The Suitcase Bruno Aveillan Kept Packing

The Louis Vuitton Suitcase Bruno Aveillan Kept Packing

LE MILE

When Bruno Aveillan writes about his Louis Vuitton Alzer 75, he mentions “the silence of a bedroom before sleep”. He has been packing the same suitcase for more than thirteen years, and on his travels he made a habit of taking its picture. The case turns up in the ruins of an abandoned village in Argentina and in Iceland’s volcanic terrain. Somewhere along the way, a raccoon made it into the book. There are 350 photographs in The Suitcase, made across more than a hundred destinations.

©Bruno Aveillan
Behind The Scenes

Before the Alzer became his subject, Aveillan had already put Vuitton’s idea of travel on screen, directing the house’s first television and cinema campaign in 2008. “Where will life take you?” asked the film. The book grew out of a job he gave himself while travelling to make other people’s films. Since the Alzer was already packed for each trip, he had a subject he could come back to on assignments that otherwise had little to do with one another. Aveillan calls the series an indirect self-portrait and has grouped the photographs by theme, with chapters including Refuges and Silences. The Alzer sometimes takes up a good part of the frame. In other pictures, looking for it makes you stay with a place you might have glanced at before turning the page. You can follow Aveillan by the suitcase, even when the order of his journeys is left open. The clothes inside are anybody’s guess.

Louis Vuitton is showing the photographs for the 130th anniversary of its Monogram canvas. The Alzer dates to the 1960s and has its origins in the garment cases the house developed in the 1890s. The one in these photographs still belongs to a working traveller, who could set it down long enough to take a picture and pick it up again for the next leg of his trip.

Flammarion and Éditions Noir publish The Suitcase on 11 November 2026. The exhibition La Valise Bruno Aveillan opens two days later at LV Dream, 26 Quai de la Mégisserie in central Paris, alongside Paris Photo.

©Bruno Aveillan

Louis Vuitton The Suitcase
photographs by Bruno Aveillan

Portrait of Bruno Aveillan

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header image credit:
©Bruno Aveillan, from Louis Vuitton The Suitcase

Carlo Morrone and the Architecture of Recognition

perspectives

An Image Rarely Appears All at Once

text CARLO MORRONE + TIM JAHN

Carlo Morrone first shared a selection of works with two short texts on his process and DÉJÀ-VU. What followed was an exchange between his initial reflections, an editorial reading of the images and a further reflection written in response to that reading.

Across the works, architectural fragments, thresholds, objects and traces of human use create spaces that feel familiar without belonging to a specific memory. The exchange gradually shifted from the origins of those fragments towards the body, possible actions and the question of why a place can seem recognisable before it is fully understood.

The feature retains that progression, moving from Morrone’s own starting point to LE MILE’s reading and back to Morrone in his response.

Born in Rome in 1988 and raised in Calabria, southern Italy, Morrone studied architecture and engineering in Italy, with periods in Madrid and Berlin, before moving to Paris, where he collaborated with the studios of Renzo Piano, Ricardo Bofill and Jean Nouvel on international projects. Drawing had been part of his life from an early age; his mother is a painter. After several years working as an architect, his artistic practice emerged as a natural continuation of that experience, allowing the same questions to take a different form. He lives and works in Paris.

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2025

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2025

Carlo Morrone
An image rarely appears all at once.

More often, it arrives carrying the weight of something that seems to precede it. Not a memory in the personal sense, but a quieter form of recognition. We feel that we have already encountered it, although no precise place or moment comes to mind.

The images I make are built from fragments that belong to different worlds and different centuries. Architectural forms, religious iconography, anonymous objects, gestures, proportions, familiar silhouettes. Once removed from their original context, these elements cease to function as references. They begin to exist as something else.

What interests me is the moment when an image no longer feels constructed but discovered.

An image is usually the result of a long accumulation of fragments collected over time: paintings, anonymous photographs, everyday objects, places visited years before, or spaces that continue to exist only in memory.

Most of these fragments remain dormant for a long time. I don’t collect them with a specific work in mind. They simply stay with me until, often unexpectedly, they begin to establish relationships with one another.

That moment marks the real beginning of the work.

From there, the process becomes one of continuous adjustment. I move elements, remove them, change their scale or position, sometimes by only a few millimetres. These almost invisible decisions are often the most important. They determine whether an image remains a composition of separate parts or gradually acquires the feeling of something whole.

Once detached from their original context, fragments lose their historical identity. What interests me is not where they come from, but what happens when they coexist within the same image.

Perhaps every image already exists in a latent state, scattered across our collective visual memory. The work is not to invent it, but to bring distant fragments into a relationship until they suddenly recognise one another. When that happens, the image acquires an unexpected sense of inevitability.

This is why I am less interested in originality than in resonance.

Certain forms survive because they continue to inhabit us long after we have forgotten where they came from. They move silently through paintings, architecture, cinema, domestic interiors and sacred spaces, shedding their historical identity while retaining an emotional one.

My work tries to remain within that threshold, where the familiar becomes uncertain and the unfamiliar feels strangely remembered.

Perhaps DÉJÀ-VU is not about the repetition of an image.

Perhaps it is the moment when an image remembers us before we remember it.

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2024

Tim Jahn
One of our first observations was that people seemed absent from many of the works. The longer we looked, the less adequate that description became. Figures, hands and fragments of faces do appear. What is more often interrupted is not human presence itself, but the connection between body, space and a clearly legible action.

Spaces without visible figures are not disembodied, because beds, curtains, doors and architectural openings remain defined in relation to human use. Previous, possible or anticipated bodily actions seem to remain inscribed in them.

We do not merely see these spaces; we test them, probably largely unconsciously, against our own bodily experience. Could we stand, lie down or pass through? Is an opening actually accessible? Is the space inhabitable, or only spatially convincing within the image?

The forms address our bodily knowledge, but do not fully meet its expectations.

This led us to a provisional reading that has stayed with us. You do not primarily show people in spaces; you show how spaces and objects presuppose them. When selecting and arranging fragments, do you think about the body as a measure or potential user of a space?

You describe how elements cease to function as references once removed from their original context, and how they lose their historical identity. We found ourselves asking what survives that detachment. Perhaps what disappears more decisively is their specific context of use, location and particular history.

At first, we also focused on the recurrence of certain objects. Over time, it seemed less important which objects reappeared than which spatial situations they produced. Arches, doors, windows, curtains and framed views open a space and withhold it at the same time.

Many of the spaces also feel less abandoned than suspended. Abandonment would already imply a history. The conditions for an action are present, while the action itself remains absent.

Perhaps recognition does not arise only from the visual or historical familiarity of the fragments. It may also come from our bodily and cultural knowledge of them. A room can feel familiar although we have never entered it, because its proportions, openings and possible uses already belong to our spatial experience.

The familiar remains active in the individual parts, but the whole cannot be traced back to an original memory. In a finished composition, do you experience this familiarity with something that has never existed as a whole?

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2026

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2026

Carlo Morrone
Until reading your text, I don't think I had consciously distinguished between the absence of figures and the interruption of action. Yet the moment I read it, it felt strangely obvious.

When I begin an image, I rarely think about a figure first. I usually find myself thinking about a space. Not necessarily a real place, but a spatial relationship that somehow feels believable.

Even when no one is present, I instinctively ask myself whether someone could inhabit that room. Could they cross that doorway? Sit on that chair? Move around that table? Stand beneath that opening?

I don't consciously analyse these questions while I'm working. They happen almost instinctively. Looking back, I think they come from years of drawing and imagining architecture, where space is always measured through the possibility of a body moving within it.

Perhaps this is why the body often remains present even when it is absent. Not as a figure, but as a measure.

You describe these spaces as physically plausible yet somehow impossible to inhabit completely. I hadn't thought about them in those terms before, but I recognise what you mean.

If the space became entirely impossible, it would lose its sense of familiarity. If it became completely functional, it would simply become architecture. I'm probably searching for a point where both realities can exist at the same time. A room that feels convincing enough to enter, yet never entirely allows you to understand how it works.

