Art Worlds: Recent Episodes
Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
Art Worlds takes you on a journey to a multitude of countries — from Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from India to Algeria — to help you forge a truly international perspective of the many thriving art worlds.
In each episode artists, patrons, gallerists, museum directors, and curators transport us to their art world, throwing light on their unique context, and sharing their struggles and triumphs.
The @artworldspodcast Instagram account has plenty more information, including articles and artworks.
Written and hosted by Dr Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
Produced by Phil Havard
Design by Sthuthi Ramesh
Natsagsuren Mangalam is the founder of Lkham, one of Mongolia’s leading contemporary art galleries. Opened in 2022, after she left her career in finance, the gallery supports a range of artists, both established and emerging from across Central Asia. Lkham has quickly built a reputation for its strong exhibitions and original education and events programme. Natsagsuren’s motivation is for the region’s artists to be recognised both at home and on a global stage. As such, she has brought in curators like Dr Christiana Bonin, invited guest lecturers and staged a major exhibition in Paris. Natsagsuren spoke to me from Athens in between planning her next international show.
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Episode 29 meets Baatarzorig Batjargal, an artist based in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, who is revered for his fastidious paintings that capture the country’s shifting character and values. Drawing on the zurag style, associated with Mongolia’s independence movement in the early 20th century, his works evoke the contradictions of a nomadic society exposed to socialism now contending with rapid urbanisation and global capitalism. In scenes somewhat reminiscent of Tibetan Buddhist painting, a spectrum of figures including deities, intellectuals, warriors and cartoon characters jostle together.
Baatarzorig has exhibited widely and was included in the Bangkok Art Biennale 2020 and the Asia Pacific Triennale 2018 at the Queensland Art Gallery. He joined me from his studio to discuss how and why he converges spiritualism and consumption.
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In episode 28, Art Worlds visits Mongolia. Gantuya Badamgarav, a curator based in the country's capital Ulaanbaatar, has been integral to the development of the country’s contemporary art. With a macroeconomic policy background, Gantuya established 976 Art Gallery and the Mongolian Contemporary Art Support Association in 2012. She has organized over 100 exhibitions and was the first-ever Commissioner of the Mongolia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Since she has been the project director and the curator in 2022 and 2019 when she brought together traditional throat singers with the German artist Carsten Nicolai in an installation by Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar. Gantuya currently runs the Nomadic Red Corner International Artist Residency. She spoke to me from her home in Ulaanbaatar about her pioneering work.
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Episode 27 meets Raphael Chikukwa, a curator based in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, who is the Executive Director of the country’s National Gallery. He first joined the institution in 2010 as chief curator, following ten years of working independently and instigating a range of exhibitions including at the Imperial War Museum North and Manchester Art Gallery.
Raphael’s commitment to enhancing the visibility of Zimbabwe’s artists saw him become the founding Curator of the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. He curated subsequent editions, up until 2019, when he became commissioner. During his time he focused on group shows that included Portia Zvavahera and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. Raphael has advised organisations internationally, among them, Future Generation Art Prize and High Line Plinth in New York and written extensively about Zimbabwe’s contemporary art. He joined me from his office at the gallery to discuss his curatorial work and the grand plans he has for 2024.
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Episode 26 features Richard Mudariki, an artist based between Harare and Cape Town. Known for his satirical figurative paintings, Richard addresses political reform in Zimbabwe, state corruption and social conditions in South Africa. In 2020 he founded artHARARE as an online platform to experience contemporary art by established, mid-career and emerging visual artists from Zimbabwe and its diaspora. The initiative has since developed with artHARARE participating in international art fairs like 1-54, building institutional partnerships as well as hosting talks and starting an art prize. Richard spoke to me from Cape Town about his ongoing efforts to support Zimbabwe’s artists.
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Episode 25 meets artist Misheck Masamvu who considers Zimbabwe’s post-independence character through painting, drawing and sculpture. Sensitive to the country’s economic and political turmoil, he uses frenetic mark making with elements of figuration lurking beneath to go some way to capturing and articulating the experiences of Zimbabweans. Misheck’s civic spiritedness is similarly felt at Village Unhu, an art space he co-founded in the capital Harare to nurture young artistic talent.
Misheck’s work has been exhibited internationally at the 54th Venice Biennale, 22nd Sydney Biennale, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, among others. In January 2024, he will be included in curator Zoe Whitley’s exhibition at The Institutum, Singapore. Misheck took a break from his painting and joined me from his studio in Harare.
