Liliana Farber is an Uruguayan-born, New York-based, visual artist. Through research-based processes and using digital strategies, Farber creates still and moving images, installations, and web-based works. These investigate notions of land imaginaries, unmappable spaces, utopias, and techno-colonialism. She uses timestamps, geolocation points, satellite imagery, antique maps, and literature as raw materials for minimal pieces that reflect on the human experience of living within global scale infrastructures and colossal amounts of data. As a third-generation holocaust survivor, Farber’s intergenerational trauma inspires her practice. There is a sense of the incomplete and illegible in her work. Her pieces are abstract data visualizations that contrast the sense of being lost or disconnected in a hyper mapped and connected world.

Website: www.lilianafarber.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/lilianafarber

Liliana Farber was recommended by Johanna Strobel.

How would you describe your work?

I work with digital tools, archives, and mapping technologies to explore how landscapes, histories, and memories are represented and erased. My projects often begin with historical materials such as old maps, poems, or memorial texts and move through contemporary systems like Google Earth or custom software. I’m interested in how empires, both past and present, visualize the unknown, and in what gets lost, blurred, or distorted in the process.

The work takes different forms, including multi-channel video installations, digitally generated images, sound-based pieces, and print works. These formats allow the projects to unfold spatially and over time, inviting viewers to move through fragmented narratives. The work sits somewhere between research and intuition, using technology to imagine connections to places and histories that are no longer fully accessible.

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What are you working on right now?

Right now, I’m exploring rivers as sites of memory and transmission. The work draws from Yiddish poems and memorial texts and hand-drawn maps that describe rivers as living presences shaping daily life and collective memory. Using digital mapping tools, I create abstracted river journeys paired with voice and sound, where the landscapes appear fragmented, unstable, and often difficult to fully access. Alongside this, I’m developing print and text-based works that translate these digital environments into physical forms. Across these projects, I’m thinking about how technology can be used not to produce certainty or completeness, but to reflect distance, gaps in knowledge, and the way memory is inherited rather than directly experienced.

What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work? Why?

I like to work in a quiet, focused atmosphere with few interruptions. Most of my process involves long periods of looking, listening, and testing, so I need a space that allows for slowness and attention. At the same time, I don’t need a perfectly controlled studio. I’m comfortable working between physical and digital spaces, sometimes moving between research, writing, and making in the same session. That kind of fluid atmosphere supports the way my work unfolds, gradually and through accumulation rather than through a single decisive gesture.

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What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

I’m curious about how traces of the past survive in landscapes, texts, and sounds, and how these traces can be discovered, layered, or imagined. I’m interested in how natural spaces can carry memories, and how historical documents, poems, or archival materials can reveal stories that have been partially forgotten or erased. I like to experiment with digital tools to trace patterns, uncover hidden connections, or surface absences that are not immediately visible. I’m fascinated by the tension between what can be seen, heard, or measured, and what remains intangible, imagined, or partially lost.

Where are you based and what do you like about the local art scene?

I’m based in New York. I love that the city is a true melting pot, with different languages, cultures, and histories constantly overlapping. As someone with a Latin and Jewish background, that mix feels very natural to me, both in life and in my work. The art scene reflects that diversity. There’s always so much to see, and so many different voices and approaches in conversation with each other, which makes the city feel energizing and alive.

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Evie is interested in the idea of life as a philosophical concept. Her work is situated in the state of suspended vitality, the in-between of life and death. Through sculpture and painting, she explores the unknown as it relates to the microscopic, the imagined and the ephemeral. Bodily autonomy, medical trauma and the gendered expectations of reproduction within society are subjects that Evie often explores through embodied and domestic practices and techniques. Evie’s work interrogates recent rulings on reproductive rights relating to termination and discusses gender rights as a catalyst for contemporary, feminist ideology.

Website: www.evieyussuf.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/evieyussuf

Evie Yussuf was recommended by Annie Edwards and by Poppy Cauchi.

https://www.remagazine.art/p/poppy-cauchi

What guides your artistic research?

My research is guided by curiosities. These are usually generated by my daily experiences of life, what I am reading or watching or the art I have been looking at. A large part of my research takes place in museums and archives, where I draw and sketch to create a library of images that I can reference when I am in the studio. I let my intuition guide me to find objects or ideas that fuel that curiosity and I follow that thread until a common theme appears, which I expand on through making work. I am a generally inquisitive person and have a tendency to over research or become overwhelmed by the amount of information, so my studio practice has become a sort of filtration system for ideas. Through the process of making, I sort through these ideas and find the most interesting aspects to push further. There are several sources for finding threads of research in my practice, local folklore, history of medicine, body politics, contemporary feminist theory, gothic culture, the macabre, and the work of other artists.

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What are you working on right now?

Right now, I am working on a series of paintings which explore a more expressive and emotional side to my relationship with my own body. My research has been grounded in the concept of ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, first discussed by Bessel Van Der Kolk in 1994. It is the idea that trauma manifests in the body, and my work is an emotional release of that trauma using abstracted and clinical imagery of the body as a visual language. It is a new area of my practice that I have been reluctant to explore, because it is so personal. I am in the more uncomfortable stages of this process, and I am working to overcome some of the blocks that go alongside being more vulnerable in my work. Although it has been uncomfortable, it also feels that my practice is in a pivotal time, it feels very important right now, and I am trying to hold on to that feeling more than any other.

When you feel stuck how do you get un-stuck?

I like to do a deep dive into the root cause of the stuck-ness. I do this through journaling, asking myself questions like “what is the intention behind this work or research?” and “Is it serving that intention?”. I then journal further on the problems within the work or my process and problem solve through those questions. If the stuck-ness is due to an existential crisis about the state of the world and the point of making art, which happens more than you would think, then I remind myself of the value of what I do. I visit a gallery and find one piece of art that speaks to me. I sit in front of that piece for 30 minutes and then I write about how it made me feel, why I resonated with it and how it has influenced me. This usually gets the creative juices flowing and I am eager to return to the studio. It is also important to recognise when the stuck-ness is due to burn-out. Rest and space away from your studio is incredibly important in order to keep a clear head. Sometimes sitting with a cup of tea in front of some mind-numbing TV is what your brain actually needs.

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Who do you recommend for the readers to check out?

I could recommend so many artists, books, podcasts but if I had to pick my favourites, Talk Art podcast is one that I always go back to. The artist interviews are a casual conversation about the work and their life and have an amazing way of brining the artist back into the real world. I think we have a tendency to idolise and think of our favourite artists as “other”, but this podcast highlights the issues that all artists struggle with and gives insight into how successful artists overcome those struggles. A book I always recommend is Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture. It’s a must-read for any contemporary artist working with themes of gender identity and feminism. Another recommendation that I have to include is the BBC Arena 1979 documentary Six Days in September, which follows the artist John Hoyland in the creation of one painting over a six day period. This is a great watch if you feel stuck in your own practice, as you witness a successful artist go through the stages of creation, including all the self-doubt, insecurity, frustration and passion that goes with it.

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What makes art “good” in your opinion?

I don't really believe in good and bad art. All art is inherently good in it’s nature because the act of making art is good. I think that there is only more truthful and less truthful art. It may be that the more truthful art is what people might recognise as good art because it is resonating with us more than the less truthful art. There are so many variables that can make art less truthful, like the context of the gallery, the writing that sits alongside the art, the way the art is hung and what is hung next to it, all things that the artists often has little control over. I think what we have to ask ourselves is whether we believe the artist was being as truthful as they possibly could, when they created the piece. As an artist, I am always seeking to find more truth in my work, my process and my research, and my more successful pieces are always those that broke through a boundary into a new truth.