The way you describe fragments also stayed with me. I don't think the fragments ever become neutral. A bed still suggests rest. A doorway still suggests passage. A curtain still implies the possibility of revealing or concealing something. They never completely lose the memory of what they once did.

Perhaps what disappears is something else.

Not identity, but biography.

The fragment no longer belongs to a particular place, person or historical moment, yet it continues to carry traces of the gestures that once surrounded it.

If a fragment remains too closely attached to its original meaning, it risks becoming a quotation. If it loses every trace of its past, it risks becoming generic. What interests me is the unstable space between those two conditions.

Until you pointed them out so clearly, I don't think I had realised how often thresholds appear. Doors, curtains, arches, windows, passages... they seem to return almost instinctively. Perhaps because a threshold is never simply an object. It always implies something beyond itself. Even when nothing actually happens, these elements quietly activate our imagination.

Perhaps that is also why I don't experience these places as abandoned. They simply remain available.

I think I'm less interested in absence than in possibility. The image remains open. Not incomplete, but unresolved.

Perhaps this is also where the feeling of familiarity begins to shift. We recognise what a doorway or a window is supposed to do. Yet the image quietly interrupts those expectations. Everything remains believable. Nothing behaves exactly as expected. I hadn't thought about this relationship between thresholds and recognition before, but it now seems difficult to separate the two.

This brings me to your final reflection on DÉJÀ-VU, which perhaps stayed with me more than anything else. For a long time, I thought the feeling of familiarity in these images came mainly from the fragments themselves. But your text made me wonder whether recognition begins somewhere else.

Perhaps it begins with space.

Or perhaps with the body.

Sometimes I have the feeling that I recognise an image before I understand it. Not because I have seen that exact place before, but because something about its proportions, its silences or the relationships between its elements already feels strangely familiar.

While I'm working, I still know where every fragment originates. At first, those references remain quite present.

Then, almost without noticing, something changes.

There is usually a moment when I stop looking at the fragments individually. The image begins to function as a whole.

The original sources don't disappear. I could still point to each of them if someone asked me. But they no longer determine how I experience the image. They become part of its history rather than its meaning.

It feels less like constructing something than recognising something that somehow already existed, although I know perfectly well that it didn't. Not because the image reproduces a forgotten memory, but because it creates the impression that it belongs to a memory we never actually had.

As I was writing these notes, I realised that this feeling isn't reserved for the viewer. It sometimes happens to me as well.

The image eventually becomes unfamiliar in a very particular way. I still remember every decision that produced it, yet I can no longer reduce it to those decisions. It acquires a kind of independence.

Perhaps that is also why, once a work is finished, I rarely feel that I have fully understood it. In a sense, I begin looking at it in much the same way as everyone else.

And perhaps that is the closest I can come to describing what DÉJÀ-VU means in my work.

Not the feeling of remembering a place.

But the feeling of recognising something that has only just come into existence.

Carlo Morrone - Untitled, 2024

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all art works (incl. header) courtesy Carlo Morrone

— more on CARLO MORRONE: www.carlomorrone.com

Every day is a Parade — Alex Da Corte in conversation

Alex Da Corte in conversation

Déjà Vu as Pop Memory

interview + written NICOLAS VAMVOUKLIS

Venezuelan-American artist Alex Da Corte approaches popular images as if they could change temperature. A cartoon figure or a shop-bought object enters his work already familiar, then begins to feel charged, vulnerable, almost alive.

Speaking from Philadelphia, in front of a studio wall covered with printed references, he described a way of working based on waiting rather than forcing an image into use. That patience gives his worlds their strange intimacy. They are bright, but not light; playful, but never innocent. In Parade, his recent exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, this attention became a passage through thresholds, where public icons carried the pressure of private feeling. Appearing three times as life-size sculptures, he used disguise not to disappear, but to become more exposed. The conversation begins there, with the moment an image stops behaving like itself and starts looking back.

Alex Da Corte, Housepainter II, 2025
Foam, plywood, resin, silicone, fur, hair, steel, paint, hardware, muslin, glass
73 1/4 x 28 1/8 x 20 1/4 inches, 186 x 71 x 51 cm
© Alex Da Corte, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Nicolas Vamvouklis
Your work presents images we seem to recognise before we understand why, like déjà vu. Have you thought about your practice in those terms?

Alex Da Corte
Much of my practice hinges on what might be considered the opposite of déjà vu: jamais vu. It is the moment when the familiar becomes strange again, and suddenly beautiful, or seems to sit outside time. I think the pieces are scratching at that feeling, even if it remains an abstract desire. You can never really notice when that happens as it happens. It is quite elusive. I’m interested in memory’s slippery nature, and in applying that to forms we might collectively call familiar, at once ordinary, charged, and unstable. But familiarity is regional, generational, relative. When we talk about global icons, or figures fixed in history, we often forget that those histories can shift. An icon known and discussed now can quickly fade. What happens then? Does its ability to transform remain? Still, everything should always be able to change.

You have described your work as “an exploration of the nuances of contemporary life.” What feels truly contemporary now?

If I pay attention, as I do, to the feeling of being alive now, I sense a turn toward matters of the hand: a tactile, material concern, a care for the world in local ways, connected to one’s own body and physical space. I don’t think it is an opposition to the digital, or a complete turn away from it. It is more an embrace of the physical, an ability to commune with it, whether in nature, with others, or wherever it meets the ground.

Many of your projects unfold within dreamlike environments. What do they allow you to express that reality does not?

I’ve been having weird dreams lately, and thinking a lot about Magritte. He obviously paints motifs one could liken to dreams. I have often thought my practice is not so surreal, because the objects are born out of actual objects. Magritte paints an apple, a rose, a person floating in space. They exist, but in a dislocated way. So perhaps that must be dreams. What excites me about dream logic is its relationship to time, its fluidity, or its illogical order. Events move happily or scarily between past, present, and future, forward and backward in unexpected ways. You wake up thinking more acutely about those occurrences. I don’t know that we get much space to move like that in waking hours, but if we did, we might intercept daily banalities differently.

Alex Da Corte, ROY G BIV (still), 2022
Video (color, sound), 60 minutes
© Alex Da Corte, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Is there a cultural figure you have always admired?

I remember finding Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks in the library. I thought: wow, there is so much around us, and the world is so bright with lessons to be learned. Anything is ripe for consideration: airflow, the way light hits glass, pigments, dirt, feelings, memory, our bodies, how they move and sweat, how we negotiate other people and ideas, including those that fail. All of that is baked into his writing. He has always been a model for thinking through my own life, and for remembering that there is an opportunity to find awe, novelty and strangeness, in everything. I don’t really get bored. If I think I might, I look to him.

Popular and consumer culture provide much of your visual language. What continues to excite you there?

I’ve always been interested in mathematics and systems-based logic. For all the emotional reasons that drive a decision, there is also a less emotional force behind so many choices we encounter, and those choices can provoke hard feelings. I like that collision. We see it constantly in cultural production. I’m curious about what informs culture as product: what is in favour or out of favour, what motivates society and its politics. It is born out of many people’s decisions, sometimes not so many. I like noticing where ideas germinate, and how the domino effect plays out. The handle of a comb, the colour of a suitcase, the way someone pins their hair back, can all be evidence of the times and their needs. The world is largely out of our control, and people keep trying to find control within it.

You often transform recognisable images into strange forms. How do you decide when one is ready to be reimagined?

I’m smiling because I’m looking at a wall of images in my studio. There are pictures printed from many periods, photos I’ve taken on my phone, material I found elsewhere. They stay there for a long time. I look at them every day, but never think about them in terms of readiness. I let them permeate my mind. I don’t know exactly how they function as I see them constantly. They change, I cycle through them, I print new ones. This collage, this analog way that I make, eventually meets me at night in a dream space, or while I’m walking in the park. Then I understand why I like an image, or why I’m drawn to it. Looking quickly now, some of what I see is about seasons, architecture, tension…

Performance view, Kermit The Frog, Even, Fridericianum, Kassel, September 7, 2024
© Alex Da Corte. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, Kültur Büro Barcelona/Buenos Aires, and documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH
Photograph by Nicolas Wefers

Can you pick one image for me now?

