A Conversation with Artist ABDULNASSER GHAREM

I’m currently working on a project titled The Healthy Sin (Aniconism),. This work addresses my personal and cultural journey navigating the strict religious and social prohibitions against depicting ensouled beings in Saudi Arabia. It explores the complex tension between faith, state control, and artistic expression that has shaped my life and practice. The project consists of a multi-layered installation combining video, sound, and painting. It documents my early experience as a child instructed to deface illustrations in schoolbooks, the silent conflict between government modernization and religious conservatism, and my later act of resistance by organizing a covert live drawing session using a disassembled and smuggled mannequin.

A Conversation with Francesco Ozzola
Founder · Director of Suburbia Contemporary

Growing up in Florence, art was just there—everywhere. It wasn’t some big revelation; it crept in slowly. Eventually, I realized art isn’t just to be admired. It demands something. It resists. It has consequences. What matters to me is how art reframes things—socially, emotionally, politically. It can shake what feels settled. With Suburbia Contemporary, I try to keep that alive. We work with artists who challenge forms and codes, who treat images as thresholds—open, not closed.

A Conversation with Artist JON JOANIS

I was always pretty serious about music and have worked as a musician in some capacity since I was around 14. For me, the disciplines, although differing in skill sets, occupy almost the same mental and emotional space. Also, I learned (and continue to learn) about harmony and composition in art and music almost synchronistically and simultaneously. But where the inspiration comes from in the desire to be connected to these worlds is harder to locate.

A Conversation with STAVROULA COULIANIDIS
Independent Curator · Founder of STAV Curatorial Organization

I believe you need to have a clear sense of the narrative you want to tell. What do you want viewers to learn? How will you visually take audiences on a journey? Whether an exhibition focuses on a particular era, a societal issue or singular body of work, a good curator should be able to tell a story that all can understand. I did not grow up in the art world, so transparency is important to me.

A Conversation with Artist SONJA KEPPLER

For me, art is a universal language that connects cultures. It can be beautiful, it can also be strange and comical, or provocative. Art is versatile and surprising. I was born and raised in Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. I still live and work here today. My parents and grandparents had a few gardens, so I spent a lot of time outdoors and learned a lot about it. My great-aunt was a jewelry designer and collected many objects from different cultures, such as ritual objects, shadow puppets from Java, and African masks.

A Conversation with JENNIFER SCHLESINGER · Owner | Director of OBSCURA GALLERY · Santa Fe

I love being a photography dealer and appraiser because I am very passionate about the medium, and I feel so lucky to be able to work in the passion I started out with 30 years ago. I fell in love with art when I was taking a gap year from college, where I was initially studying Political Science. In 1994, I moved to Atlanta and started working at a photography lab where we processed C-41 color film and black film and white gelatin silver prints. I would visit the High Museum and study art books. I then took a several-month trip to Europe, where I immersed myself in the arts and culture there – I was hooked. I then decided to go back to school for photography in Santa Fe, and moved here to do so in 1996.