Linus Lohmann is an artist from Hannover who works primarily in drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. He has a quixotic approach to problem-solving where his works focus on connections between intention and material, utilizing various techniques to develop processes for image-making. Linus lives and works in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, and he obtained his MFA from Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee in 2012. Recent exhibitions include: Gallerí Y, Reykjavík (2025), Listasalur Mosfellsbæjar, Reykjavík (2025), Sláturhúsið, Egilsstaðir (2025), Maximilian Pavillion and The Paint Shop, Berlin (2024).

Website: linuslohmann.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/linuslohmann

Linus Lohmann was recommended by Olivia Divecchia.

What themes and motifs do you explore in your art?

Manipulation, failure, distortion and its misinterpretation of language, memory, experience, material and perception. Basically the state of things/objects/thoughts moving and eroding.

What guides your artistic research?

Limitation of access, random encounters in aimless research. Failures that refresh the memory and view on a previously encountered solid states.

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What are you working on right now?

Honestly, im cleaning and sorting my studio, cancelling or reconsidering unfinished projects. Very uncreative, but a basic way to end the old and start a new year.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

If I realise that I’m stuck, there are different ways I react; a complete change of scene, physically leaving the room and if that’s no option, metaphysically leaving the room—a bit like changing topic trying to remember a forgotten name. The last resort is deconstruction or turning it upside down, more like switching the work off and on again.

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What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

Financial independency and bronze sculptures.

What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?

My 2 year old daughter stating that my favourite colour is brown. Brown and grey are completely underrated.

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Valentina Várhelyi grew up in a Roma family, where heritage was integrated into a modern way of life. This background fostered a lasting sense of curiosity and humility that continues to shape her practice. Frequently engaging with Roma heritage, folk traditions, and magical practices, she approaches these elements not as static symbols but as living materials through which to question and reframe dominant narratives of identity. Beginning with an early interest in literature, her work expanded into theatre and music, and later into art history and curatorial practice, before finding a sustained focus in performance and intervention-based art. Her practice draws on actionist and situationist influences and unfolds through intuitive, experimental processes.

Instagram: www.instagram.com/valuska___

Valentina Várhelyi was recommended by Martha Kicsiny.

What themes and motifs do you explore in your art?

My art mainly revolves around motifs drawn from magic and pageantry. I am deeply interested in iconography, and I search for meeting points between everyday rituals and canonised belief systems. As a performance artist, I often work with historical archetypes and contextualise them by imagining how these figures might survive within contemporary frameworks. I frequently allow myself to be led by characters, letting my body become a vessel for them. The symbol of the white dress is also recurring in my work; I have explored this garment in many forms—worn by the bride, the surgeon, the priest, the newborn, and the woman returning from the dead.

What drives you to do what you do?

I am convinced that art can generate social change, and my practice is deeply shaped by this belief. I place myself in uncomfortable situations not only to present misinterpreted or marginalised characters, but also to evoke empathy in the viewer and reintroduce these hidden archetypes into capitalist society. I strongly believe in the power of community, and my motivation comes from bringing people together and offering shared experiences that encourage connection.

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What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work? Why?

I am drawn to a balance between chaos and order. I often need to feel pressured or constrained while creating, as this helps me connect more deeply to my core messages. I enjoy working alone, though another pair of eyes can be helpful during more advanced stages of the process. When I am in flow, I am free to play and explore at my own pace, allowing objects to speak to me.

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What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

I am particularly interested in gaze and attention, even though this topic is largely popularised in a world dominated by screens. In the coming months, I would like to explore how our attention have shifted in recent years and the effects of this on the surveillance systems. The other topic I can nerd out about is Tudor England. I feel a strong affinity for the era’s customs, rituals, and legends rooted in Celtic heritage. I always try to synthesise my varied interests within my work, which can elevate a piece, but can also risk overcomplicating the narrative.

Where are you based and what do you like about the local art scene?

I am based in Budapest, and although surviving as an artist in Eastern Europe can be challenging, the city has a vibrant and resilient art scene. Due to limited resources, artists have learned to adapt, often working with found materials and DIY methods. The local community is diverse and dynamic, with subcultures and movements constantly emerging, creating alternative narratives and supporting the interdisciplinary discourse. Collaboration across different media is common; while it often emerges as a coping mechanism in the absence of institutional support, it also allows artists to work with greater freedom and fewer expectations.

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Susana Rocha is a portuguese multidisciplinary artist born in Braga and based in Lisbon, Portugal. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts, and master degrees in Painting and Visual Arts Teaching from the University of Lisbon. She is also the founder and Artistic Director of DUPLEX, an artist-run-space and art residency program.

Her artistic practice revolves around the exploration of tensions, both physical and emotional, through visual and material experimentation. These tensions often relate to universal experiences such as anxiety, grief, fear, loss, inability, failure, memory and the absurd. Rather than presenting direct biography, her work uses metaphorical and sensory references to the body as a common ground. She uses a wide range of materials with symbolic potential - such as rubber, glass, metal, and other manipulated or appropriated materials - to evoke bodily responses, limitations, and psychological states.

Website: www.susanarocha.com
Instagram: susana.v.rocha

Susana Rocha was recommended by Emese Kádár.

What themes do you explore in your practice?

I think tension sits at the core of my practice. I’m drawn to moments of emotional and physical distress, states where pressure shapes how we experience ourselves. So in short, the body and the psyche form my primary field of exploration.

I use my personal experience of loss, discomfort, failure, fear, unadjustment, womanhood and motherhood, to face feelings that in the end are quite universal.

It is also fair to say that my upbringing was deeply influenced by the medical world, it’s ethics and aesthetics, which naturally weaved its way into my work.

What drives you to do what you do?

I think, as for many artists, I need to understand and give form to experiences that are difficult to articulate and then be able to communicate them.

Ideally, I want to spark a sense of connection or at least recognition and because our range of emotions is so vast and so calibrated to our own history—meaning, the feelings I evoce might be universal but the way we process them is very particular—I focus on the body and its by-products, as a constant reference to what are the most basic similarities between all of us.

Beyond that, my enthusiasm for materials, and their metaphorical potential, drives me to pursue possible translations between concept and execution, in a constant learning process.

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What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work? Why?

I’m not very particular about the general atmosphere, in the sense that I don’t need any set of extraordinary tangible conditions. But I work at Duplex, a big shared studio space, so I paradoxically need quietness, which we have, and human presence, which we also have. I find it quite difficult to work in an isolated studio. To have fellow artists close by, to share a coffee with, to exchange ideas, or to generally share a sense of community, became crucial to me.

As for the conditions of the space itself: I need my studio to be minimally organized, and I like to divide it into two main areas. One to work, which changes quite a lot depending on what I’m producing, and another to have a clean and clear view of the work itself or to manipulate the way the work is going to be seen or perceived, much like an impromptu “exhibition space”.

Beyond that, I prefer to start working early in the morning and work until mid afternoon. I like to listen to music. Spotify tells me I listen to “The Nationals” the most. Or to crime podcasts. And I don’t live without coffee.