There is a fantastic Robert Morris work I have printed out. It is made of wood, metal, debris, building materials, just laid out. I love it because this unremarkable scatter, which could be in any workspace, ends up having such personality. The longer you look, the more specificity appears in the piles. They are evidence of a body that was there. These objects were made by somebody, by some machine, by a combination of the two. I think about those invisible histories, and they stay with me. It is so unlike my own pieces, so I let it be. I don’t need to remake it, or have it become anything more than a prompt. It is a joyous reminder of what it looks like to engage freely, maybe even unabashedly, with chaos or dishevelment. That isn’t so apparent in the practice, but it interests me in life.

Let’s turn to your recent exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City. Why did you call it Parade?

I saw a performance of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations by the Philadelphia Orchestra last year. Part of it speaks about a character witnessing the savage parade that is their life. Throughout the poem there is a perspectival shift: the author is watching a parade, then inside it, then observing that it has passed. I thought about this through those three positions. To witness an event, to stand at its edge, is to be at the beginning, at a precipice, like standing before the ocean. To enter it, to swim or sail in that body, space, or procession, is to participate, to live in the present, to engage, to find joy and loss. It activates the idea, rather than only imagining it. To watch the parade go by means you have arrived at the thing you dreamed of, executed what you wanted, lived through it, and perhaps grieved its passing. These parades do not have to be adventurous or grand. They can be minor. Every day is a parade, every conversation could be one.

Although you move across many media, sculpture had a strong presence in the show. You said that a sculpture “has a side you cannot see.” What interests you about this hidden dimension?

I have always loved sculpture for its insistence that you be in space with it, walk around it, and become aware of your own body here. That is a condition we negotiate all the time. It’s a call to resist screens and a flattened experience, and instead to participate. I believe in participation, and in all the ways it can yield a win, a loss, or any value in between. I love material so much. The show included artificial leaves, paint, wood, fur, plastic, rhinestones, flocking, prosthetics, rubber, glass, scents. All of it was there, as a proxy for who we are as human beings. We make gestures with our hands. We shift matter around. It is quite animal to make sculpture. It is quite primitive.

Alex Da Corte, Pink Store Front, 2025
Poplar, paint, brass, foam, plasticized fabric, twine, pegboard, muslin, coffee, velvet, fluorescent tube, acrylic, craft paper, acrylic medium, plastic tape
154 1/2 x 212 x 24 inches, 392 x 539 x 61 cm
© Alex Da Corte, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

You appeared as the Pink Panther and Popeye. What made you want to inhabit these characters yourself?

You are born into a body. You don’t have much choice in it, so you spend your days negotiating what that feels like, and it is always changing. For brief moments, when I embody another figure, whether a real one like Paul Thek or a fictional one like Popeye, it disperses my own self and how I live inside it. It turns me into sculpture. My flesh and blood become no more remarkable than the Robert Morris piece I mentioned, made of wood, felt, scattered metal. I am not so dissimilar to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, just a sculpture in the round moving through space. It takes away the sentimentality and first-person point of view of my own being for a time. It allows me to be free, to take on other psychologies and shapes.

Have you ever thought about disappearing?

I have. I always wanted to be a magician. Houdini was my hero when I was younger. It would have been cool to vanish. This brings me to Paul Thek, who was so tragically lost to AIDS, while his 1967-installation Tomb, I recreated for the exhibition, was lost for more complicated reasons. There is a moment when you could free yourself even from the death of yourself. To kill your ego is also to allow yourself to be born again. Disappearing need not be finite. Learning how to disappear regularly is probably good for the soul. It checks the ego and creates mini deaths, spaces for change. That change is urgent and necessary. I look for those sites in my work and life, so that when I am there, I am as present as I can possibly be.

What are you currently working on?

I’m developing a big project about Roy Lichtenstein: the largest retrospective he has had to date in New York City, and the first there in 33 years, in the city where he was born. I have co-curated it with Meg Onli, and it will open at the Whitney Museum in October. It has been a challenge and a joy to think through someone so ubiquitous, whose images are present in everything, in every mode of making, in every object one might find. I’m certain that if you went outside today, you could find some reference to Lichtenstein. That is curious, both a gift and a curse for the artist. I’m inside that question now, remaking some of his murals from the 1960s and 1970s, and working on a new film related to him.

Alex Da Corte, The Conversation Pit, 2023
Flock, foam, velvet, steel, SLA-printed plastic, concrete, plywood, laser-cut mirrored plexiglass, wire-core urethane rubber plant, carpet
Dimensions variable
Installation view, THE DÆMON, Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, September 23 – November 4, 2023
© Alex Da Corte, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

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header image credit:
Alex Da Corte, ROY G BIV (still), 2022, Video (color, sound), 60 minutes, © Alex Da Corte, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

about the author:
Nicolas Vamvouklis is an Athens-based curator and writer whose work spans contemporary art and performance. His texts have appeared in publications including Sternberg Press, Flash Art, Afterall Journal, Observer and tanz.
— follow via @vamvouklisn

Packed for Pleasure and the Secret Routes of Desire

Packed for Pleasure: A history of desire in hiding

written LE MILE

In 1928, Jean Cocteau’s Le Livre blanc was published anonymously in Paris, its account of homosexual desire circulating without the author’s name. Nearly three decades later, the Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen made his American debut in Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial, under the name Tom of Finland. Both publications appeared in Packed for Pleasure, the exhibition presented by the Tom of Finland Foundation at Galerie Regard in Paris from 1 to 13 October. Their presence established a history in which publishing a sexual image could mean disguising its author, its audience or its purpose.

Tom of Finland Foundation presents Packed for Pleasure, supported by Pornhub, Galerie Regard, Paris, France. Artworks: (left) Man Ray, (right) Drake Carr.
Photography © Maria Rubtsova/BFA

Curated by Brooke Wise and co-produced by Cocteau historian Chloë Cassens, with support from Pornhub, the exhibition brought together work by figures including Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, alongside contemporary artists such as Drake Carr, Emma Stern, Violet Chachki and Nicolo Gentile. Its most revealing material, however, lay in the methods people had devised to make erotic culture accessible under threat of prosecution or social punishment.

Physique Pictorial was a particularly ingenious example. Bob Mizer’s magazine presented men’s bodies through the respectable vocabulary of athletics and bodybuilding, making room for a readership that recognised an additional meaning in the images. In its spring 1957 issue, Mizer published Laaksonen’s drawings and supplied the name by which the artist would become known. Le Livre blanc tells a different story of concealment. Cocteau continued to leave his name off the book even after contributing illustrations to later editions.

At Regard, CRT monitors, physique magazines, books and printed ephemera filled a darkened room modelled on an adult video store. Elsewhere, moving-image works were viewed through a glory-hole structure. Recreating these settings inside a publicly advertised exhibition raised a curatorial difficulty. The furniture and viewing arrangements could be reproduced; the consequences of being seen using them were harder to convey. A back room entered through a gallery invitation carries a different charge from one whose visitors have reasons to conceal their presence.

Leigh Ledare, Mom As Baby Jane, 2004, impression lambda, cadre bois, 154,9 cm x 121,9 cm

Pornhub had previously supported The Pleasure Principle at Maccarone in Los Angeles in 2019. Its backing of Packed for Pleasure came with an explicit contemporary argument. In the exhibition’s press material, Alex Kekesi, its VP of Brand and Community, linked the importance of erotic archives to age-verification laws and social-media deplatforming. The sponsorship placed those disputes beside the histories of Cocteau and Tom of Finland. That association offered Pornhub a useful cultural context for its position, while making its own interest in the exhibition clear. The company was helping present an archive through which it could also argue its case.

