pursuing painting: “I have to pursue what I know fulfills me and what I love.” Read more.

Avant Arte Hosts a Maurizio Cattelan Scavenger Hunt Across New York, London & Amsterdam

Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 1999, photo Zeno Zotti, Courtesy: Maurizio Cattelan Archive

“If you never thought you would be able to hang my effigy in your home, that makes two of us.” —Maurizio Cattelan

Known for his irreverent humor and incisive social critique, Maurizio Cattelan is often described as both an art-world prankster and one of the most influential artists of his generation. In a first-ever collaboration with Avant Arte, Cattelan has reimagined his revered work Untitled (2000) to create We are the Revolution (2025). The work is the latest of Maurizio's revered miniatures—perhaps the most famous of which, La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi (2000), nods to German artist Joseph Beuys and his canonical felt suit.

Maurizio Cattelan, We Are the Revolution, 2025, image courtesy of Avant Arte

Cattelan’s motto, “I am not really an artist,” playfully inverts Beuys’ famous declaration that “every man is an artist.” The statement encapsulates the tongue-in-cheek sentiment of this sculpture: at once a parody of Cattelan’s own role as creator and a reflection on the place of the artist in society.

Each resin sculpture is handcrafted, and meticulously hand-painted by a team of specialized artisans. Limited to 1,000 editions and priced at €1,500 each, We Are The Revolution (2025) is set to be released via a randomized draw. Entries for the draw are now open exclusively on Avant Arte’s website and will close on October 24. Successful entrants will be notified within 24 hours of the draw’s closing.

In anticipation of its launch, Avant Arte is introducing a global scavenger hunt, Where’s Maurizio?, giving collectors the chance to acquire an edition ahead of the official release.

Inspired by Cattelan’s enduring interest in value, context, and power structures—most famously highlighted by Comedian (2019), when the artist’s duct-taped banana fetched $6.2 million at auction last year, sparking global media interest and public fascination about its cost and origins—this treasure hunt will place his sculptures in unexpected, everyday locations, from market stalls to bodegas, across major global cities spanning New York, Amsterdam and London.

From September 30 to October 7, Avant Arte will release two clues per location on their dedicated microsite for the scavenger hunt, inviting the public to join the search and track down the hidden sculptures across the three cities. New York will host a physical scavenger hunt, while London and Amsterdam will offer digital-only hunts, with participants submitting their answers via the microsite.

Cattelan’s sculpture edition will be playfully priced according to its location—ranging from $0.99 at a bodega to €9,999 at an antiques dealership—exploring how context shapes value while offering a whimsical twist on the conventions of the art world. Each location becomes both stage and gallery, bringing Cattelan’s humor directly into the public space.

Capitalocene Ikebana: The Animist Assemblages of Yuji Agematsu

text and images by Perry Shimon

Fleas, lice,
a horse peeing
near my pillow

— Bashō

There is a friendliness towards the abject, a distinctly Shinto, open and capacious reverence in Yuji Agematsu’s daily practice: meditative walks and the gathering of small bits of detritus to make delicate, ikebana-like assemblages inside cigarette-cellophane vitrines.

New York, Agematsu’s chosen home, has been given the rare privilege of seeing two full years of his unwavering practice on view: one vitrine—or ‘zip,’ as he calls them—from each day of 2023 and 2024, shown respectively at Gavin Brown’s house in Harlem and Donald Judd’s former studio in Soho, where Agematsu worked for twenty-five years doing building maintenance and art handling.

The vitrines of 2024, displayed in the airy Judd Foundation gallery, place the two artists in a fascinating conversation. Judd’s cold, machinic, monolithic forms assert and insist on themselves, while Agematsu’s works embody a fluid becoming: daily meditations on the plural forms encountered during his sensitive perambulations.

Donald Judd Foundation, Soho, August 2025

In Absence (2007; trans. Polity, 2023), Byung-Chul Han contrasts the Western concept of essence—identity, duration, inwardness, permanence—with an Eastern notion of absence, which precedes and “gathers” an ever-changing relationality or becoming. One could see this as a fundamental difference between Judd’s paradigmatic modernist objects and the fleeting, friendly assemblages of Agematsu, however stylized and reductive these contrasts may be.