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What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

That’s kind of a personal problem... I’m always jumping between materials, techniques, or interests. Glass, rubber, metal, and objects are so far my most constant materials. Given that, right now, I’m very interested in welding. I tried it for the first time not long ago, and I’m now looking to have a MIG at the studio. I want to be able to play with it, even if I don’t expect to master it. I mainly want to be able to produce small supports and other connection elements by myself, without depending on anyone else.

I also want to work with sound, light, stone... and possibly jewelry techniques.

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What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

If we are talking about my work, I would say that I feel the most satisfied when it shows a mix of well executed techniques, as I tend to combine materials, a particular sense of restraint and refinement, and clarity of intent.

As for “good” artworks in general—whatever “good” may be—for me it has to do with resonance, capability and intention. I know often artists mention “honesty” as a crucial attribute, but I’m not sure we can assess honesty. Instead, I would say that an artwork also needs to be, somehow, contextual to the artist.

Poppy Cauchi (*2003) is a sculptor from Liverpool, living in London, whose practice transforms the quiet rituals of daily life and the invisible weight of psychological survival into tactile, emotionally charged forms. At the heart of her work is the tension between appearance and sensation. Cauchi uses skin-like materials such as silicone and latex to sculpt uncanny surfaces that oscillate between attraction and discomfort. These tactile forms often reference domestic objects : pillows, beds, limbs, fractured or reassembled in ways that evoke fragmented memory and identity. Through mould-making, hair punching, and intricate detailing, she visualises the subtle violence of everyday existence, where inner experience is carefully hidden beneath polished surfaces.

Website: www.poppycauchi.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/poppycauchi

Poppy Cauchi was recommended by Annie Edwards.

How would you describe your artwork?

My work looks at how trauma shows up beyond the individual, in objects, spaces, and systems we move through every day. I’m interested in the ways difficult experiences get managed, hidden, or flattened over time, and how that affects how we relate to ourselves and others. Sculpture lets me slow those processes down and make space for things that are messy, unresolved, or hard to sit with.

What drives you to do what you do?

I’m driven by a need to confront experiences that are often fragmented, dehumanised, or forced into tidy narratives. Making work becomes a way of resisting that compression, of insisting on complexity, contradiction, and emotional truth. There’s also a strong ethical motivation in my practice: to acknowledge experiences that are frequently silenced or retraumatised by the very systems meant to offer support, and to create work that validates those realities without sensationalising them.

What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work? Why?

I need a studio atmosphere that lets me move between focus and instinct. Some parts of my process are slow and methodical, while others are much more intuitive and reactive. Having space to shift between those modes is important to me, because the work itself sits in that in-between, somewhere between control and loss of it. I usually have my headphones on and work with intense focus, particularly when I’m adding details that aren’t immediately visible.

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What inspired you recently?

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about rest and vigilance about how hard it can be to properly switch off after trauma. Conversations around sleep, recovery, and long-term stress have been really influential, especially hearing how differently people experience safety and rest.

Alongside that, my ongoing activism around non-contact abuse and cyber-crime continues to shape the work. It’s made me think more critically about visibility, belief, and control, and about how bodies are monitored, questioned, or dismissed. Those concerns sit quietly underneath everything I’m making at the moment.

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Where are you based and what do you like about the local art scene?

I’m currently based in London and recently completed my MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. What I value most about the local art scene is its openness to experimentation. There’s a strong culture of dialogue, critique, and risk-taking. Being surrounded by artists working across disciplines has been hugely formative, especially in a city where institutional spaces and grassroots scenes exist side by side.

Maria Jose Garcia, is a sculptor and installation artist, making precarious amalgamations of materials sourced from Mexico, and the United States. Maria Jose, was born and raised in Mexico and currently resides in New York City, A recent resident of the Hercules Studio Program 2023-2025 she received an MFA from Hunter College- and the 2022 Eva Hesse Excellence Sculpture Award at Hunter College.

Website: www.mariajosegarciaestevez.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/pepinoconchile

Maria Jose Garcia was recommended by Olivia Divecchia (click here to read the interview with Olivia Divecchia).

How would you describe your work?

I would describe my practice as an exploration of materiality, and re-use. The objects and installations I make are from, the re-using of discarded (trash), industrial, and organic materials. I work with materials pertinent to my personal, cross-regional vernacular, opening a space for habitual observations to incite an uncanny slipstream of familiarity and belonging; a deliberate materialization of my relationship to Mexico, my relationship to the United States and my relationship to my body.

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What are you working on right now?

I recently moved to a new studio, so I have been setting up (nesting) slowly. I am finding that my new making environment has me thinking about making larger sculptures, which feels exciting. Also my latest things, first things made at the new space, have been some paper paintings.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

I organically seem to set different sections in the studio, when I feel stuck in one I just move to another. Like a playground. My objects are made from the studio; So all and any materials and objects in the studio will be used, transformed and eventually become my art object. However if I am not feeling it or I am getting overwhelmed with things not working. I go outside for a long walk.

What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

I am currently exploring the possibility of utilizing living organic materials, specifically moss, and making works that will exist outdoors.

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What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

I went to see Wilfredo Lam’s retrospective at the MOMA, and it was an enchanting. A watering well filling experience. It has stayed within me like a shield. Entertaining so many emotions, hard to express with words eloquently. However it made me think of my favorite part of any work that seeps into you. One that lingers. It made me want to run to the studio and make.

Seihee Cho lives and works in London. She recently completed her studies in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and holds a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts. Her work reflects the dissonance of navigating the world, while suggesting that tension itself can become an anchor. The works operate as milestones, bridges, satellites, buoys, anchors, and temporary shelters. As she describes them, they are “repeated gestures of sending out skipping stones or signals to find comfort within flux—or vice versa— creating psychological refuges where motion subsides.”

Website: www.choseihee.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/choseihee

Seihee Cho was recommended by Aura Sun (click here for the interview with Aura Sun).

What guides your artistic research?

I often return to sleep and find myself reentering the same dream over and over again. There is a disorienting continuity between waking and dreaming—unsettling yet familiar—that blurs the boundary between what is real and what is imagined. Reflecting on the memories of twelve different places I’ve called home over the past decade, this sensation feels uncannily similar to drifting in and out of dreams. My past and its presence feel both vivid and faint, as if remembered through fog. The more I try to conjure these experiences, the more they dissolve. Fragmented, yet stubbornly there.

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This sensation draws on the Gestaltzerfall effect, a phenomenon in which repetition causes perception to break down. Like a word repeated until it loses meaning, memories, too, begin to disintegrate under excessive scrutiny. My practice stems from this recurring drift between states. Waking and dreaming, presence and absence, the remembered and the forgotten. As a result, the idea of “home” has become less a fixed location and more a condition that flickers in and out of clarity.

On another note, I am constantly sketching. Drawing is the one thing I’m never afraid to simply do. These drawings eventually take the form of sculptures, large-scale installations, writing, images, videos and research. They function as speculative blueprints, while the objects become their tangible manifestations. This reciprocal relationship is not only formal but conceptual, reflecting place-making as a personal and often precarious act.

What are you working on right now?

I’ve been looking at chimneys a lot recently—to the point where I instinctively photograph every one I see, and friends and family now send me images when they come across one. I’m drawn to the idea that they function as exits for air, fumes, and atmosphere from interior spaces, but can also be read as entrances. London has many of them due to the age of its buildings, and they often appear in clusters. That grouping feels important, suggesting a collective outline of lived space rather than a single interior. I think of chimneys as quiet witnesses to habitation. They imply warmth, breath, and residue, but only indirectly—through what escapes and disperses.