Nicolo Gentile’s Hold On Me began with Philadelphia’s 12th Street Gym and the older gay men who had frequented it. He took impressions of their hands and cast them in aluminium salvaged from the gym’s demolition. In the Cable Flyes works, the casts appear with knurled and chromed steel, cable mounts, expanded metal and magazine print. The choice of material ties each hand impression to the building those men remembered. As Gentile explained in V Magazine, “I wanted to take all that muscle, machinery, sweat, sex, and history and turn it toward something more intimate.”

Nicolo Gentile, Hold On Me II (Cable Flyes), 2023–2026. Cast and electroformed aluminum sourced from demolition site on knurled and chromed steel, cable mount, expanded metal sheet, offset magazine print on coated paper. 91.4 × 22.9 × 7.6 cm.

Nicolo Gentile, Hold On Me III (Cable Flyes), 2023–2026. Cast and electroformed aluminum sourced from demolition site on knurled and chromed steel, cable mount, expanded metal sheet, offset magazine print on coated paper. 91.4 × 22.9 × 7.6 cm.

Tom of Finland Foundation presents Packed for Pleasure, supported by Pornhub, Galerie Regard, Paris, France. Photography © Maria Rubtsova/BFA.

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credits
header image: Tom of Finland Foundation presents Packed for Pleasure at Galerie Regard, Paris, France.
Photography © Maria Rubtsova/BFA.

Frieze London 2026 — Nine Artists Beyond the Booth

Frieze London 2026 — From First Encounters to Second Impressions: Nine Discoveries

Post-Frieze: Beyond the Booth

written TAGEN DONOVAN

This year’s Frieze saw painting and sculpture take precedence over screen-based art, whose relative absence seemed curious at a time when so much of our cultural experience is mediated through technology. Rather than signalling a rejection of the digital, this renewed attention to materiality offered an unexpected counterpoint to its growing influence. Alongside the emphasis on the material, questions of identity and belonging emerged through the construction of personal worlds, while other practices turned their attention to the systems and conventions through which modern life is shaped. What rang true throughout was a revisiting of inherited histories, complemented by a reconsideration of the familiar objects that punctuate the everyday. In some sense, there was a unison in the ways artists looked beyond appearances to examine the assumptions that govern how we understand ourselves and the strange new world around us.

Some of the most compelling presentations came from independent galleries such as Rose Easton, Ginny on Frederick, Diez and Eastcontemporary; equally noteworthy was the younger generation of artists championed by more established galleries. The significance of these presentations extended beyond the commercial transactions of the fair; several works entered public collections, including Jessica Wilson's Sweet Nothing (2025-2026), acquired by Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and three works by Okiki Akinfe for Abbot Hall in Kendal through the inaugural Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund. Through acquisitions of this nature, the art fair reveals a purpose beyond its commercial machinery – one that opens avenues for wider public engagement and contributes to a shared cultural inheritance.

Rather than attempt a comprehensive account of Frieze London 2026, this slightly unorthodox index brings together nine artists and their representing galleries, whose practices suggest a cultural zeitgeist extending beyond the confines of the algorithm and into more tangible realms. Moving between what was presented at Frieze and the wider artistic worlds from which these works emerged, it becomes a collision of sorts between what was shown and what remained unseen – an invitation, perhaps, to look beyond the booth and pursue the discoveries that outlast the ephemerality of the fair.

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Rose Easton x  Amanda Moström

Amanda Moström, Rocky, 2026, Billy goat skin and chair 94 x 51 x 55 cm. Courtesy the artist and Rose Easton, London. Photographed by Jack Elliot Edwards.

header image credit
Bikini Bottom (2026) Amanda Moström, Bikini Bottom, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Rose Easton, London. Photography by Jack Elliot Edwards.

the artist

Amanda Moström (b. 1991) deals primarily with the erotic, albeit in an unconventional sense. Subtly humorous and rich in psychosexual undertones, her photographic work frequently appropriates familiar imagery and transforms it into something more provocative and intimate, complicating it with restaging or re-contextualisation. Her interest in expansive forms of sensuality extends to her bronzes, which upend the medium’s associations with solemnity and multiplicity by existing as one-off pieces that are deliberately imperfect, showing signs of human touch. Moström is inspired by the writing of the theorist Audre Lorde, who was quick to separate eroticism from the strictly pornographic or explicit, reclassifying it as “the personification of love in all its aspects.” Throughout her practice, Moström explores the conceptual and physical potential of softness, upending a cultural hierarchy that often prizes hardness and solidity instead, both materially and emotionally. The resulting works coax the viewer, made complicit by the act of looking, into confronting their own boundaries and preconceptions.

the artwork

Amanda Moström's Bikini Bottom (2026) presents an installation of familiar, second-hand objects clad in sections of billy goat hide — sourced from male goats considered redundant within dairy farming. Arranged on a low platform and reconfigured daily, the objects occupy a shifting stage that reflects the marketplace from which they were acquired. The installation explores the politics of care and the economics of exchange, questioning how value is produced through use and attention.

the gallery

Since its inception in 2021, Rose Easton has established a presence within London's contemporary art landscape, championing emerging artists and practices that might otherwise struggle to find institutional or commercial support. With an emphasis on artistic development beyond traditional educational pathways and funding structures, the gallery has cultivated a programme that fosters experimentation and unconventional approaches. Rose Easton's curatorial vision reflects an interest in artists who explore new forms of artistic expression, offering a space for practices that resist the conventions of the commercial gallery system.

Further reading: Elaine M.L. Tam's accompanying text on Bikini Bottom HERE.

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Diez Gallery x Jessica Wilson

Jessica Wilson, The Commute, 2025, Repurposed LED taxi top, custom software, CG animation, 8:37 65 x 136 x 70 cm (25 5/8×53 1/2×27 1/2 in), Diez Gallery.

the artist

Jessica Wilson (b. 1991, New York City) lives and works between Amsterdam and New York. Her work occupies a space where computer-generated animation and sculptural installation are treated as a sophisticated interrogation of the somatic and material effects of virtual systems, moving away from hyperreal spectacle toward an awkward, haptic sensitivity to human inexactitude. Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is deeply rooted in the belief that everyday infrastructure—from anthropomorphised electrical outlets to repurposed NYC taxi tops—can act as a surrogate for psychological states of neurosis and anxiety.

Wilson was a resident at the Rijksakademie (2023–2025) and has exhibited at Petrine, Paris (2026), and diez, Amsterdam (2024), among others. Her moving-image works have screened at the ICA, London (2025); IFFR, Rotterdam (2020); and the New Museum, New York (2020). An upcoming solo exhibition at SculptureCenter in New York opens in November 2027.

the artwork

Sweet Nothing (2025-2026) comprises 12 repurposed LED taxi tops, custom mapping software and CG animation presented on an infinite loop. In October 2026, the work was acquired by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht — marking Wilson's first work to enter a museum collection.

the gallery

Diez is an Amsterdam-based gallery with an international outlook, founded in 2022 by Diego Diez. With a background in fine arts, Diego first established several nonprofit initiatives, which became the starting point for a practice that now moves fluidly between experimental projects and the commercial art world. The gallery has become a place where many young artists present their first exhibitions, while also showing the work of figures from previous generations whose practices have deeply influenced them and their surroundings. This intergenerational dialogue defines the gallery’s identity, fostering a program that embraces both risk and sustainability. With its base in Amsterdam and projects that extend through pop-up spaces and international fairs, diez maintains a sensibility that is open and playful, yet grounded in everyday life, committed to creating meaningful encounters with contemporary art.

Jessica Wilson, Pretend I’m Dead, 2024, CGI animation, sound, 5:08, Ed 4 + 2AP, Diez Gallery.