In Shinto thought, there are eight million kami, or spirits, each worthy of consideration and respect. The number is shorthand for the infinite and ever-growing. When Buddhism arrived in Japan in the 7th century, Buddha was welcomed simply as another kami among the rest. Agematsu’s practice can be read through this animist disposition: a reverence for the infinite pluralities of the world, even in its discarded fragments.

At the risk of overdetermining the work, I experienced it as profoundly ecological, illustrative of a disposition that might serve us well in imagining what Anna Tsing calls “the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.” Agematsu’s practice suggests a clear-eyed willingness to look closely, to re-enchant the detritus of our shortsighted and economically ravaged world.

One of the great challenges of our time is to find a balanced, reciprocal relationship to the earth—and especially to our waste. Agematsu’s careful, sublimative approach offers one model, resonant with political ecology, discard studies, and circular-infrastructure thinking. His work reminds us of the need to reorient our relationship to the abject itself, and to transform our systems toward more stable, regenerative ecologies. Our very survival may depend on it.

Atlas Loved: Slava Mogutin's Photographic Curation of Queer Romance @ The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in New York

“What is ‘My Romantic Ideal’? If there were just one, I’d have been able to stop making images searching around the borders of yearning, imagining, and lusting, many years ago. These are some recent attempts at mapping those.” – Robert Flynt

Robert Flynt. Untitled (NPCG; NYC 41), 2023 Unique inkjet photograph on found atlas page (additional image on verso) 11 x 16 inches 

text by Summer Bowie

Like Lee Oscar Lawrie’s sedulously brawny statue of Atlas lunging interminably under the weight of the world in Rockefeller Center, Slava Mogutin has taken on the ambitious charge of defining Queer romance in all of its variegated multitudes. Drawing from the work of twenty-eight artists, his curation coalesces into a comprehensive cohort across the generational and gender spectrums with searingly vulnerable takes on romanticism. Such an endeavor seems only natural considering Mogutin’s personal history of putting himself on the line for the sake of his community. Working in a plurality of media, he has always questioned and prodded the boundaries of sexual freedom, from his early Queer activism and writings for the political weekly newspaper Novy Vzglyad to making the first attempt to register for a same-sex marriage in Russian history with his then-partner, Robert Filippini. As the first Russian citizen to be granted exile in the United States for reasons of homophobic persecution, his commitment through legal and artistic means to broaden our understanding of love and its ultimate liberation remains steadfastly on the frontlines. 

In Mogutin’s “Stone Face (Brian), NYC” (2015), we see an outstretched arm holding almost identical copies of a photograph containing a man’s face partially buried in rocks. More than just a nod to David Wojnarowicz’s “Untitled (Face in Dirt),” we see lower Manhattan’s skyline at sunset on the horizon. Where Wojnarowicz quietly mourns the violent isolation of ultimate abjection, Mogutin’s figure is rendered in print and then literally held by another man in the city of his exile—a photo taken almost a quarter century after Wojnarowicz’s untimely death from AIDS at just thirty-seven years of age. In Stanley Stellar’s “Cherry Grove Kiss, Fire Island” (1990), the man’s entire face emerges from the sand in anticipation of an impassioned kiss. Where Mogutin trades dirt for pebbles, Stellar trades it for sand, making the burial feel elective and impermanent. Made at a time when the AIDS crisis was still looming large, it effectively sublimates the unthinkable trauma of carrying such an insidious burden into not only erotic, but manifestly romantic pleasure.