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What are your favourite items in your studio?

At the moment, it’s Eva Hesse’s Diaries. I return to it whenever I feel the need to have a quiet conversation with someone. No matter how many times I’ve read it, there’s always something new to discover. It grounds me and helps bring me back into focus; Or sometimes does the opposite. I think being unfocused is often fine, even crucial. More recently, I was gifted a new pair of winter studio slippers. They’ve become my next favourite thing.

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What inspired you recently?

I’ve been listening to a lot of Lelio Luttazzi’s albums. Many of my recent drawings and sculptures were made listening to his music. Even as I’m writing this, I have Mi piace playing. His music sits in a space that’s not quite happy but not quite sad either, and I feel there is a connection with that emotional register and my visual language.

What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?

My dad built a small Finnish sauna at home recently. I facetimed them this morning and they were in the sauna with funny looking hats. I asked them what the hats are for and they told me they are specific sauna hats to prevent hair loss from the heat. Seeing them made me laugh; Took some screenshots too.

Bori Mákó is a media artist based in Budapest and a fourth-year doctoral student at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME, Budapest, Hungary). In her research, she explores animated painting as a new hybrid medium that combines painting, animation, and environmental psychology. Her work ranges from site-specific, immersive video-installations, audiovisual performances to digital paintings and zines. In her creative practice, she works with the temporal extension of movement, using repetitive, intertwined, extremely slowed-down gestures accompanied by experimental electronic drone music. Her latest works shed light on the social mechanisms that force us to hide our true feelings, while questioning the boundaries of personal vulnerability and social expectations.

Instagram: www.instagram.com/bori_mako/

Bori Mákó was recommended by Martha Kicsiny (click here to read the interview with Martha Kicsiny).

What guides your artistic research?

My artistic practice and research topic complement each other and are closely intertwined, which I consider a fortunate combination. In my installations, I focus on questions of temporality and reception, with particular emphasis on how animated painting differs from traditional film narratives and the new perceptual possibilities it offers. Just as the development of monitors and handheld cameras in the 1960s led to the emergence of video installation and a radically new way of seeing, the introduction of projectors and advances in computer technology in the late 1980s brought about an equally significant shift in the visual arts. These developments blurred the boundaries of traditional art forms, creating space for works with a unique aesthetic and viewer experience.

What are you working on right now?

I am nearing the end of my doctoral studies and am currently developing my final doctoral project, which will take the form of an exhibition. I am creating a large scale, site-specific installation scheduled for fall 2026. The project takes the form of a multi-channel video installation through which I aim to construct a mythical, conceptual landscape. My research explores how individual practices of concealment can become a collective experience, and which aesthetic and dramaturgical strategies can make this perceptible to the viewer. The installation seeks to activate local experience and emotional engagement as a reconfigurable communal state.

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When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

I mostly work in front of a monitor, so when I get stuck, my first instinct is movement—nature, or anything that pulls me out of a narrow state of mind and beyond the four walls. I go for walks, ride my bike, or spend time in nature. I grew up by a river, and water has a very calming effect on me; it immediately gives me a broader perspective. Sometimes I simply listen in silence, or I put on music—classical, rap, or whatever I’m currently drawn to—often on repeat. If nothing else helps, I call one of my sisters. There are four of us, and we are all involved in the arts. They work in music, while I work in animation, and they are a constant source of inspiration for me.

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What inspired you recently?

In April, I spent a week in Berlin and took a day to visit museums on my own. At the Hamburger Bahnhof, Klára Hosnedlová’s site-specific installation and large-scale sculptures completely captivated me. The work felt both oppressive and strangely comforting at the same time—the way she engaged with the space, the scale she works in, the atmosphere, the utopian yet traditional motifs evoking a distant past, and the sound design all contributed to this effect. I was also glad to experience the exhibition alone; I feel it had a much stronger impact on me than it would have if I had shared the experience with someone else.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion?

I am drawn to work that can shake me out of my own bubble and offer a perspective different from my own. I am always curious about what people are immersed in, what interests them, and how they communicate this through different media. If a work of art evokes strong emotions in me, that is already meaningful. But if I find myself returning to it in my thoughts and forming a deeper connection with it over time, then I feel I truly gain something from it.

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Timofej Kratz (*1984) is an artist based in Düsseldorf. He works between large-scale spray-paint painting and sculpture. Graduating from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2025, he was a Meisterschüler of Prof. Andreas Schulze and attended the sculpture class of Prof. Martin Gostner. He held a Cusanuswerk scholarship (2019–2025).

Website: www.timofejkratz.de
Instagram: www.instagram.com/timofejkratz

Timofej Kratz was recommended by Silja Wendt (click here to read our interview with her).

What does your practice look like?

When I paint, I usually don’t start from a theme or a motif. I’m more interested in what comes up through the process and in an exchange with the painting . Sometimes it begins with a color, or a combination of colors, and leads somewhere I did not expect. I like experimenting and trying out different materials. When the academy was closed during the pandemic, I spent some time making temporary installations in the forest. I was interested in how the paintings became part of the landscape while still feeling like a disruption. That experience changed how I think about where art can take place, and it still feeds into my studio work.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

When I notice I’m getting stuck, a short journey helps me get back on track. Spending time in nature, walking along the Rhine river, or visiting another city helps me reset. When I try not to think about art, that’s usually when inspiration comes.

What would you like to explore further?

I want to explore painting in space further, especially through plaster and ceramics. Clay feels responsive and has energy-storing qualities that relate to painting, but in a different way. Recently, I’ve rediscovered paper. After working with other materials, it feels good to return to something that allows for an immediate start.

Where are you based and what do you like about the local art scene?

I’m based in Düsseldorf. I moved here a few years ago because I was looking for more exchange with other artists. The local art scene is very alive here. The other day I was out having pizza with some friends, and at some point I noticed that we’d been having a painter-nerd talk for two hours straight. I love that. The academy plays an important role, and a lot of exhibitions are self-organized. There are always several shows running at the same time, alongside galleries and museums.

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What are you working on right now?

Right now I’m preparing canvases, stretching and priming them before I start painting. I enjoy the repetition. It’s meditative and gives me time to think about my recent work. At the academy it was all very social. I’d run into painters from other classes in Kirsten’s painting workshop, and we’d pause for an espresso at some point. These days I mostly work alone in the studio, and that feels fine.

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Emese Kádár is a Budapest-based artist who graduated as a painter from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Her work explores the impact of digitalization on emotions and belief systems, as well as its intersections with traditional practices. She is particularly interested in how digitalization affects our emotional life and belief systems, how traditions persist in the present, and where these aspects converge or diverge. Her primary mediums are tapestry weaving and transferring digital drawings onto gypsum plates, through which she explores themes such as grief and mortality, and also reflects on the impact of lost or misunderstood information. These questions concern her both as collective phenomena and from a personal perspective, so the therapeutic nature of the process also plays a quietly important role in her practice.

Website: https://emesekadar.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kadaremese/

Emese Kádár was recommended by Martha Kicsiny (click here to read the interview with Martha Kicsiny).

What themes and motifs do you explore in your work?

In my work, I most often explore themes that have preoccupied humanity across the ages. One such theme is the question of transience, which I have examined in various ways over the past few years, both in relation to the fear of death and in terms of grief. These timeless themes allow the past and present ways of thinking to meet, providing an opportunity to place the new perspectives brought by the present into a broader context. I use this duality in the execution of my works as well: I design digitally and then work with traditional, handcrafted techniques. Similarly, when developing forms and motifs, I draw inspiration from both contemporary and historical visual language.