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Ames Yavuz x Stanislava Pinchuk

the artist

Stanislava Pinchuk (b. 1988, Kharkiv, Ukraine) lives and works in Melbourne, Sarajevo and Barcelona. Pinchuk is an artist working between data-mapping and information-mining, conflict topographies, legacies of literature and the politics of translation. Pinchuk’s practice spans film, architecture, installation, performance, drawing, tattooing, painting and sculpture. Currently serving as an Official War Artist of Australia, Pinchuk has previously held career surveys of her work at Heide MoMA and FAC.

Recent exhibitions include the 17th Gjon Mili Bienniale at the National Gallery of Kosovo (curated by Valentine Umansky, Tate Modern) and a solo institutional exhibition at The Dallas Contemporary Museum of Art. Pinchuk is the director of the roaming, radical architectural design school The Anti/Monumental Laboratory, which is currently the opening faculty unit of the experimental Masters Degree in Critical Design at the Elisava University of Architecture & Engineering in Barcelona.

the gallery

Founded in Singapore in 2010, Ames Yavuz emerged from a vision to champion the transformative voices emerging from Asia’s contemporary art scene. The region’s artistic innovations and critical dialogues remained underrepresented on the global stage. Over fifteen years, the gallery has evolved into an internationally recognised platform representing over forty artists and estates. Their practices span continents and disciplines, from painting and sculpture to moving image, installation, and photography.

Central to the gallery’s programme is a commitment to long-term artist development and cross-cultural exchange. Rigorous curatorial practices form the foundation of all programming. Long-term collaborative relationships with artists are cultivated and sustained over many years, often spanning a decade or more. This generates intellectual rigor and meaningful dialogue around art’s role in society’s most pressing conversations. Through solo and group exhibitions, participation in leading international art fairs, and cross-cultural collaborations, the gallery remains committed to presenting work that challenges conventions.

Stanislava Pinchuk, The Wine Dark Sea (Set 4b), 2023. Marble, enamel. 70 × 140 × 140 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ames Yavuz. Photographed by Jessica Maurer.

the artwork

The Wine Dark Sea

The Wine Dark Sea (2021) speaks to the Odyssey’s primary question of hospitality – as how we treat our visitors, and what it says about us, rather than our guests. While Homer’s Odyssey is embraced as the first ‘migrant novel’ and key foundation of global literature and democracy – we are perhaps unwilling to do so for the near-identical narratives of exile on our own doorstep. Odysseus’ story, like those illegally detained for 9+ years in Australia’s off-shore migrant detention centres, is one of seemingly permanent exile – moving from island to island, with an unknown prospect of reaching home.

The texts of both the leaked condition reports of illegal off-shore detention and the great epic of oral poetry were written and recited by many authors and contributors, and covering many subjects – eventually falling to credit under one umbrella, be it Homer or Transfield. The Wine Dark Sea interrogates such fragmentation of narrative into its installation specifications, referencing Homer’s tomb on the island of Ios, Greece. Composed of modular and stackable rocks, it is forever swapped and re-arranged into vernacular forms by visitors through millennia, without a final form – akin to the process of story-telling itself.

Similarly, The Wine Dark Sea is not touched by the artist, and invites a guest kindred to the world of the artwork to arrange and interpret the sculptures and narratives for each showing.

Stanislava Pinchuk, The Wine Dark Sea, installation view, AGSA Biennial: Free/State, 2022. Curator and arrangement: Sebastian Goldspink. Collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Photographed by Saul Steed.

Installation image of Each Apparition Searches for an eye, 2025 at Frieze London, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Ames Yavuz. Photographed by Deniz Guzel.

the artwork

Each Apparition Searches for an Eye

Each Apparition Searches for an Eye (2025) presents a series of 100 photo-portraits of soldiers from the artist’s deployment into combat training for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Instructed to obscure all identifying features to elude enemy facial-recognition software, the resultant erasures into her film negatives recall 19th-century ‘spirit photography’: whereby daguerreotypists experimented with emergent long-exposure technology to capture ghosts onto silver plates.
Critically, the daguerreotype's unprecedented visual fidelity also produced the first photo-portraits of soldiers: a road littered with cannon-balls in Sevastopol, Ukraine taken during The Crimean War in 1855. This erasure onto film negatives to allow a public record, means committing facial expressions and identity markers solely to the private memory of the artist: which must be further made in anticipation of how region-based convolutional neural networks may evolve in sophistication in the near-future. In this gesture, it is to both simultaneously attempt to bypass and freely catapult the frames into the murky, perma-speculative realm of 21st Century ‘operational images’.

The following photo-sculptural installation interrogates how the fundamental phenomenologies of a photograph remain, its components simply re-arranged in a different order; the unseen eye behind a lens, the passport-size portrait untouchable under glass, the information veiled behind a curtain, the hardware plate, the migration of the captured image – be it through a portable frame or a fibre-optic cable, and the process of sensitisation, by which the more exposure time to a subject’s face still means a greater clarity. Curiously, the same facial recognition technology is now being used to identify previously unnamed sitters of these earliest 19th Century soldier portraits, matching facial structures against wider data-sets of historical photographs and archives.

Each Apparition Searches for an Eye proposes that the central question of our biotechnological relationship may not be simply the idea of a sentient ‘ghost in the machine’, but rather of the necessity to become a ‘ghost to the machine’: a phenomenon already embodied by recent frontline legends such as the Ghost of Kyiv. An elusive apparition for another ghost; one which first searches for an eye to be seen, an eye to be localised, classified, mapped to a wider face, and verified.

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G Gallery and Sargent’s Daughters x Rachel Youn

Rachel Youn, Endure, 2023. Spring horse frame, shiatsu neck massager, artificial orchids, polyurethane swivel casters, stainless steel bird spikes. 88,9 × 63,5 × 101,6 cm.

the artist

Rachel Youn (b. 1994, Abington, Pennsylvania) is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice centres on kinetic sculpture. Salvaging motors from exercise equipment, massagers and baby swings, Youn animates artificial plants and other everyday materials, coaxing a strange tenderness and wit from the mechanical. Their interest lies in the artificial sense of human touch machines can evoke, questioning how movement might lend otherwise inanimate objects a sense of agency.

Youn received their BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and MFA from the Yale School of Art. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including solo presentations at Sargent's Daughters in New York and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. At Frieze London 2026, Sargent's Daughters × G Gallery presented Youn's work in cross-pollination, alongside Choi Yoonhee and Yaron Michael Hakim.

the artwork

At Frieze London 2026, Youn presented a series of artificial plants that find themselves at the mercy of repurposed massage devices, whose mechanisms, originally intended to imitate human touch, lend their botanical counterparts an awkward semblance of life. There is something both comical and faintly pitiful about these involuntary movements; in their mechanical attempts at intimacy, the sculptures seem to acquire a vulnerability ordinarily reserved for living things.

the gallery

Sargent’s Daughters was founded in 2014 in New York's Lower East Side. The gallery takes its name from the painter John Singer Sargent, who was an innovator working in a traditional medium. Accordingly, the gallery’s interest is in artists whose work combines the same qualities of tradition and the cutting edge. In addition to exhibitions by represented gallery artists, Sargent’s Daughters creates collaborations as a platform for exploring new conversations within a wider context and presents a strong female program, often highlighting overlooked artists working outside the established gallery world. The gallery has a history of granting young artists their first exhibition opportunities. Sargent’s Daughters was the first to exhibit Jordan Casteel, Cy Gavin and Wendy Red Star in their debut NY solo shows, as well as placing works in major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

WATCH: Rachel Youn's kinetic sculptures in motion, via Design Boom.

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Carlos/Ishikawa x Issy Wood

Issy Wood, Furni, installation view, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, 2023. © Issy Wood, 2023. Courtesy of the artist, Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photography by Damian Griffiths.

the artist

Issy Wood (b. 1993, Durham, North Carolina) is a British-American painter and musician who describes herself as a ‘medieval millennial’. Working between the conventions of traditional painting and the visual excesses of the twenty-twenties, Wood draws upon an eclectic archive of imagery from obscure corners of the internet. Her tightly cropped compositions frequently depict everyday objects and fragments of the human body, rendered with a peculiar intimacy that belies their mundane origins. Working in oil on surfaces ranging from linen to her characteristic velvet, Wood's use of short, dabbed brushstrokes creates a hazy realism in which familiar objects take on an unsettling psychological charge. Beneath their seductive surfaces lies a preoccupation with desire, and its uneasy entanglement with personal identity and consumer culture.

