Art Worlds: Venice special

Dana Awartani is an artist who delves deep into the forms, processes, ideas and spaces that give shape to the culture of the Middle East. Her research often leads to artworks that utilise historical art-making traditions, like stonemasonry, in ways that highlight political issues including gender, ecology and cultural destruction. She has filled Saudi Arabia’s pavilion at Venice with 29,221 compacted clay-earth bricks that reference a spectrum of design motifs drawn from demolished, damaged and threatened sites across the Arab world.  The pavilion is curated by Antonia Carver, the director of Art Jameel who leads the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and Hayy Jameel in Jeddah. Across their exhibition and live programming, the organisation supports artists and has been integral to fostering public engagement with art in the region. As Venice draws to a close, I spoke to Dana and Antonia about their incredibly ambitious presentation.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 49 features András Szántó, a cultural strategist with a background in sociology who advises museums, foundations, universities and corporations, the world over. Offering a range of planning and project development guidance, he has an eye on global trends and an awareness of current and future challenges facing the art sector. He addresses some of these topics in his articles, books and through the initiatives he has established including the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A seasoned speaker, at the Venice Biennale he hosted a panel discussion on reimagining museums for the twenty-first century. I spoke to András about this event and the health research he thinks will be shaping institutions in the years to come.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 48 speaks with Don Handa, a curator, writer and podcaster based in Nairobi who specialises in experimental and research-based practices in and from Eastern Africa. As a curator at the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, he leads exhibition, public and educational programmes that focus on preserving and promoting East African art. NCAI was founded in 2020 by artist Michael Armitage and has steadily been building a collection and archive of East African art history. Their shows have contextualised the area’s art heritage and in doing so, made the institute a place of conversation and community. I spoke to Don about NCAI’s inclusion in the Venice Biennale and their working methods.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This special edition of Art Worlds comes to you from Venice during the 61st Biennale Arte 2026. Amin Jaffer is a curator and art historian focused on South Asia and the cultural intersections between Europe and Asia. His research has seen him mount an exhibition exploring the complex furniture trade in colonial India at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lately he has been an artistic director for the second Islamic Arts Biennale and currently directs The Al Thani Collection, which stretches across cultures from the ancient world to today. Amin's appreciation for historic art traditions has informed his curation of the India pavilion at Venice this year. Five artists (Alwar Balasubramanium, Ranjani Shettar, Sumakshi Singh, Skarma Sonam Tashi and Asim Waqif) each using methods and materials that have been deployed in India over great lengths of time, transform the pavilion into a haptically rich environment that considers the notion of home. Amin spoke to me from Venice, in the final run up to the pavilion’s opening.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 46 is with Eunice Tsang, a curator who puts community-building at the centre of her practice. Working in Hong Kong, she initiated M+ museum’s Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival alongside curating the Live Art programme and at Tai Kwun she began the Asian Artist Book Library. In 2020, she founded Current Plans, a not for profit art space which is playfully multidisciplinary. The industrial space has seen performance parties, communal cooking events and hosts artists in residence. Eunice spoke to me from Milan, where she had just finished a special project at Paris Internationale. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Worlds Episode 45 meets Tobias Berger, a curator who has been instrumental in the development of contemporary art in Hong Kong. He has taken a leading role in shaping the curatorial direction of institutions including M+ Museum and Tai Kwun Contemporary and now has co-founded the organisation Serakai Studio. Positioned as a cultural think tank attached to the real estate firm Serakai, the initiative is a meeting point for creativity, culture and the built environment. As such, they publish an annual journal called Cong and recently opened Gold, a salon space that welcomes experimentation and interdisciplinary programming. Tobias spoke to me a month into Gold’s inaugural and highly acclaimed exhibition, Certainly.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 44 features Pearl Lam, a gallerist, collector and patron who has been instrumental in shaping Hong Kong’s and more broadly, China’s art worlds. Her eponymous spaces, the first of which opened in 2005, have over the years championed artists from Asia and placed great focus on challenging misconceptions and reductive readings of such practices. She has since expanded her remit and, with locations in Hong Kong and Shanghai, is known for her varied programming that bridges geographies and celebrates diverse perspectives. This mission has led to Pearl instigating museum exhibitions, launching the China Art Foundation and hosting the Pearl Lam podcast featuring leading thinkers and creatives from all over the world. I spoke to Pearl just as she finished showing at Art Basel Hong Kong.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Worlds episode 43 moves to Hong Kong and meets Jaffa Lam, an artist who creates sizable, mixed-media works, often formed from materials discarded in the city. Crate wood, stones from the city’s shoreline and abandoned metal are some of these finds that are worked up into subtle forms that delve into Hong Kong’s history and heritage. She has created sprawling canopies from disused umbrellas and almost stained glass-like panels that dwell on elements of cultural life that are disappearing over time and as the city develops.For Jaffa, the process of making is often as meaningful as the final artwork. She has undertaken collaborations with a range of people including members of the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association. Jaffa spoke to me from her studio in Hong Kong about this form of production and her new solo exhibition at Axel Vervoordt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art Worlds episode 42 features Hadeer Omar, an artist and researcher who embraces a range of digital technologies to consider the fundamentals of being human. Often working collaboratively, she seeks out people’s stories and memories to reflect, partly, on cultural identity. She has used extended reality to create a video tracing the story of a jewellery-maker, she’s filled a historic fort with an audio-visual installation and created digital artworks which honour the tradition of the zaffar wedding procession. Through her position as associate professor at VCUarts Qatar, Hadeer continually encounters different perspectives which feed into and energise her practice. Her work, ‘Fragmented Realities’, visualised, in video form, the dreams of her students and projected them onto a mound of pillows. Hadeer spoke to me from Doha about her production process and the way building connections is a vital component of her work.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Series 5 begins with Wael Shawky, an artist best known for his epic, narrative films that explore and toy with common ideas about history. Whether using puppets or people for his cast, his work looks beyond the historical canon and brings to the fore lesser known events from the past.Extending his artistic practice, Wael founded and ran MASS, an independent educational space in Egypt’s Alexandria. Since 2024, he has been the artistic director of Fire Station, a creative residency space in Doha and last year was named the inaugural artistic director of Art Basel’s first art fair in Qatar. Wael spoke to me from his Doha office just ahead of the fair’s launch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.