About Art

In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, founder of ART X and ART X Lagos, the leading international art fair in West Africa. Through ART X, Peterside-Schwebig has played a pivotal role in positioning Lagos on the global cultural stage while remaining deeply committed to local communities and creative voices.Their conversation explores the development of ART X Lagos; the importance of engaging both local and international audiences; connecting African artists and collectors; and supporting new generations of creatives through initiatives such as ART X Live!, the ART X Prize, and ART X Cinema. Together, they discuss artistic innovation across Africa, the power of cultural entrepreneurship, and how younger generations are shaping the future of art on the continent and beyond.This is a conversation about building platforms, expanding narratives, and reimagining what global cultural leadership can look like.

What does it mean to read fashion—not just as style, but as culture, politics, and lived experience?In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with designer Carla Fernández, founder of the Mexico City–based fashion house dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the textile knowledge of Indigenous and mestizo communities across Mexico. Fernández’s work demonstrates how manual methods, collaboration, and tradition can generate fashion that is ethical, innovative, and forward-looking.Their conversation explores the connection between head, heart, and hand; the importance of going slowly; creation through trust and friendship; and why innovation can emerge from centuries-old techniques. They discuss fashion as resistance, the politics of clothing, confidence and undergarments, technology and weaving, the realities of fast fashion, and what is lost—and possible—when fashion is treated as disposable.This is a conversation about fashion as cultural expression, collaboration as creation, and the power of choosing the best for the best.

Aindrea Emelife is Curator, Modern and Contemporary at MOWAA (Museum of West African Art), a new museum which opened in Benin City, Nigeria in November 2025. She was also the curator of the Nigeria Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Born in London, United Kingdom, Emelife studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her work focuses on questions around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation. Her recent exhibitions include BLACK VENUS; a survey of the legacy of the Black woman in visual culture which opened at Fotografiska NY and toured to MOAD (San Francisco, USA) and Somerset House (London, UK). Emelife’s first book, A Brief History of Protest Art was released by Tate in March 2022, Emelife has contributed to exhibition catalogues and publications, most recently including Revising Modern British Art (Lund Humphries, 2022). In 2021, Emelife was appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.She and Zuckerman discuss being seen in institutions, how exhibition making can shape the curator, nuance, artists as activists, what a museum can be, power, ancient traditions as innovation, impact, visibility and belonging, the archive, the human imagination, and not being afraid of imaginative possibility!

Kami Gahiga is a curator and art professional based between Kigali and London. Her work primarily focuses on art from the Global South and she has curated several exhibitions across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.  She is an acting contributor to NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art. Kami is the Art Basel VIP Representative for Africa. Previously, she served as the Head of VIP & Gallery Relations at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (London, Marrakech, New York, Hong Kong). She is a patron of the Delfina Foundation (London, UK), a board member of the Tyburn Foundation Board (Harare, Zimbabwe & Umbria, Italy) and is a Nominator for the Norval Sovereign Art Prize (Cape Town, South Africa). Gahiga is the Co-Founder of the Gihanga Institute of Contemporary Art opening soon in Kigali, Rwanda!She and Zuckerman discuss Contemporary Africa Art, creating a new art space in Kigali, Rwanda, multigenerational collecting, African patronage, art and culture as the last frontier in Rwanda, creating interest, the experience of exposure, the idea of beginning, how to inspire, finding answers within, artists opening and operating their own spaces on the continent, and writing manifestos!

Spencer Lewis, born 1979 in Hartford, Connecticut, lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of California, Los Angeles. Known for his gestural paintings on cardboard and jute, Lewis uses flashy bright and colorful notions executed through streaked lines, smears of paint and rough strokes that suggest the impulsive creative process underneath. With chaotic, almost infinite layers, Lewis's canvases conceal and simultaneously unveil a brushstroke, a gesture over the other, stories and moments culminating and accumulating on the painting's densest parts. Despite the apparent unpredictability of Lewis's compositions, they are based on a methodology and structure. Lewis is, in fact, interested in pictorial organization and image-making. Consistently concentrating towards the centre of the canvas, Lewis's brushstrokes frantically tell the different layers of the same narrative. In a podcast recorded live in his LA studio, he and Zuckerman discuss wanting positive things, paint as a fluid object, seeing and feeling distance between ideas, cities, being courageous, finding novelty, what art is really good at, timelessness, how artists want to be free, having an anxious attachment style, why people like complexity, what feels big, the space of color, how and why you need a studio, how to make great paintings, his phrase “for me to make a painting,” how art is still about beauty, remembering that making art will feel bad, and how gratitude works every time!