The motifs I use are often inherently somber, connected to grief, remembrance, or negative emotions, but they dissolve into a visual language inspired by social media, carrying a lighter, straightforward honesty, and sometimes humor. Behind this lies an attempt to balance: in my work, I am interested in a mixture of the somber and the light, one that carries just enough weight from the serious questions posed to make it accessible to others, and therapeutically valuable for me.

What is a challenge you faced recently?

Most of the time, I approach my subjects from a collectively relevant, general perspective, but personal involvement inevitably comes into play, and it is a fundamental source of my work. I usually communicate this only very subtly or within a small circle. Still, it has always been my aspiration to achieve healing through creation, to conclude a grieving process that has lasted twelve years by now.

Last year, through the exhibition of my project NOT_FOUND, which took a year and a half to prepare, I attempted to put an end to the works dealing directly with grief. The series drew parallels between fading memory and the loss of digitally stored memories, adressing data loss as a contemporary obstacle in the grieving process. The attempt at closure proved unsuccessful, as the works I have created since then have circled back to the earlier theme or opened new directions within it. I had to allow this return, and I am currently again focused on grief and the state of emotional freezing. The current project contrasts with my previous approach: it questions whether the increased ability to revisit memories might actually create a more emotionally hardened state.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

I often spend weeks or even months on the execution of a single work, so my ideas must undergo a strong selection process. The weight of this alone can lead to creative block. Lately, to prevent this, I have placed greater emphasis on the idea-generation phase, during which I enjoy manual creation without conscious conceptualization. The most important thing for me at these times is to allow myself the time to overcome the blockage and to continue working on something — even if it is just coloring or toning a previous, unfinished sketch in my sketchbook. I also set time boundaries for myself: I determine a minimum amount of time to spend on creation, even if it initially seems completely meaningless or aimless.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion?

Although I do not have a fixed opinion on what makes an artwork “good,” over the years and through experiencing many works, I have become increasingly clear about what resonates with me. I appreciate it when an artist is authentic, someone who draws from both personal experience and observation of the world, leaving space for the viewer to connect emotionally and intellectually.

I can also recognize when a work is created by an experienced artist, as skill benefits not only the viewer but also the artist during the creative process. Such an artist skillfully selects between visual and conceptual directions, which reinforces the appearance of intentionality. This, alongside the subconscious process I mentioned earlier, is also an essential quality in the works I find appealing.

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What would you like to explore further?

Over the past several years, I found a media basis in tapestry weaving and transferring digital drawings onto plaster, which I originally approached as a painter due to my studies. Gradually, I began producing works that I consider objects, which I exhibit both as wall installations and as pieces integrated into the space.

Currently, I am interested in exploring how far I can expand into spatiality while retaining the main characteristics of two-dimensional thinking. Over the past year, I have complemented my woven works with supporting elements made from laser-cut flat shapes, which, unlike before, are structurally integral to the works. This has led me in a direction where the central element is a sculptural approach, which I aim to further develop in the coming years.

Annie Edwards’ essential area of focus is the human body. Her multidisciplinary practice distorts our familiar sense of reality by incorporating robotic, figurative sculptures with abstracted skeletal forms. Annie’s installation and performances aim to understand the body from biological, psychoanalytical and social perspectives. Her research choreographs the tension between body and machine, embedding visceral knowledge into mechanical gesture. Annie references wider systems of control present in domestic, medical and industrial environments, drawing on her personal experience of trauma, neurodiversity, atopic illness, and her background in farming.

Website: www.annieedwards.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a_knee___

Annie Edwards was recommended by Aura Sun.

How would you describe your work?

My practice centres on the human body as a site of tension, mediation, and meaning. Working across sculpture, installation, and performance, I disrupt familiar bodily realities through the combination of robotic, figurative forms and abstracted skeletal structures. I use these hybrid bodies to investigate embodiment through biological, psychoanalytic, and social lenses. My research stages an ongoing negotiation between flesh and machine, translating visceral, lived knowledge into mechanical movement and gesture. Referencing systems of control embedded within domestic, medical, and industrial contexts, my work is informed by personal experiences of trauma, neurodiversity, atopic illness, and my upbringing within agricultural environments.

What themes and motifs do you explore in your art?

My work interrogates the boundaries of skin—its texture, tone, and tension—both as a surface and a symbol. Skin becomes the barrier between what is hidden and what is exposed, a juxtaposing membrane of encasement and vulnerability. Through processes of building, dissembling, and rebuilding, my fragmented forms evoke the containment and expression of trauma within the body and brain. Drawing from abattoir architecture and my rural upbringing, I create visceral metaphors of consumption, where bodies are reduced to objects within a system. I use humour as both a disarming and subversive tool, addressing the parts of the body we are conditioned to shy away from. My work embraces the grotesque and the abject as strategies to confront both the beauty and discomfort of embodiment—using the language of the body to expose what is usually hidden, repressed, or deemed unacceptable. Ultimately, my work asks the viewer to reckon with their own embodiment, their own complicity, and their own capacity for tenderness.

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What drives you to do what you do?

My work is driven by a desire to expose how bodies and minds are disciplined, misread, and controlled when they fall outside ideals of productivity, coherence, and femininity. My practice is grounded in lived experience and feminist thinking, and emerges from navigating trauma, neurodiversity, and gendered medical bias within systems that privilege linear functioning and compliance.

I am driven by a desire to challenge the myth of the “functional” body and mind. Experiences of PTSD and dyspraxia have made me acutely aware of how dysfunction is framed as personal failure rather than as a response to social, medical, and industrial pressures. Using my own body as a site of resistance, I work with fragmentation, repetition, absurdity, and humour to undermine expectations of control, efficiency, and aesthetic coherence. Humour, in particular, allows me to subvert authority and to challenge misogynistic assumptions about women’s bodies, labour, and intellectual capacity—including the persistent notion that women are not funny or capable of sharp, disruptive wit.

My performative work is driven by an impulse to expose what is usually hidden: disrupted gestures, repeated attempts, laboured rhythms, and moments of failure that mirror forms of executive dysfunction often masked from view. By drawing parallels between domestic labour, medicalised femininity, and industrial systems of production, I reposition dysfunction not as deficit, but as critique. Failure becomes a strategy of refusal—an embodied protest against hyper-efficiency, self-surveillance, and compliance.

Ultimately, I am driven by a need to confront how women’s bodies are observed, assessed, and objectified. I am interested in the power dynamics of the gaze—how judgement is imposed, internalised, and performed. By implicating the viewer within these dynamics, my work asks them to reckon with their own role in systems of control, care, and harm. Through this, I seek to reframe vulnerability, failure, and messiness as sites of agency, resistance, and collective recognition.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

My studio is full of playful, absurd and joyously grotesque objects and sculptures. It’s a great place to be if you feel stuck. There are endless combinations of items to interact with that have the power to heave anyone out of a rut. I am a lecturer and made an extensive list of prompts routed in play for my students to turn to when they experience creative block. I call it the Blocksmith list. Prompts might include taping a pencil to something heavy and drawing with it, or creating an installation using only toilet roll and light. These exercises interrupt habit, reduce pressure, and allow thinking to happen through action.

What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work?