Slava Mogutin
Stone Face (Brian), NYC, 2015 Offset print, 20 x 27.5 inches Edition of 10 

Stanley Stellar
Cherry Grove Kiss, 1990
Archival analog tinted silver gelatin print
15 x 15 inches, 16 x 20 inches frame
Artist Proof 

Held both literally and figuratively by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, My Romantic Ideal implores us to define romanticism on our own terms, knowing that in the process of queering the heteronormative parameters, we normalize our queerness. He is glitching the hegemonic system, à la Legacy Russell, with an unabashed proposal to reexamine our assumed notions of tenderness, intimacy, and beauty. These images represent a disparate yet equally valid selection of possibilities for romantic encounters, both with others and with self. They are safe spaces that are not safe for work, and at times, I can’t help but blush at the thought of sharing them. Some of them are too risqué even for the press kit, like Quil Lemons’s “Untitled (Penetration)”—which is reason enough to see the show in person if you live in New York. Others, like Carter Peabody’s “Bastian Floating,” lean into dreamy ecosexual escapism with an Adonis-like figure floating in sea grass-lined, turquoise waters. “I have only known shame when it comes to love” says Peabody, “For me, romanticism is freedom from heteronormative oppression. The bodies floating in my pieces are unattached to the strict norms of our world and free to feel, explore, and play with the sensuality of the sunlight and water surrounding them. There is an innocence and wonder that takes hold when we become our inner child in search of love, and the judgement of our subconscious just melts away.” Here, romance is imbued in everything surrounding the act of love, rather than in the act itself.

 

Carter Peabody
Bastian Floating, 2025
C-print on Metallic Paper
23.5 x 31.5 inches
Edition 1/12 

 

Benjamin Fredrickson’s “Self-Portrait with Lillies” features the artist sitting nude in a brutalist wooden chair, peering out of a floor-to-ceiling window that reveals a verdant forest. He props his feet on the identical chair facing him with an enormous vase of lilies placed tightly between his legs. If we deign to inquire, we cannot help but notice that he is gently indulging himself with just the tips of his fingers. This sensual, autoerotic moment feels utterly unimpeachable. 

Benjamin Fredrickson
Self-Portrait with Lillies, 2019
Chromogenic print
15x19 inches image, 16x20 inches sheet
Edition of 3+2APs 

Bruce LaBruce’s “Hunk with Sneaker” might be having an autoerotic moment of his own. Then again, he might just be testing that theory about guys with big feet. Berlin-based American photographer Matt Lambert presents us with two new pieces from his forthcoming book If You Can Reach My Heart You Can Keep It. Luridly graphic in content, these images leave us only to imagine what kind of tantric infrared technology he is patenting in his dark room/dungeon. Pierced and penetrating, his figures find themselves interlocked in full coitus with mysteriously luminescent erogenous zones. Berlin-based Spanish photographer Gerardo Vizmanos says, “I have a complicated relationship with the term ‘Romanticism’—I see it as both something we enjoy and something that restricts us … which is why I focus on love and desire instead. They offer a more radical, utopian force—one I strive to capture in my photography.” His dancer performs a preposterously blasé hamstring stretch, his entire body giving rise to the kinds of questions often inspired by an ample-when-flaccid endowment.

Bruce LaBruce
Hunk with Sneaker, 2008
Digital C-print
11 x 14 inches
Edition of 1/5 

Gerardo Vizmanos
Dancer, 2024
Archival Pigment Print
8 x 10 inches
Edition of 7 

Matt Lambert
Warm Amour, Paris, 2017
Thermal Imaging C-print
20 x 24 inches
Edition 1/5 

Of course, no collection of photography on the subject of Queer romance would be complete without the work of Paul Mpagi Sepuya. His intimate studio portraits meditate on the vulnerable interplay of sensuality and performativity between artist and subject—that ineffable power dynamic inherent in every nude portrait since time immemorial. In all of these artists, we see an earnest motion to decouple our fantasies with any notions of shame or fear—to let them not only be conspicuous but copyrighted in our names. 

 
 

My Romantic Ideal is on view through August 31 @ The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division 208 West 13th Street Room 210, New York

Telfar Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary Not With Spectacle But With Substance

Two decades after its quiet beginnings in Queens, Telfar turned the streets of New York into a runway and the community into the main event. This was not just a fashion show; it was a reminder that independence, creativity, and cultural impact are what fashion is all about.

Courtesy of Jason Nocito

What began twenty years ago in a Queens apartment by a teenage Telfar Clemens has evolved into the largest Black-owned fashion brand in the world, and likely the longest-running genderless brand in history. The brand has charted its own path entirely, remaining 100% independent, without investors and little entanglement with the fashion industry. Yet, with its captivating DNA, Telfar managed to build a loyal following of over three million customers along the way.