Princess Alia Al-Senussi, PhD, is a leading member of the contemporary art world, with a special emphasis in her academic, personal and professional work on visual arts and culture in the Middle East, holding a doctorate degree in politics from SOAS which analyzed the nexus of soft power and cultural diplomacy in the context of networks of patronage, with a case study of Saudi Arabia.  Dr. Al-Senussi is a founding member of the Tate’s Acquisitions Committee for the Middle East and North Africa, the Board of 1:54 The African Art Fair, and the Middle East Circle of the Guggenheim. Amongst other positions, Dr. Al-Senussi is Chair of the K11 International Council and a member of the Tate Modern Advisory Council, the board of the Serpentine Future Contemporaries and the Strategic Advisory Council of Delfina Foundation. Dr. Al-Senussi’s work has encompassed a variety of other initiatives in the global art world, including being integral to the founding of Art Dubai, as well as the international advisory board of Edge of Arabia, the Advisory Board of Ikon Gallery, and the Advisory Group of Photo London.  Dr. Al-Senussi is Senior Advisor, International Outreach and the VIP Representative for the United Kingdom, as well as the Middle East and North Africa, for Art Basel and a Senior Advisor to the Saudi Ministry of Culture focusing on work with the Diriyah Biennale Foundation and will be lecturing this autumn at VCU Qatar.She and Zuckerman discuss cultural diplomacy and soft power, women and self-confidence, being more than one thing, recent travel and exhibitions, and where feels like home!

Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg are co-founders of US-AD100 design firm AGO Interiors and co-founders of Wallpaper 400 collectible design gallery AGO Projects. Their firm’s first book, Love How You Live: Adventures in Interior Design (2024), showcases their projects and the makers they’ve nurtured throughout the years. His practice emphasizes comfort, connection, and supporting local artisans.They and Zuckerman discuss art versus design versus craft, erasing hierarchies, Collectible design and how it is often misunderstood or overused, fairs, the first work of art they each acquired and the most recent, and as collectors what they wish they had been taught about collecting when they started out!

Marilyn Minter (b. 1948, USA) is an artist based in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Marilyn Minter, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, South Korea (2024). Marilyn Minter, LGDR, New York, NY (2023); Marilyn Minter, Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong, China (2021); All Wet, Montpellier Contemporary (Mo.Co), Montpellier, France (2021); Smash, MoCA Westport, Westport, CT (2021); Fierce Women, The Cube, Moss Arts Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA (2020); Nasty Woman, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah GA (2020); among others. From 2015 through 2017, her retrospective, Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty, traveled to the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (TX); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (CO); the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach (CA); and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn (NY). Her video Green Pink Caviar was on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from 2010-2011.Minter is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant (2006) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1998). Minter’s work is in the collections of many museums globally, including the the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (CA); (MA); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (NY); the Perez Art Museum, Miami (FL); the Tate Modern, London (U.K); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (NY); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (NY), among many others.She and Zuckerman discussed shaming young and beautiful women, trust, how we take care of ourselves, making things her own, progress, the ability to copy anything, getting rid of narrative, finding out who we are, identifying people’s gifts, seeing joy and the love of making, making bad things, the reality of self-doubt, looking for things that bother you, piggy backing, and how hard it is to be alive!

Conceptual performance artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. She was sentenced in 2012 to 2 years' imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer. Punk Prayer was named by The Guardian among the best art pieces of the 21st century. Tolokonnikova's Putin’s Ashes art installation at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in January 2023 propelled her into a new criminal case and put on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. In 2024 her debut museum exhibition RAGE, opened at OK Linz, Linz, Austria, and the eponymous performance piece performed at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In 2025, Tolokonnikova has solo shows at Honor Fraser gallery (Los Angeles), Nagel Draxler (Berlin) and MOCA (Los Angeles). She and I discuss memory, books, Environmental consciousness, young motherhood, Feminism, how to run from the police and protect yourself as an activist, equality, being a mom, survival mechanisms, freedom of thought, how criticism does not equal hate, making things better, how people are not even trying, spreading something good, how paradise is within you, radical activism, the minuscule audience for contemporary art, places of liberation, enchanted and magical art balanced with the raw, and not being dumber than AI, ideas first, thinking while walking, what’s the future of creativity, solidarity, moments of gratitude, making things beautiful, and imagining the impossible! 

Raina Lampkins-Fielder is the Curator of Souls Grown Deep, a nonprofit that advocates for the artistic recognition and social and economic empowerment of Black artists from the American South. With a distinguished career as an art historian, museum educator, and curator of 20th century and contemporary American Art, focusing on African American creative expression, Lampkins-Fielder has worked for over 20 years in museums and cultural institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has curated and produced many exhibitions, served as a juror for artist residency programs, organized and participated in numerous academic conferences, and spoken widely on audience accessibility to the arts in the US and abroad. She holds a BA in English from Yale University and an MA in the History of Art from the University of Cambridge, England.She and Zuckerman discuss finding solace in museums, assumptions, play as fearlessness, stewardship of precious sharing, saying thank you, vulnerability, lines of life, how art saves lives—including hers, burdens of history, stories of abundance, using sound as a curatorial strategy, being a mom and how that influences her practice, how there is no sound bite for why art matters, how art speaks to the unspeakable, and overjoying in creation!