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In episode 24, Hana El-Beblawy, an artist and curator, discusses the organisation Ard Art she founded in 2022. Situated in central Cairo, in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, the space provides opportunities for artists to experiment through a varied programme of residencies, workshops, exhibitions and more. With an open and inclusive ethos, Ard Art develops according to artists’ needs and places value on being away from the pressures of the commercial gallery system. Hana’s own artistic practice and experience organising exhibitions in her previous role as artistic and executive director of Art D’Égypte, inform her empathetic, ground-up approach. She joined me from her home in Cairo.
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In episode 23, Art Worlds meets artist and academic Huda Lutfi who integrates her specialism in Islamic culture and history with her multimedia practice. Having taught at the American University of Cairo, her work is suffused with historical references, including symbols from Pharaonic and Coptic cultures, that are recontextualised to highlight Egypt’s contemporary social and political issues. Female archetypes, like the image of the iconic singer Umm Kulthum along with found mannequin parts, often overlaid with Sufi calligraphic text, question gender roles in a patriarchal society. Lutfi’s work is internationally renowned and can be found in the collections of the Barjeel Art Foundation, British Museum, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Huda joined me from her studio in Cairo to discuss her work and Egypt’s art history.
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Art Worlds Series 3 starts in Egypt with Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, a French Egyptian curator who founded Art D’Égypte in 2016. What started as an exhibition platform to support Egyptian arts and cultural initiatives has since grown into a cultural consultancy called Culturvator. The organisation offers a range of services, including collection management and art advisory, with the ultimate goal of promoting creative collaborations in Egypt. Nadine is perhaps best known for activating Egypt’s astounding heritage sites through contemporary exhibitions. This includes her annual show Forever is Now that takes place among the Pyramids of Giza. In the run up to the third edition, Nadine spoke to me from her office in Cairo and explained just how one manages to work across one the seven wonders of the world.
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Episode 21 meets Daisuke Miyatsu, a collector based in Japan, who has amassed an enviable art collection famously on his modest salary. Working in advertising by day and as a hotel receptionist at night, he has made art his life, collecting widely and inventively since the early 1990s. His collection is founded on the close relationships he’s built with artists and has been shared with public exhibitions at institutions including the Kasama Nichido Museum of Art and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in Japan and Daelim Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. Now teaching and writing on contemporary art and its economics, Daisuke joined me from his extraordinary art home in Tokyo to discuss his idiosyncratic approach to collecting.
teamLab, an international art collective, are world renowned for creating immersive environments through digital technology. Exploring the intersection of art, technology, science and natural worlds, in Hiroshima they’ve created an interactive ‘Future Park’ where audiences are encouraged to co-create and make drawings that are transformed into installations. In Sao Paulo, they’ve filled rooms with eternal cycles of budding and blossoming flowers. Last year teamLab made their scenographic debut, confounding the boundaries between the stage and audience with a sculptural space of light in a Puccini opera at the Grand Théatre de Genève in Switzerland. Ahead of this opera opening in Japan, Takashi Kudo, teamLab’s Communications Director, joined me from their Tokyo studio to shed light on their process and ambitions.
Episode 19 visits Japan and speaks with Mami Kataoka, director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a space dedicated to contemporary art and architecture. Part of the founding team, Mami has earned international renown for her curatorial approach, teaching and writing. She’s been consistently listed in ArtReview’s Power 100 and was the first Asian curator to direct Sydney’s Biennale in 2018. Last year saw her open the Aichi Triennale, one of Japan’s largest international art events. Mami joined me from her office in Tokyo to discuss her impressive work and the concept of ‘Asian’ art.
Episode 18 meets Natasha Marie Llorens, an academic and curator focused on North African and Middle Eastern contemporary art and film. She has written for numerous publications including ArtReview, ArtForum and Frieze. In 2019, Llorens opened a significant group exhibition at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery that addressed contemporary art from Algeria and its diaspora. The exhibition has since seen iterations at the Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille and will soon open in Grenoble. The accompanying catalogue, Waiting for Omar Gatlato: A Survey of Contemporary Art from Algeria and Its Diaspora is published by Sternberg Press. Llorens is currently researching on Algerian socialism in the 1970s and planning an exhibition in collaboration with artist Massinissa Selmani. She joined me from Algiers to discuss this project and the process of bringing Algerian art to New York.