Telfar has long stood out as a brand that simply gets it right. It’s visionary, equitable, and deeply in tune with its audience. From the beginning, it gained a loyal community drawn to its commitment to cultural storytelling, accessible pricing, and customer-first values. This integrity helped elevate the iconic “T” bag into one of the most sought-after accessories of the past decade, carried by A-listers and aspirational shoppers alike.

Over the weekend, following a five-year hiatus, Clemens took to the streets of New York City to make his return to the runway.

 

Courtesy of Telfar

 

At the show, the support and love were undeniable. Fans, friends, family, and industry insiders all came crowding to the street behind the Telfar store, fittingly on Juneteenth weekend. Among them were familiar faces like Luar’s Raul Lopez and Solange Knowles, who’s often cited as the one who promoted the brand in its early years. Her sister, Beyoncé echoed that same support in her 2022 Renaisssance album, closing it with a shoutout to the brand: “This Telfar bag imported, Birkins them shit’s in storage,” encapsulating everything the brand is all about.

As always, Telfar did things their own way. Instead of a traditional runway cast, the show featured people directly from the brand’s community. Through a series of open castings at the Telfar store called New Models, anyone could take part. The final lineup was chosen not by insiders but by the public, who voted live during the first episode of New Models, streamed on Telfar’s own platform on June 19. Friends, family, and longtime collaborators all walked the show, making it a true celebration of the people who have shaped the brand.

Telfar’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection was a bold celebration of community and creativity, and every look was met with cheers and applause. It opened with reimagined suiting and shirting, crafted from deconstructed jersey T-shirts that honored the brand’s twenty-year history. Loose-fitting jackets, flared trousers, and relaxed silhouettes offered a fresh take on fashion staples; easy streetwear, and polished tailoring—echoing the brand’s ability to capture New York’s forward-looking vibe. The collection continued with khaki in tones of beige, black, and camo as a foundation, denim spanning vintage to futuristic rib knit dresses, and logo jelly sandals in various colors, just in time for the minimalist footwear wave.

Courtesy of Jason Nocito

Accessories took center stage as much as the clothing did, proving once more why Telfar changed the way the industry thinks about “it” bags. The debut of the Tie Bag—an evolution of the Telfar shopper as a slouchy hobo tote—is available in three colors and one perfect size. Of course, the legendary Shopping Bag was also present in spirit, reminding everyone just how Telfar became the brand known as Bushwick Birkin. Together, these pieces underscored Telfar’s core message that quality design and cultural resonance need not break the bank.

Twenty years in, Telfar has proven that good things are worth the wait. The fashion industry constantly demands speed and instant reinvention, often leaving creatives forced to accumulate. But Telfar Clemens has built an empire that allows him to listen to a slower, more authentic rhythm, and he understands the value of risk in fashion. As he celebrates the brand’s platinum anniversary, it’s never been more clear that Clemens is still winning the game, with rules he made himself.

Read Our Interview of Matthieu Humery, Curator of Diane Arbus' Constellation @ The Armory →

Diane Arbus, Constellation, 2023–2024, The Tower, Main Gallery, LUMA Arles, France. All artworks © The Estate of Diane Arbus Collection Maja Hoffmann/LUMA Foundation. Installation Photo © Adrian Deweerdt

Diane Arbus’s photography has long unsettled and fascinated viewers, defying easy interpretation. In Constellation, the newly opened exhibition at The Armory, curator Matthieu Humery brings a second life to her work; not to explain or categorize, but to invite quiet, intimate dialogue between the viewer and the photographs. Featuring 454 photographs from the artist’s archive, including many rarely seen, the exhibition defers any chronological or thematic structure, favoring a layout without linear direction, making every encounter entirely unique and unpredictable. The experience is haunting, dissociating the viewer from the fact that they’re in an art show, and instead allowing them to sink into provoked emotions, completely immersed in an entirely human experience, dissolving the distance between audience and the subjects.

In our conversation, Humery shares what it means to curate with restraint, how working with a posthumous body of work introduces both freedom and distance and what it felt like to place each image by hand in the space, listening for their rhythm. Read more

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.