I am a huge advocate of artist residencies and I find this to also be one of the most impactful ways to reinvigorate and nurture new ideas. Residencies radically shift pace, context, and expectation, creating space for risk, failure, and recalibration. My time at Joya:AiR Arte + Ecología, Spain in 2024 and Argo Arts, Athens in 2025 were particularly formative, and out of those experiences I developed a residency programme linking both places to the Royal College of Art. The programme creates a pathway between institutional study and independent, site-responsive practice, offering early career artists time, distance, and support to experiment without the pressure to immediately resolve or professionalise their work.

Being embedded in these environments—through shared labour, conversations, isolation, and immersion in place—allows ideas to unfold slowly and unpredictably. Ultimately, getting unstuck for me is about introducing play, displacement, and generosity: towards materials, towards process, and towards myself.

Who do you recommend for the readers to check out?

I’d encourage readers to look at the work of Rosie Gibbens, whose curatorial approach to the absurd, the grotesque, and humour has been a major influence on my thinking—particularly during my degree show.

Another creative force I’m deeply excited about is OHSH Projects. They’re a nomadic project space in London founded by Henry Hussey and Sophia Olver with a real commitment to creating tactile, textural conversations between artists and spaces. Their playful and contemporary themes often draw on mythology, memory, identity, the raw human body and symbolic storytelling. They create exhibitions that feel urgent, immersive, and resonant by utlising spaces like former restaurants, station waiting rooms and raw industrial environments, giving artists the freedom to experiment outside the usual commercial or institutional frameworks. I love how their programming is bold and funny, intellectually stimulating but never aloof, and fiercely supportive of both emerging and established practices. I have the honour of showing with them in early January.

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What inspired you recently?

Most recently, Athens has been a huge source of inspiration for me. The creative communities in Exarchia and Kypseli are so vibrant, generous, and full of mutual support. It felt like everywhere I went there was something to spark my imagination—private views almost every night, conversations in the streets, and a palpable sense that art is lived communally rather than isolated in white cubes.

What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

What I’m curious to explore further is how art can sustain and radiate that same sense of communal generosity—how we can make spaces and practices that don’t just show work but nurture it, invite people in, and make experimentation feel like a shared, joyful risk rather than something solitary or pressured.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

This is a question I return to every year with my students, and one I don’t think has a single answer. There are many valid ways to define a “good” artwork—evidence of time and care, technical skill, scale, surprise, mystery, or a sense of awe. These qualities often signal commitment, intention, and attention, and they matter.

For me, though, what makes an artwork compelling is complexity. I’m drawn to work that holds more than one emotional or intellectual position at the same time. This is why I’m so interested in the grotesque: it has the capacity to pull you in through intrigue while simultaneously pushing you away through discomfort or revulsion. Comedy and darkness often operate in a similar way—shock and laughter arriving together, destabilising certainty and making space for deeper engagement.

I also believe strongly in the importance of multi-sensory experience. We move through the world with our whole bodies, not just our eyes, and I think art should reflect that. Work that considers sound, texture, scale, movement, or atmosphere creates an embodied encounter rather than a purely visual one. For me, a “good” artwork doesn’t just ask to be looked at—it asks to be felt, negotiated, and physically experienced.

Olivia DiVecchia is an artist working across drawing, sculpture, photography, video, sound and text. DiVecchia’s often recursive practice works to develop systems whose logics are followed through multiple points of translation and mutation. At the center of her work is an enduring interest in the failure of meaning as we know it; in the way that the singular presence of things is dissimulated in various regimes of knowledge; in opacity as a general condition.

Her work plays with what a world initiated by this haunting can be. With the way in which reaching to know is inherently colonial, all too easily opening a quantitative, extractive orientation to the world. This dynamic, between what she names opacity and the unwieldy desire to grid it out, is the core interest of her practice.

She received a BFA in studio art from Southern Methodist University in 2010 and an MFA in studio art from Hunter College in 2020. Her work has been exhibited in both Dallas and New York. She lives and works between upstate and New York, New York.

Website: www.oliviadivecchia.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/odivecchia

Olivia DiVecchia was recommended by Johanna Strobel.

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How do you think about what your work is? What is your practice like?

I would describe my work as precise, obviously labor and time intensive, always hinting at an underlying system or logic, but one that is not fully revealed in the art object itself. Lately this is manifested in large scale, highly detailed mesh-like drawings that reference the language of mapmaking and architectural drawing. Ultimately, I think I would like the art to exist as a kind of contradiction between the clarity of a precise logic or system and a deeper opacity or constitutive mystery.

In practice, being guided by this contradiction means I have a hard time starting from scratch. I always try to unfold new projects out of work and systems of meaning I developed before. I like to make work by building up a series of tasks that when followed, make the work. Over time these tasks become like rules that when pushed in the studio through repetition and time, bend, transform, open into new terrain. I like to think of it as a process of unfolding.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

I like to have enough space to have a few things going at once so that when I get stuck in one place I can keep it moving by jumping into another piece. This is what I had been missing for some time working in small home studios in NYC and what I am hoping shifts in my new space.

When I have been really stuck in the past, I have turned to photography, which is my first medium. There is something calming about collecting images with the idea that what anything “means” or will be can be figured out later in a kind of editing or assembling process.

I think I take this approach into other mediums too, I like to collect materials, small actions or tasks, methods and sources and not think too much, just let time in the studio and repetition unfold and assemble a system of making.

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What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

I think what I look for in artwork is not a discrete object that is beautiful or well executed or what have you, but something that acts as a signpost, a residue almost, of a whole world or thinking, meaning and practice. I also resonate with things whose meaning remains open, whose future is not written and fixed in the moment of its making. Things that have a certain density.

What would you like to explore further?

I am very curious about sound work and would love to find ways to bring this into my work in more developed fermented ways than I have so far been able to. I have done some things with sound, but I feel like a total amateur in that realm. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an amateur!

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What does your studio mean to you in your making and art?

Lately I have been renovating a space upstate to be my new studio. So I am in a bit of a pause in making, and looking forward to seeing what the new space brings to my work. In times where I am not making as much it can be easy to lose sight of the drive to make.

I think this is because for me that drive is completely intertwined with the constant cultivation of a space for thinking that takes place by just showing up in the studio and building that kind of rhythm where one’s focus can shift and open into the spaces where thinking about meaning making and art’s place in all of that is possible. It is a different register than the one occupied in daily life, work, and all that.

That being said I am also very driven to find and spend time in that headspace because it has always enriched the way I can engage with others, with conversation, friendship and deep connection which is maybe the most important thing to me. So in that sense I think of art, at its best, as a way to be in the world with other people in more beautiful and full ways.

Aura Sun (b. 2001) is an artist and spiritual practitioner. She received her BA in Product Design from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and later completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in the UK. Her work constructs landscapes of the unconscious, dissociating an enchanted poetics from reality. Moving like a spiritual alchemist, she maintains a state of fluidity between matter and material. As she notes, “Through art, I try my best to perceive the starlight hidden within the human soul,” a gesture that signals both the return of spirituality and the quiet rebuilding of a spiritual home.

Website: https://www.ariasunglitters.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solar_aura_/

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What guides your artistic research?

The construction of my inner narrative under a Hermetic1 context. I have been immersed in a world of fantasy for as long as I can remember. My mind continuously stages countless scenes, and sometimes they turn into still images that linger for a long time. From the texture of these narratives, and from the gaps between these images, many thought-provoking sentences split off from me inexplicably. I capture the energetic qualities of these languages and explore their esoteric connections with their corresponding images.

