Art Worlds

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. 

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.

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.  

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. 

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.

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.  

This special edition of Art Worlds comes to you from London during the week of Frieze art fair. Cecilia Brunson is a London-based, originally from Chile, gallerist and advisor who has dedicated over two decades to championing Latin American art on a global stage. Beginning her career as a curator in America and then founding a residency programme in Santiago, her move to London in 2009 led her to establish Cecilia Brunson Projects in Bermondsey. The gallery, which is attached to her home, has become a beacon for Latin American art in the capital. Cecilia has uncovered overlooked Latin American artists’ estates and supported contemporary talent from the region, often introducing artists that have never been shown before in Europe. She joined me from her gallery to discuss the artists she’ll be exhibiting at Frieze and in her space.   

This special edition of Art Worlds comes to you from London during the week of Frieze art fair.Reena Saini Kallat is an artist based in India’s economic capital, Mumbai. Central to her practice, which spans drawing, photography, sculpture and video, are the often man-made tensions and divisions that mark our existence. As such, she has explored political borders like the Radcliff Line, investigated water treaties as well as researching divisive national rhetoric. In all her investigations, Reena likes to highlight areas of subversion and show the ways in which systems of authority can be malleable and overcome. Reena is showing one of her impressive listening device sculptures at Frieze Sculpture curated by Fatoş Üstek. Installed in the grounds of Regent’s Park, her work is interactive and uses sound to invite audiences to dwell on themes of loss, violence and protection. Reena joined me from her studio just after she had returned from London and the sculpture park’s opening.