Wood studied at Goldsmiths and the Royal Academy Schools in London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo presentations at Goldsmiths CCA, Lafayette Anticipations and Kistefos. In October 2026, the National Portrait Gallery inaugurated its new Artist Focus programme with Issy Wood: Self-Portraits, bringing together eleven paintings from a series begun in 2020.

the artwork

Wood's ongoing series of self-portraits, begun in 2020, occupies a more intimate corner of her practice. Initially conceived, in part, as an alternative to conventional press photography, the paintings offer the artist a means of negotiating her own visibility. Through tightly cropped compositions, face masks and gestures of concealment, Wood complicates the relationship between self-representation and exposure; the painted image offers a likeness while retaining something of the artist's privacy.

the gallery

Founded in London’s East End in 2011, Carlos/Ishikawa’s program focuses strongly on artists with wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary and experimental practices. The artists represented by the gallery work with performance, sound, internet, dance, film, installation and text, as well as painting and sculpture. The program exhibits international artists, offering many artists their first solo shows in London.

Carlos Ishikawa, Frieze London 2026. Image by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze.

Installation view, Fish, Fish, Duck, Issy Wood, 2026, Kistefos Museum. Photo: Tor S. Ulstein/Kunstdok. © Issy Wood.

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EastContemporary x Anastasia Sosunova

Anastasia Sosunova ‘Public Feelings’, 2025, scrap metal (fragments of cars), etched zinc, polystyrene, water from Villa Unity and the lake from the night of 18 January, found objects. Photographed by Jonas Balsevičius.

the artist

Anastasia Sosunova (b. 1993) is a visual artist working across video, installation, sculpture, and printmaking. Her practice sits at the fault line between DIY, underground culture and hegemonic systems, tracing how magical thinking persists within the mechanics of community mobilisation. Sosunova’s moving-image works operate as case studies, exploring how authority and belief shape individual and collective behaviour today: from vernacular wood sculpture to pseudo-medicine to corporate religion. Rooted in a printmaking background, she often reads fan bases, cults and movements using print media theory as a framework, exposing the machinery of political myth-making and the contours of contemporary folklore.

Sosunova’s works have been exhibited at major biennials, including Gwangju, Kaunas and Lyon, as well as at leading art institutions across Europe and beyond.

the artwork

Preppers (2026), an installation combining film and sculpture, draws on the artist’s long-term research into Kesko Senukai, the largest DIY retail chain in the Baltics. Combining devotional aesthetics and apocalyptic symbolism, the work proposes DIY as both a means of survival and a mythology of contemporary capitalism.

the gallery

Eastcontemporary is dedicated to the research, development and support of international artists through exhibitions, public programmes and partnerships. Founded in Milan in 2020 as a non-profit project space, it evolved into a contemporary art gallery in 2021, with a particular focus on providing a global perspective on the Central and Eastern European art scene, alongside regions historically and culturally influenced by the former Soviet Union, including Southeastern Europe and Central Asia.

The gallery aims to increase the international visibility of artists from these regions while creating connections between often distant artistic communities. Its public programme extends beyond exhibitions, encompassing talks, performances, music and publishing-related events. Recent examples include a discussion around Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West, a stand-up performance by Mila Panic, a DJ set by Stach Szumski and a performative talk by Slavs and Tatars at Spazio Maiocchi in collaboration with SPRINT.

Anastasia Sosunova, DIY, 2023. Installation view at Editorial gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania. Photography: Editorial. Courtesy of the artist and Editorial, Vilnius.

Anastasia Sosunova, Preppers (2026). Installation view at Frieze London 2026, presented by eastcontemporary.
Photographed by Tagen Donovan, 2026.

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Ginny on Frederick x Okiki Akinfe

Installation view, Okiki Akinfe, Where the Wild Things Are at Ginny on Frederick. Courtesy of the Artist and Ginny on Frederick. Photographed by Stephen James.

Okiki Akinfe, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Ginny on Frederick. Photographed by Corey Bartle-Sanderson.

the artist

Okikioluwa Akinfe (b. 1999) is a Nigerian-British artist based in London whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting and drawing. Central to her practice is the construction of an alternative archive that challenges conventional representations of Black identity. Encompassing ‘The Black lens’, a subversive tool of her own creation, Akinfe interrogates stereotypes by exposing their absurdity, shifting the perspective from the white gaze towards a Black gaze.

Akinfe graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022 before completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2023. She has received the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award and the Freelands Painting Prize. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Ginny on Frederick in London, and has entered public collections, including Abbot Hall in Kendal.

the artwork

Okiki Akinfe’s distinctive painterly style draws on the traditions of underpainting. By leaving sections of the canvas exposed and retaining the faint grids and measurements used to build an image, Akinfe foregrounds painting as a process of looking, thinking and making, rather than concealing its labour behind a finished surface. Fame is a Gun (2026) is a self-portrait depicting the artist sitting backwards on a chair. One arm stretches out in front of her, casting a shadow across her face, while her hand forms the shape of a gun. The gesture occupies an ambiguous space between playfulness and self-fashioning, complicating the relationship between how one chooses to be seen and how one is perceived. The title introduces a further tension, suggesting that fame can be both a form of agency and something less easily controlled.

At Frieze London 2026, the inaugural Dasha Shenkman Focus Fund, facilitated by the Contemporary Art Society, supported the acquisition of three works by Akinfe for the collection of Abbot Hall in Kendal: a painting, a lightbox work and a preparatory drawing. Established to acquire works from the fair’s Focus section for UK public collections, the fund recognises emerging artists at a critical moment in their practice.

the gallery

Founded by Freddie Powell in 2020, Ginny on Frederick is a London gallery whose beginnings were decidedly unconventional, taking its name from Powell's mother and its original premises on Frederick Terrace in Hackney. Following the closure of its first space during the pandemic, Ginny on Frederick reopened in 2021 in a former sandwich shop near Smithfield Market, before relocating to larger premises on Charterhouse Street in 2023.

With a programme shaped by friendships and close artistic relationships, Powell approaches the gallery as much through facilitation as conventional art dealing. Its modest physical dimensions have become integral to its identity, encouraging artists to develop exhibitions in direct response to the space. Despite its relatively short history, the gallery's programme has attracted recognition at Frieze London, including the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize in 2023 and the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize in 2025.

Read LE MILE’s Tiny Galleries Feature with Ginny on Frederick, London HERE.

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Victoria Miro x Kudzanai-Violet Hwami 

Installation view, Booth D12, Frieze London 2026.
Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro.

the artist

Born in Gutu, Zimbabwe, in 1993, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami currently lives and works in London. Hwami’s work reveals a deeply personal vision of Southern African life. Drawing on experiences of geographical dislocation and displacement, her paintings combine visual fragments sourced from collections of photographs, collapsing past and present. Many of Hwami’s paintings feature self-portraits and images of her immediate and extended family. Powerful nudes are another point of departure, raising questions about the black body and its representation, as well as sexuality, gender and spirituality. Her influences include music, such as Zim Heavy and Afrobeats, and literature, including the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Carl Jung. Hwami’s process involves experimenting with photography and digitally collaged images to create large works on paper or canvas, combining intensely pigmented oil paint with techniques such as silkscreen, pastel and charcoal.

In 2016, the same year she graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Hwami was awarded the Clyde & Co. Award and the Young Achiever of the Year Award at the Zimbabwean International Women’s Awards, as well as being shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries. In 2019, Hwami presented work at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the Zimbabwe Pavilion, the youngest artist to participate in the Biennale.