What are you working on right now?

I have recently been studying astro-theology and the sacred geometry of the cosmos, and my trip to Prague not long ago gave me infinite inspiration. My upbringing was filled with order and discipline. Those rules—once something I desperately wanted to escape—have now somehow transformed into a dependency on a certain “pattern of patterns.” I am completing a series of wall-mounted installations in which I further extend the language of paper as a material that repeatedly appears in my earlier works—a material that has accompanied my growth like archival documents. Through it, I attempt to express a kind of “admonition from the cosmos,” like Emerson’s “admonition of nature.”2 It is not a harsh teaching, but a steady guidance.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

I would read a book very, very, very slowly, as if I were writing it by reading it. I read so slowly that I almost fall asleep, and then I lie down on my bed. In that half-dreaming state, I receive pulsed signals from my dreams. It is a strange method, but it always works.

I would also make myself forget that I am a creator and become an experiencer of art instead—traveling, walking, and perceiving the multidimensional images of the world in infinitely subdivided ways. I always believe that you’ll never actually “stuck,” because all energies between heaven and earth are constantly, actively surging and generating new life at every moment. The feeling of being stuck comes from an imbalance in our own energy conduit, so we must let go and relax.

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What inspired you recently?

Definitely David Lynch. I had never watched his works systematically until I recently restarted Twin Peaks. I was amazed by how calmly, objectively, and yet with such refreshing curiosity he integrates the images of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious—an inner work I once avoided greatly.

I also read László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango and was astonished by his development of the materiality of language. I think his writing is sculptural, and for someone like me—trained in sculpture and highly sensitive to language, it was essentially inspiring.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

Authenticity. I believe there is no “good” or “bad” in art—only the true and the false. When a person is completely honest with themselves and allows the image reflected by that inner clear mirror to descend truthfully into the material world, they become a real artist—an archetype of the magician, like in the tarot. The Magician in tarot has one hand pointing to the universe and the other to the ground. In this authentic state, he lets the energy flow into him and out of him, and thus becomes infinite creativity itself.

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Silja Wendt lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. She completed her studies this year at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Prof. Martin Gostner, who also appointed her as a master student. Her work often explores questions of space and the environment, reflecting on the ways we shape it and how it, in turn, shapes us.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silja.wendt

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How would you describe your art?

I think my works sometimes appear massive and heavy at first glance, yet they are actually very light and sensitive. They often convey a sense of spatiality, though not necessarily in the classical sense. They remind me of inner worlds of space, of poetic reflections on our surroundings. I often ask myself how we shape our environment and how it, in turn, influences us. I also believe there is always potential for change, and I also try to explore this through the material I work with. Many structures may seem rigid like stone, but in reality, they are malleable and flexible like paper.

What drives you to do what you do?

I believe that every process also generates potential for further processes. How can we make use of this potential and for how long, or how often? Recently, I have been focusing strongly on the material paper, which surrounds us abundantly in everyday life. When I create an installation, I often reuse material from it for the next work. That’s the wonderful thing about paper, it can always be reshaped into new forms.

I’m also often asked why I don’t integrate many other materials equally into my process. I think it is, among other things, the curiosity to explore all the different facets of this simplicity. I also hope to inspire others to discover potential in seemingly simple things and, through that, to release interesting processes.

What are your favorite items in your studio? Why?

I have a big bucket in my studio that I truly love. All the papers I gather end up in it, soaking and turning into pulp. It’s my magic bucket, whatever goes in comes out transformed.

What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

My graduation project was strongly shaped by the academy’s environment. I’m now looking forward to seeing how different places will influence my work in the future.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

This is a difficult, yet also interesting question. I’m not sure I can fully answer it, as it depends on perspective. Sometimes art is simply necessary for the artist, and in those cases, it doesn’t really matter whether the viewer understands it. For the viewer, however, a work is probably successful when it touches them deeply in some way.

As an artist, one can also pursue this goal and be moved or surprised by one’s own work, which is always a very beautiful experiene.

I especially enjoy works that spark thought processes or inspire meaningful action or learning. But sometimes it is enough for me to simply be moved by the beauty or aura of a work. That too can leave a lasting impression and create a unique sensory experience. It reminds us what it means to be a sentient being.

Ha Sung-Wook is a Seoul-based sculptor whose practice explores material transformation and the systems that shape contemporary consumer life. After a period away from the art world running a leather goods business, Ha began working with discarded leather—once a byproduct of industrial production—as a primary medium. Through this material, he reflects on cycles of production and disposal, reimagining the surface of leather and positioning it as an autonomous presence within sculptural form.

https://www.instagram.com/ha_sung_wook_/

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What themes and motifs do you explore in your art?

Lately, I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from plants. Sometimes I feel that the relationship between order and structure revealed within organic forms is close to the archetype of all things in the world. Observing how plants grow and support each other, I explore ways to connect the surfaces of discarded leather into organic forms, augmenting their bodies into stable structures.

What makes an artwork “good” in your opinion? Why?

When my work progresses in directions I haven’t tried or thought of before, unexpected forms or expressions sometimes emerge. I feel joy in my work, and consider it “good,” when such unanticipated, non-habitual expressions appear. It would be nice to discover these unexpected expressions every time, but in reality, it happens very rarely, which makes them feel even more “good.”

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?

There are often times when I can’t think of what to make or why I should make it. This usually happens when I get greedy. When I start thinking about how it should look or wanting to make it really well, the work doesn’t start smoothly. So instead of thinking too much about what to create, I spend a lot of time just moving my hands—stacking, carving, and attaching things without really knowing what it will become. Often, by the end of the day, nothing significant has been made. Still, I don’t feel regret or anxiety at all. In fact, I sometimes enjoy it even more when I work this way, and somehow the work ends up being fun to complete. In any case, even when I feel stuck, the moment I’m touching and making something in the studio is what I enjoy the most.

What inspired you recently?

These days, I enjoy examining very small, trivial details. The shapes of bones and muscles forming under the skin of a person’s leg, bark precariously attached to a tree trunk, or the volume of a half-eaten snack bag—when I look at these tiny details for a long time, I feel their sense of volume gradually expands. I think that this emerging sense of volume, though unfamiliar, could provide a hint for how something can develop a certain presence.

What drives you to do what you do?

Right after graduating from university, I stopped making art and started a business. I was financially unstable and felt I couldn’t manage both at the same time. For the five years (2018–2023), I ran a business producing and selling leather goods, and I found a sense of stability. However, over time I realized that what I truly needed wasn’t money. My longing for a meaningful life grew, and I felt that only making art could satisfy this. So I closed the business and since then I’ve been working on my art very happily. Of course, my financial situation has become more difficult, but I believe that even in poverty, life is about doing something you are passionate about.

Martha Kicsiny is a British-Hungarian visual artist based in Ghent, Belgium. She is a multimedia art fellow at the Doctorate School of the Moholy-Nagy Arts University (MOME, Budapest, Hungary). Her research aims to unearth and incorporate 19th-century Media Archaeology findings into Contemporary Art and, especially Immersive Media discourses. Her artworks fuse predigital and digital techniques to understand the deep cultural traits from which our modern technology stems. Ranging from video art, site-specific installations to 3D-printed lithophanes, her practice focuses on the human condition in society, the aftermaths of historical events, the expression of power in architecture and the mythological origins of oppression and segregation.