Los Angeles-based artist Liza Lou is widely known for introducing beads as a contemporary fine art medium. Lou’s persistent experimentation has challenged hierarchies and helped to redefine previously marginalized terms such as craft, labor, the feminine, and the decorative. Reviewing her groundbreaking Kitchen (1991–1996) at the New Museum in New York, Roberta Smith wrote, “…this radiant piece effortlessly annihilates any barriers between art and craft, [and] proves unequivocally… that quality is where you find it and will not be denied.”¹In the two and a half decades since Kitchen, Lou’s oeuvre has expanded to include numerous room size sculptures, including Back Yard (1996–1998), a 500-square-foot work comprised of 250,000 pieces of beaded grass; Trailer(1998–2000), a forty-foot-long mobile home with a glittering film noir interior; and Security Fence (2005), a chain link and razor wire fence enclosure covered in silver-lined glass beads that both attracts and repels, transforming a symbol of confinement.In 2002, Lou was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and moved to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she operated an art studio and women’s advocacy program from 2005–2020. There, Lou explored the capacity of beads to stand in for the paint medium in a body of Minimalist woven works. For example, The Waves (2013–2017) comprises an installation of over one thousand woven white cloths which cover gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Through the process of weaving, each cloth is “painted” with the residue of natural oils from the artist and her assistant’s hands. In 2020, Lou returned to her solo practice in Los Angeles and began a series of abstract, gestural oil paintings on woven, glass-beaded cloths. Lou and Zuckerman discuss living in a state of wonder, meditating, bending the light, endurance, labor, repetition, focusing on beauty, God, the intersection between fine art and craft, suffering and pain, truth and who is “with you!”

Brooke A. Minto assumed the role of Executive Director and CEO of the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) in May 2023. With a career spanning over two decades, Minto has experience working for a range of museums and interdisciplinary arts organizations in the United States and abroad.   Before joining CMA, Minto served as the inaugural executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums (BTA). During her time with BTA, she grew the grant-funded pilot program into a robust nonprofit membership organization equipping Black trustees with the resources to bring meaningful and lasting change to their institutions.She and I discuss institutional memory, what draws us to a new community, football, belonging, stewardship, risk tolerance, audacious leadership, audience advocacy, and purpose!

Pedro Reyes studied architecture but considers himself a sculptor although his works integrate elements of theater, psychology, and activism. His practice takes a variety of forms, from participatory sculptures to puppet productions. In 2008, Reyes initiated the ongoing Palas por Pistolas project in which 1,527 guns were collected in Mexico through a voluntary donation campaign to produce the same number of shovels to plant 1,527 trees. This led to Disarm (2012), where 6,700 destroyed guns were transformed into a series of musical instruments. In 2011, Reyes started Sanatorium, a transient clinic offering brief unexpected treatments mixing art and psychology. Originally commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum, New York City, Sanatorium has been in operation at Documenta 13, Kassel (2012), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013), The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2014), and OCA, São Paulo (2015), among 10 other venues. In 2013, he presented the first edition of pUN: The People's United Nations at the Queens Museum in New York. pUN is an experimental conference in which ordinary citizens act as delegates from each of the UN countries and try to apply techniques and resources from social psychology, theater, art, and conflict resolution to geopolitics. Recently, Pedro Reyes was commissioned by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists together with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winners of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, to raise awareness of the growing risk of nuclear conflict, for which he developed Atomic Amnesia to be presented in Times Square, New York City, May 2022. For his work on disarmament, Reyes received the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2021. At the same time, he inaugurated his largest exhibition to date in Mexico, at the Museo MARCO in Monterrey. In 2022, Reyes had his first solo exhibition in Europe, at the Marta Herford Museum in Germany, where he presented a large body of his early work. Currently Reyes is participating in the first Macau Biennale in China, the International Art Biennial of Antioquia and Medellín in Colombia, and has a solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in New York.In a far ranging and deeply meaningful conversation Reyes and Zuckerman discuss relationships, accountability in art, change, the studio as a school or a guild, vicarious joy, the writer’s museum and the museum of life, hope, embracing the cringe, and understanding the world!