At Frieze London 2026, Victoria Miro presented recent paintings and a sculpture by Hwami in a special installation conceived by the artist for booth D12. The presentation coincided with her inclusion in British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers, which began its national tour in October.

the artwork

Victoria Miro's presentation at Frieze London 2026 brought together four paintings by Kudzanai-Violet Hwami — Sorbus Hymn II (2025), Animus (2025), Scapegoat (2025) and Witness (2025) — alongside the sculpture Containing Multitudes (2025). The sculpture's title draws on the words of American poet Walt Whitman, whose declaration, ‘I contain multitudes’, has long resonated with Hwami's practice.

the gallery

Victoria Miro is celebrated for its commitment to artists whose visionary and singular practices shape the landscape of contemporary art. The gallery presents a programme that reimagines how art is made, accessed and experienced through exhibitions in its London and Venice spaces and on LIVE / ARCHIVE, as well as through international art fairs, museum collaborations, commissions and residencies in the Venice studio.

By advancing the use of new technologies, Victoria Miro is at the forefront of presenting art beyond gallery walls, enabling collectors, curators and the public to connect with art anytime and anywhere in the world, while significantly reducing carbon emissions. The gallery shapes artistic inquiry by bringing together acclaimed writers, critics and thinkers to collaborate with artists on exhibitions, commissions, new writing and conversations that open perspectives on culture.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, A Making of Ghosts, installation view, Victoria Miro, London, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, A Making of Ghosts, installation view, Victoria Miro, London, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro.

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Public x Steph Huang

Steph Huang, Lili Deli, installation view, presented by Public, Focus section, Frieze London 2026.

the artist

Steph Huang (b. 1990, Taiwan) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes of labour, value and commerce through the cultural biographies of everyday objects and spaces. Working across sculpture, installation, film and sound, she transforms mundane materials into minimalist yet poetically resonant installations. Her work uncovers the historical and transcultural narratives embedded within consumer culture while critically examining its environmental and human costs.

the artwork

For Frieze London 2026, Public presented Lili Deli, a solo presentation of new works by Steph Huang investigating the systems of mass production and commerce that underpin the global food industry, alongside its transcultural and historical dimensions and profound impact on the natural environment. Comprising two hand-built bar carts, a freestanding privacy screen and a series of found and sculpted objects arranged on custom shelving, the installation takes the form of a critical audit of our consumption habits; an intervention that asks viewers to reconsider the true cost of our global pantry.

the gallery

Public is a London-based contemporary art gallery dedicated to supporting international emerging artists and promoting cross-cultural exchange. Established in 2020, the gallery presents a diverse curatorial programme that encourages ambitious projects, intergenerational dialogues, and non-traditional modes of seeing and thinking. In 2025, Public expanded its brutalist East London space within the Middlesex Street Estate, incorporating the neighbouring unit to create a second multi-story exhibition space and a combined total of five levels across both sites. The gallery is run by co-directors Alex Harrison, Harry Dougall, and Nicole Estilo Kaiser.

Steph Huang Golden Egg's Matinee, 2026, Hand-blown glass, powder-coated mild steel, copper, bronze, brass, string, 126 x 82 x 82 cm. Frieze London. Public, London, 2026.

Steph Huang High Seas, 2026, Hand-blown glass, mild steel, bronze, paint, 147 x 90 x 68 cm. Frieze London. Public, London, 2026.

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header image credit
Bikini Bottom (2026) Amanda Moström, Bikini Bottom, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Rose Easton, London. Photography by Jack Elliot Edwards.

Corentin Fila on The White Lotus, Memory and Acting

perspectives

Finally, Corentin Fila Is Just Acting

written + interview ALBAN E. SMAJLI

“Finally I’m just acting.” Corentin Fila remembers thinking it five minutes into his first day on The White Lotus, after months of hearing everyone else talk about the project before he had even started filming it. Fila came to the profession without much of a plan. At 24, after seeing a Peter Brook production with South African actors at the Bouffes du Nord, he enrolled at Cours Florent. Two years later, he was making his first film with André Téchiné. Before that came boxing, an injury, three years of economics he readily admits left him with very little knowledge of economics, and a long list of jobs including construction and bartending.

Corentin wears a full look by GUCCI, a jacket by LA MASKARADE and a ring by TANT D’AVENIR

Corentin wears a jacket by LA MASKARADE

Fila prepares differently for every role, sometimes doing extensive research and sometimes deliberately leaving room for surprise. For The White Lotus, he met people who reminded him of his character, occasionally inviting friends of friends for coffee and observing their behaviour, their values and mood. He calls it “stealing” from them. Music is another tool: he can spend hours building playlists and using them to think through a character before filming begins.

Directors have repeatedly seen melancholy in Fila, even though his friends would not necessarily describe him that way. He recognises it too, tracing some of it back to childhood, and notes with some amusement that he has also been cast as “the object of desire” more than once. That overlap between performance and lived experience also shapes the way Fila thinks about DÉJÀ VU, with a breakup scene sometimes drawing on something he has actually lived and the feeling still being there hours later, when he goes to bed and thinks, “Wow, it feels like I’ve already lived this moment in my life.”

Corentin wears a coat and blazer by OTTOLINGER

Alban E. Smajli
You're currently filming The White Lotus. Without revealing too much, has there been a moment during production when you suddenly understood the scale of what you had stepped into?

Corentin Fila
I would say it started before production, months before I began to shoot it. It was everywhere because it’s such a big project. Every day, someone was talking to me about The White Lotus. And it was insane. It was the first time in my life that I had to talk about a project every day, months before filming. It was really, I would say, difficult to prepare for this role with this amount of pressure beforehand. And finally, after maybe five minutes on set on my first day, I thought, “Wow, finally I’m just acting, and it’s something I can do.” And now I’m part of this adventure. Before, it was just something really far from me that everyone was talking to me about. And now I’m really part of it.

When acting suddenly became a serious possibility for you, did it take longer to find the craft or to recognise yourself in it?

No, honestly, it didn’t. I think I’ve been really lucky because it was really quick and really natural for me. I was 24 when I saw a theatre play with Black actors from South Africa. It was a play by Peter Brook at the Bouffes du Nord. Before watching this play, becoming an actor was not in my mind. I saw this play, and then I decided to go to Cours Florent. And two years later, I was filming my first movie with André Téchiné. So it was very, very quick, I would say.

Before acting, you studied economics and worked a string of different jobs. What stayed with you from that period?

I studied economics, but it was kind of by mistake. I was in sports studies. I was really good at boxing and I wanted to become a coach or something of that kind. Then I got injured during my first year. And so that’s when I thought of doing something else at the same university. There was a possibility to switch to economics, and that’s how I got into it. But I’m really bad at economics and I have a degree. I did three years of it, but I was working while I was studying, doing small jobs, every kind of job. So I would say I know almost nothing about economics.

But the fact that I worked all those jobs — in construction, as a barman, and many, many different ones — was definitely a huge school of life, I would say.

Looking back at your first roles, do you notice recurring themes or character types that continue to find their way back to you?

Yes, I would say I’ve played many melancholic characters. And it’s funny because my friends and people don’t really know me for that. But I would say I have a big melancholic side to me since childhood. And it’s funny that I play so many melancholic characters because in my life it’s like a little secret, that I carry maybe some sadness from my childhood. And it looks like directors sometimes see it. So yeah, I would say melancholic characters. And I’ve also played “the object of desire” many times. I’ve had many sex scenes in my career.

Corentin wears a shirt by CELINE

Corentin wears a total look by CELINE

Has all the waiting that comes with acting changed your relationship to patience?

I think it’s a job where you wait a lot, and I love it. I think you learn to live in the moment. I think there are two ways to be in this job. When you wait, many actors become nervous. They become really frustrated. And others take that time to cultivate some wisdom and enjoy the present moment.

hat do you usually do while you wait?

I’m just in my head. I’m watching the set, speaking to the team. I’m just in the moment.

Did your father’s work in film ever feel connected to your own path once you became an actor?