Episode 17 features artist Massinissa Selmani. He is known for his seemingly irreverent pencil drawings and animations that converge documentary and fiction, often starting with a press cutting taken from his long standing personal archive. Massinissa leaves his figures and objects stranded in large areas of white space as an invitation for the viewer to fill in the gaps and consider how the circulation of media images affect our perception of events. Massinissa’s work has been shown internationally including at Palais de Tokyo, the 56th Venice Biennale where he received a special mention, Dakar Biennial, Modern Art Oxford and Centre Pompidou. From his studio in Tours, west-central France, we discussed the absurdity of his drawings and the degree to which his Algerian background shapes his work.
Episode 16 visits Algeria to speak with Myriam Amroun and Khaled Bouzidi who established rhizome, an arts organisation in 2017. Their model has developed and now, with a space in a Haussmannian apartment block in downtown Algiers, they combine being both a commercial gallery and independent art entity. Rhizome’s programming focuses on supporting artists in Algeria and its diaspora with emphasis on intergenerational exchange. They’ve had a busy year showing at Art Dubai, Liste Art Fair Basel and Paris Internationale, among others. Myriam and Khaled discuss the challenges they’ve encountered and their long term ambitions.
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Episode 15 visits Dubai to meet Vilma Jurkute, the executive director of Alserkal Initiatives, a Dubai-based arts and culture enterprise that comprises the cultural district Alserkal Avenue, Alserkal Advisory, and Alserkal Arts Foundation. First founded in 2007 by patron and businessman Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, Vilma joined the team in 2012 and has driven both the organisation’s physical expansion and the breadth of its programming. From supporting research and scholarship to co-commissioning art projects with partners across the world and hosting arts festivals in Dubai, Alserkal is an integral part of the UAE’s art world. Vilma discusses Alserkal’s approach and its impressive growth.
Artist Maitha Abdalla is a consummate storyteller. Inspired by theatre, folklore, tradition and ritual, her multidisciplinary practice is underpinned by her fictional writing. Paintings, typically worked on with her fingers, feature fantastical creatures and figures often angst ridden and vulnerable. Maitha studied at the Zayed University in Abu Dhabi after which she came together with fellow artists to establish an artist-run studio and exhibition space called BAIT 15. Since then she has been part of the Abu Dhabi Art Fair’s Beyond Emerging artists showing at Cromwell Place in London, at the fair and in Venice. Maitha recently completed the An Effort residency in London supported by the Abu Dhabi Arts & Music Foundation(ADMAF). We spoke about studio life, the opportunities for artists in the Emirates and her plans to write a film script.
Art Worlds is back!
The second series starts in the United Arab Emirates with Maya Allison, the founding executive director of The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery and chief curator at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Integrated within the NYU campus, the gallery has at its forefront an educational mission to expand scholarship of the area’s long tradition of artistic practice.
As part of this remit, Allison has delved into the art communities that pre-date the international focus on the UAE. Her seminal exhibition ‘But We Cannot See Them’ surveyed avant-garde artists and writers associated with the late 1980s and was accompanied by a comprehensive sourcebook.
This year Maya was nominated by the artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim to be the curator of the UAE Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. She discusses this prestigious project and how working in the region has expanded her approach to exhibition making.
Art Worlds meets Adeline Gregoire, an artist and curator who co-founded CultureGo, a platform dedicated to showcasing art and design from Trinidad & Tobago. She’s made it her mission to amplify the work of Trinbagonian creatives and over the last year has been developing Hot Sun, an online community of Caribbean contemporary artists. On the website you’ll find artworks, recorded talks and articles. She talks about Hot Sun's inception and how she's energised by T&T's artists.
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Christopher Cozier, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s leading artists, speaks to Art Worlds. His practice is grounded in the island’s post independence conditions. This context provides an entry point to exposing wider cultural shifts, historical erasures and international economic policies that have affected the broader Caribbean region. Aside from his artwork, which has been shown most recently at Liverpool Biennale and Sharjah Biennale, Christopher also writes, teaches and co-founded Alice Yard, an experimental project space in the country’s capital Port of Spain. The space is a focal point for many artists, curators, architects and writers. From his studio he spoke about his interest in putting forward new readings of the region including understanding the island’s oil wealth and its changing communities.