Website: https://www.marthakicsiny.hu/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marthakicsiny/

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What guides your artistic research?

I feel a deep fascination towards the past, but also a desire to express the tension and contradictions I feel about being alive now. These might seem to be polar opposites, but I believe that connecting elements of the past and the present offers us a broader perspective. Helen Kaplinsky described the medieval experience of life as a duality between the material world and an otherworldly religious realm. Today, the virtual and digital create a similar parallel layer of existence, guiding our physical lives by something metaphysical and invisible. However, in contrast to the way we imagine the internet, this intangible realm is created by very material technology, created and run by resources that way heavy on the environment and exploited groups. This drives me to reflect on the nature of mediation, its history, politics and social impact.

What are you working on right now?

Many questions about the origins and possible alternative futures of our contemporary technology can’t be answered based on canonised art history and media history. This is why I love researching forgotten 19th-century media. I believe the essence of digital imagery is that it is made by light, so I strived to find a way to keep its light-based essence, while materialising and deconstructing the high-tech nature of screen technology. So, I revisited the historic medium of lithophanes with 3D printing. Lithophanes were porcelain screens that would glow in front of candles or gas lamps in the dark of homes at night, like how our digital screens glow today. Without the use of pigments, images appeared on the surface of porcelain when backlit, due to its varying thickness, creating an entrancing, glowing image which is slightly spatial. In the coming months, I want to experiment with further deconstructing my 3D-printed lithophanes. On one hand, I’m planning to work on incorporating some kinetic components and motion sensors to make more dynamic pieces. But I would also like to reflect on the difference between natural and electric lights. I’ve recently been given the green light to exhibit some candlelit lithophanes, which will add a whole new aspect to the images, so I’m excited to be able to experiment with that as well.

What are your favourite items in your studio? Why?

Recently, I found an amazing 19th-century freestanding carved wood fire screen frame in an antique shop in Ghent, where I’m based now. I knew it would be a real artistic challenge to make a lithophane that suits this elaborate frame, and I wasn’t even sure it would fit in our narrow staircase and small studio, but I couldn’t leave it there. Thankfully, we managed to get it in, and now I love looking at it every day. The fact that it is a fire screen perfectly fits my research on lithophanes, and I love working with the symbol of fire. I can’t wait to incorporate it into a project soon!

What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?

Technofeudalism is a topic that I find very relevant, as the global platforms of the internet create a new layer of reality, thus causing tensions and schisms. While the internet seemingly offers such freedom and possibility for individuals, it also creates a fragmented vulnerability exposed to forms of exploitation previously unknown. As some, such as Yanis Varoufakis, have pointed out, the evolving cloud power structures echo those of the feudal Middle Ages. Living in Ghent, a city where the medieval past is very much present, I often feel strong resonance between the Middle Ages and the present. I would love to research this topic further and focus on historic tactics of resistance and resilience against feudalism that we could learn from today, such as the Ghent revolts against the Holy Roman Empire.

What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?

I really enjoyed watching The Studio; it’s a self-reflective satire, a not-too-serious comedy series made about the creative industry. It’s a great way to have a good laugh about the absurdity and complexity of trying to survive making art while navigating financial realities and social pressure. The dynamic cinematography, punchy script and intense music score have a catchy momentum, so it also gives energy to just get on with it.

The new version of RE:MAGAZINE will focus on short written interviews with artists and it’s main home will be the website and the newsletter.

RE:MAGAZINE is a small-world experiment inspired project showcasing artists and their work.

How it works: The interviewed artist recommends three artists themselves. They will be asked if they want their work to be posted on RE:MAGAZINE. If the answer is yes a written interview will take place and the article is published. They recommend three artists. And so on.

I am looking forward to find new artists along with all of you readers! Don’t miss a post and support this project for free by subscribing to the Newsletter.

Find Gretta Louw here:
www.grettalouw.com
Or on Instagram:
@grettalouw

What are you working on right now?
I’m finalizing work for two shows opening at the end of April. The first is Digital Combines at bitforms gallery in San Francisco, the piece is a large embroidered painting paired with a sound piece as an NFT. The second is called Hope on the Edge, curated by Anabel Roque Rodriguez at Yvonne Hohner Contemporary in Karlsruhe and I’m excited to be showing several new works from the last two years there.

How would you describe your work?
My work is concerned with networks – from the digital to ecosystems, networks of kinship and mycelium. I am interested in how things are connected, and the overlapping impacts of advancing technologies on society, culture, and environments. My work is inherently hybrid and I work back and forth between digital and algorithmic methodologies and traditional ones such as embroidery.

What guides your artistic research?

Curiosity, of course, but also, on a much deeper level, a sense of genuine connectedness with human and more-than-human webs of being. There is a chasm between this and the destructive forces of exploitation, extraction, and domination that seem to govern so much of what we see happening in the news today. We need new narratives.

What could these new narratives look like?
Ursula Le Guin has criticised what she calls “prick stories”; narratives in which a ‘hero’ goes out into the world and acts upon it, creating change and resolution while their surroundings remain passive. We need anti-heroic stories, we need tales of interconnectedness and small (inter)actions, we need narratives of messy hope within ongoingness rather than artificially finite ones. We need future-stories that evolve consciousness and contentedness rather than predicting ever more detailed dystopias that limit our imagination to create anything different.

What trait do you most admire in a work of art?
A sense of the sublime.

What kind of atmosphere do you like when you work?
I appreciate peace in my working environment, though it isn’t always possible. I like hearing the birds and seeing greenery, lots of tea, few distractions. Sometimes I listen to music or podcasts when I’m embroidering but I need silence if I’m writing.

What are your favorite items in your studio?
All my embroidery threads, my tea thermos (a gift from a loved one), comfy armchairs, plants, light.

When you feel stuck, how do you get un-stuck?
I go for a walk. Write it down. Stretch. Read something inspiring. And I find that taking some time to consciously breathe almost always shifts something.

What are you curious about? What would you like to explore further?
Lately I’ve been reading more about fungi and their incredibly diverse roles in terraforming, connecting forests, shaping animal behaviours and environments – it’s absolutely fascinating. That’s definitely an ongoing research interest. And I’ve been curious to learn more about birds lately, though I’m not sure how or if that will connect up with my practice. I’d like to be better at identifying plants and foraging too.

But also, my next research project is concerned with ways to inject ecological justice modes of thinking into blockchain, so I’ll be diving into research for that too.

What do you like about the Munich art scene?
I love the museums in Munich, they are amongst the best in the world.

Which artists, curators or other art world people should the readers check out?
I am a huge admirer of Claudia Hart’s work – as both an artist and curator she’s doing groundbreaking work. I love LoVid’s recent tapestry works and Sara Ludy and Martina Menegon’s digital works. 

I love Jakkai Siributr’s work and Sophie Kahn’s achingly beautiful sculptures, Dennis Rudolph’s hybrid worlds, Florian Kuhlmann’s wit, Alina Birkner’s illuminated canvases, Emma Stern’s colour palette, Antwan Horfee’s layering. I could go on and on and on!

I worked with an amazing curator last year, Julia Katharina Thiemann, that was a fantastic experience. And I’m working on a project with my friend the curator Anabel Roque Rodriguez, it’s amazing when someone totally gets your work. And I’ve had a long relationship with Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett from Furtherfield, who I love dearly. I also really admire Chus Martinez and Stephanie Hessler’s curatorial work. There’s too many to name.