Michi Jigarjian is the CEO and founder of Work of Art Holdings (WOAH) and a Managing Partner at 7G Group, advancing art-led, socially responsible projects that strengthen communities. She helped shape the award-winning Rockaway Hotel’s arts-driven revitalization, led Baxter St at CCNY, serves on the Brooklyn Museum’s executive committee and the National YoungArts Foundation board (DEAI Chair), and has taught at Bard College.Jigarjian and Zuckerman discuss community building and designing platforms, interruptions, problem-solving, what the next step can be, ecosystems of athletes, perfect practice, flow, bringing the creative back into the game, what actually matters, how women lead differently, deserving to sit at the table, things that are bigger, who provides agency, how we do both, finding joy, loving to host, sport hobbies, letting things grow bigger than you, seeing actual change happen because of Art, and non-transactional conversations!

Kate Bryan is a British art historian She is Chief Art Director for Soho House and Co. globally where she curates and builds a collection of over 10,000 contemporary artworks on permanent display across 17 countries. She is an arts broadcaster and recently made a one hour special with the Guerilla Girls. She has been a judge on the popular TV show, Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year since its inception in 2013. She started her career at the British Museum and has run commercial galleries in both London and Hong Kong.  Her third book and first for a mainstream audience will be released in September. How to Art aims to demystify the artworld and help us all have a more joyful relationship with art.She and Zuckerman discuss art anxiety, our shared belief that “Art is for everybody,,” being helpful, cultivating taste, stress relieving impact of making art, why art is the ultimate art form, good and bad art, prioritizing the visitor, already knowing everything that you need to know, when things click, busting art out of where it is usually seen, making television about art, emphasizing the human connection, what makes artists interesting people, how there is no really conventional art career, having a great time, purposeful inclusivity, allowing art to be good for us, being honest, and being really excited to talk about art!

Nate Ready is a winemaker, farmer, former sommelier, and founder of Hiyu Wine Farm in Oregon. Nate’s work lives at the intersection of agriculture, alchemy, and aesthetics. His wines are complex, expressive, and deeply rooted in place — and his approach asks us to reconsider not just what we consume, but how we perceive. His philosophy-driven, biodynamic approach to wine cultivates experiences that bridge the poetic and the practical.He and Zuckerman discuss the aesthetics of wine, fear of feeling, plant touching, imagination, outsized impact, care and connection, the importance of forgetting, wine as something quasi-ethical, the act of being uncomfortable, looking for the signal, harnessing biological energy, and when it’s worth it!

Orange County-based photographer Deanna Templeton is best known for her street pictures documenting everyday suburban life in Southern California and the skate and beach scene of Huntington Beach, a city where she has lived all her life. Her generous portrayal of the punks, goths, metal heads, skaters, and surfers she encounters reflects her own subcultural identity as a young person. Included in OCMA’s 2025 California Biennial: Desperate, Scared, But Social, Templeton presents over 40 photographs from her series What She Said (2001- ongoing), some scaled for the first time larger-than-life.She and Zuckerman discuss her relationship to photography, her relationship with her husband the photographer and former professional skateboarder Ed Templeton, growing up and working in Southern California, how her practice calls into question topics of identity, body image, and female identity, how she selects the girls and women she photographs and how she approaches them, and what she would you say to her younger self!

Los Angeles-based artist Amy Adler works across the disciplines of drawing, performance, photography, and film. Her practice explores media and process considering subjects that exist between paradigms and identities. Born and raised in New York City, Amy is a graduate of LaGuardia High School of Music and Art. She attended Cooper Union and went on to receive her MFA in art practice from UCLA and an MFA in film production from USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has had multiple international and national gallery and museum exhibitions including solo projects at MOCA Los Angeles, the Aspen Art Museum, the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She is Professor of Visual Art at UC San Diego where she has been teaching since 2004. And her current solo exhibition NICE GIRL is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art.She and Zuckerman discuss Leonardo DiCaprio, family as subject matter, girls, and nice girls, protecting the vulnerable, power dynamics, the vulnerability in making art, self-love, time well spent, drawing in negative, her studio practice, working standing, technique and texture, and how there is always more!

Nene Humphrey is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans across mediums including performance, video, drawing, and sound. Known for her unique approach to storytelling, Humphrey’s projects often explore the connections between personal memory, dream states, and the collective human experience. Her recent project, This Like a Dream Keeps Other Time, is the culmination of years of research into the emotional and psychological impact of dreams and the healing power of music. Humphrey has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries including The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and Sculpture Center, New York, NY; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Mead Museum, Amherst, MA among others.

Tony Freund is Editorial Director and Director of Fine Art at 1stDibs, which operates at the intersection of design, collecting, taste, and cultural storytelling. Freund has spent decades chronicling the world of design, collecting, and connoisseurship, helping to shape the editorial voice of one of the world’s leading online marketplaces for art and design. He brings a deep, nuanced view of how we live with objects — and what they say about us.He and Zuckerman discuss the connoisseur’s eye in a digital world, the evolving meaning of luxury, the power of objects to connect time, place, and people, beauty, storytelling,and why objects — whether functional, historical, or sublime — continue to hold cultural power!