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In Episode 10, Art Worlds visits Trinidad and Tobago and speaks with Nimah Muwakil-Zakuri, curator of the the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago's Money Museum and Art Collection. The collection was the vision of the island country's artists and now includes over 200 works of art brought together since 1965. It is an unparalleled collection. From her office in Port of Spain, the country's capital, Nimah discusses the array of art works including those by pioneering artist Sybil Atteck.
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Art Worlds speaks with ruangrupa, a collective founded in 2000 and based in the south of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, who along with two other collectives, Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara, have formed Gudskul, a public learning space and educational platform. They see the project as an ecosystem and founded on the idea of collectivism, all resources are pooled and shared. This includes equipment, money and books. From their vast warehouse complex, ruangrupa’s Farhid Rakun, an architect and investigator, and Gudskul's Gesyada Siregar and Cella Kencana Putri talk about how they run their abundant activities and programmes.
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Aaron Seeto, the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum Macan) talks to Art Worlds about this ambitious private initiative. Masterminded by businessman and major art collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo, Museum Macan opened in 2017 in Jakarta. It’s Adikoesoemo's collection of around 800 works, built over two decades, that forms the museum’s holdings. As the first institution of its kind in Indonesia, there's been a lot of planning around cultivating a local audience and developing the museum's educational values. Aaron spoke from Jakarta about how their exhibitions strive to make cross-cultural connections and nurture Indonesia's arts.
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Tromarama—a collective composed of Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena—speak to Art Worlds from their studios in Bandung and Jakarta, Indonesia. They first came together to produce a music video for a local rock band that ended up as a stop motion animation film comprising hundreds of woodcut boards and was simultaneously displayed as an installation. They’ve gone on to continue working with video, sculptural forms and digital technologies in inventive and humorous ways, showing ambitious work at galleries including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Tromarama talk about their process, working in the digital age and the power of being three.
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Yves Zlotowski, co-founder of Batia Sarem, one of Cambodia’s leading contemporary art galleries, takes us through how a conversation one day in Paris with gallerist Lyvann Loeuk that lead them both to Siem Reap. It's a tranquil place famed for the Ankor Wat temple complex and where a cluster of galleries are taking shape. Yves talks through what its like to work in this context and explains how the country’s abundance of NGOs have shaped artistic practices.
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Vuth Lyno, a Cambodian artist, curator and educator, speaks about one of the country's significant project spaces: SA SA art projects that he co-founded in 2010 with the collective Stiev Selapak. SA SA oversee extravagant performances, city-wide festivals, innovative art history workshops and an artist residency programme. As they prepare to be a part of documenta 15, Vuth talks about the work the group do and reflects on the legacy bequeathed by the Khmer Rouge, which left a deep void in art historical knowledge.
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Sopheap Pich, one of Cambodia's most innovative artists, speaks from his studio about his ‘non-wastage' approach. Working from his farm in Cambodia’s mountains he makes use of the materials around him. This might mean he creates pigment from soil, weaves with rice sacks or softens bamboo and rattan to create his monumental woven sculptures. We discuss in detail the trajectory of his practice—including his studies in America to returning to Cambodia—as well as hosting vast ‘Art on the Farm’ evening for the country’s artists.
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Feroze Gujral, one of India's leading art philanthropists, speaks to us about steering the Gujral Foundation and striking a balance between supporting artists at home and working on projects internationally. In a country with limited government art funding and nothing that comes close to the UK’s Arts Council, private initiatives take up the slack. Feroze talks candidly about fitting the arts into India’s wider political agenda and establishing their value when humanitarian disasters are, rightly, at the forefront of the country’s concerns.
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The brilliant and bold performance artist Nikhil Chopra speaks from his studio in Goa. Nikhil's practice is world-renowned, and he's been supporting performance artists in India with the residency space, Heritage Hotel Art Spaces, which he co-founded. But it might be his alias, Yog Raj Chitrakar, you're better acquainted with. The artist transforms into this starchy, upright gentleman—a Victorian throwback who would seem better placed in the Charles Dickens Museum than the contemporary art galleries, biennales, and museums he haunts. We talk about Nikhil's characters, their appearance, and extended stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as the very personal origin of this character's excessively colonial pursuits.
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Curator and Director Pooja Sood talks about Khoj, India's unique artist led workshop and studio complex in New Delhi. The place has nurtured experimentation for more than a quarter of a century, and numbers many of India's leading artists and curators among its alumni. Pooja talks us through it all - from sourcing warm goat lungs for a performance to navigating geopolitical frictions- in this episode.
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