It’s very weird because I’m not close to my father as an adult. I grew up with him as a kid, but as an adult, I’m not. We’re not close. We don’t see each other. And I never had the feeling that I was living like my dad. But definitely, in a way, I am. And I have lots of admiration for him, and the artistic side of me, in my blood, comes from him. The first time I did a TV interview, my sister sent me a video of him doing one too, and we were moving the same way. Our faces looked the same. And I was like, “What the fuck? It’s so weird.” I’m definitely proud to be his son.

When you first read a script, what usually makes you want to spend months living with a character?

Usually, it’s not only the character. I think I need to be moved by the story and to think, “I want this story to exist and to be a part of it because I’m moved by it.” Even in a spiritual way, I want it to exist and to be part of it. And if you do it, it’s going to exist for the world to experience it.

Corentin wears trousers and a jacket by 3.PARADIS, a tank top by GMBH, shoes by ROMBAUT, a necklace and ring by D’HEYGERE and glasses by IC! BERLIN

Corentin wears a total look by DIOR

Corentin wears a total look by DAVID KOMA, shoes by PRADA and a ring by D’HEYGERE

And how do you prepare for one?

It depends on the project. I have so many different ways. Sometimes I don’t do a lot of preparation because I feel like I just want to be surprised on set. Sometimes it’s a really long preparation. I do research. I love to meet people and be inspired by them. I work a lot with music too. For hours and hours, I build playlists and I just like to dream while listening to them. Sometimes I read books, watch movies — many different ways.

How did you prepare for your character in The White Lotus without giving anything away?

It’s hard not to spoil anything, but I can say I met with many people. People who made me think about the character through the way they live their lives. And I was also really trying to rely on what I carry within me and where the character and I meet. Sometimes I would ask friends of friends to have coffee with me, without really explaining why. Other times I would tell them. I was trying to steal things from them — their mood, the way they are, their values — that I could see were similar to the character’s. And I thought to myself, “Wow, I want to be like that. I want to act like them.”

What's the worst advice young actors constantly receive?

It’s a good question. I think the worst advice is to pretend like there is one particular way to do this job. Like in life, there are so many different paths you can take, so many different ways to get there. There isn’t one way to do this job. It really depends on your personality, on who you are. So I think the wrong advice would be to say that it has to be done in one way.

Has a scene ever felt like DÉJÀ VU because it brought you back to something you had already lived?

I would say all the time because, as actors, we play with our emotions, and all those emotions are based on things we’ve lived through, experiences we’ve had in life. For example, if you’re acting in a scene where you’re breaking up with your wife or girlfriend, we all know that feeling, you know? And sometimes you go back to bed after set and you’re really sad. I would say on every project you have this kind of moment where you think, “Wow, it feels like I’ve already lived this moment in my life.”

watch the film
/ with Corentin Fila for LE MILE Digital by Artem Sadovnikov

Corentin wears a total look by JUUN.J

Corentin wears a total look by BURBERRY and shoes by GUCCI

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talent   CORENTIN FILA
photography   BOYAN LI
creative direction   BOYAN LI
styling   CHIARA BOTTIN
hair   PIERRE GINSBURG
make up artist   JINDIAN YANG using ARMANI BEAUTY
first photography assistant   THOMAS LAPORTE
second photography assistant   HAN ZIXU
styling assistant   JULIETTE TANGUY
video   ARTEM SADOVNIKOV
production   MARIA VICTORIA RUSSO
location   HOTEL LES BAINS PARIS
special thanks to   STUDIO LA BRIQUE ROUGE

copyright LE MILE Magazine / Boyan Li

Franki Domino — The Art of Imagined Memories

perspectives

An Evening That Never Was With Franki Domino

interview + written AMANDA MORTENSON

Franki Domino emerged when Julien Pacaud’s long-established collage practice began opening into a much wider field of image-making. After more than two decades of working with found photographs and digital composition, generative AI introduced a new rhythm, a new volume of possibilities and a freedom that no longer fit comfortably within the visual language people already associated with his name. Franki Domino became the space in which those experiments could develop without having to explain themselves too early, allowing styles, atmospheres and references to shift until something coherent began to appear.

Evening Avant grew from that process of looking, selecting and recognising. The series was never planned around a fixed narrative, yet its images gradually began to share the same light, the same restraint and the same uncertain sense of time. Roads, cars, buildings and clothes carry traces of the twentieth century, though no single decade fully contains them. Evening settles over each scene without ever becoming night, leaving the characters suspended in moments that feel incomplete. Some are waiting, some are watching, some seem to have arrived too early or remained too long, and the spaces around them hold the quiet tension of a story that has not yet declared itself.

That atmosphere is closely tied to the way Domino understands visual memory, he describes his influences as a kind of magma made from films, books, music, photographs, conversations and everything else absorbed over time. These references return without preserving their original form, passing through instinct until they become part of a world that feels familiar without offering a clear point of recognition. The same is true of the solitude that runs through the series. It was never introduced as a subject, yet it appears repeatedly in the distance between figures, in the architecture around them and in the silence that seems to continue beyond the edge of the frame.

Generative AI gives Domino access to an enormous field of images, though the work begins through his decisions about what deserves to remain. Images may appear quickly, but the world of Evening Avant is built through the slower act of choosing which possibilities belong together. What finally emerges feels neither retrieved from a specific past nor projected toward a defined future. It exists in a parallel time of its own, close enough to memory to feel known and distant enough to resist explanation.


Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Amanda Mortenson
Who is Franki Domino to Julien Pacaud?

Franki Domino
Franki Domino was born for practical rather than conceptual reasons. I’ve worked as an illustrator and collage artist for more than twenty years, and people know me through a very specific visual language. When AI entered my practice, I suddenly found myself exploring many different aesthetics. My agent suggested creating a separate identity so there would be no confusion between my long-established collage work and these new experiments. Franki Domino isn’t another person. It’s simply the name under which I can freely explore everything AI makes possible.

Once Franki Domino found that freedom, how did Evening Avant begin to take shape?

There wasn’t a plan. That’s true of almost everything I make. I rarely begin with a fully formed concept. I let the work reveal itself as I go. With AI, generating images is easy. Choosing between them is where the work really begins. Evening wasn’t an idea I started with. It gradually emerged through that process of selection. More than the evening itself, I was drawn to an in-between state, a moment that’s difficult to define, where daylight hasn’t completely disappeared. I’m always trying to create places that remain slightly elusive.

Does the uncertainty of Evening Avant extend to time itself, and do you see the series as belonging to the past, the present or the future?

I’ve never been interested in placing my images within one clearly defined period. I’m naturally attracted to twentieth-century imagery, especially from the 1920s through to the 1980s. Those references have always been part of my visual vocabulary. But I’m not interested in recreating a particular decade. I prefer images that seem to exist outside historical certainty. I sometimes describe them as “perpendicular dreams” — parallel realities that briefly intersect with our own. I like worlds where you can’t quite say where they are or when they exist. That ambiguity is essential to me.

If Evening Avant doesn't belong to one particular time, why can an image of something that never happened still feel like a memory?

I’m not sure “memory” is the right word. Every viewer brings something different to an image, which is why I’m always reluctant to explain my work too much. I don’t want to tell people what they should see or feel. What interests me is whether an image can awaken something that already exists inside us. Sometimes that’s a memory. Sometimes it’s simply an emotion or an intuition we’ve never been able to put into words. For me, what matters isn’t whether an image is true or fictional. What matters is what it sets in motion.

What are your characters waiting for?

That’s exactly the kind of question I prefer to leave unanswered. I don’t believe there’s a single explanation, and I wouldn’t want to impose one if there were. If I answered today, it would only reflect how I feel today. Tomorrow, my answer might be different. I think mystery is part of the artwork itself. Once the image exists, it also belongs to the viewer, and I’m happy if someone sees something completely different from what I see.

Many of those characters seem to exist in their own worlds. What role does solitude play in Evening Avant?

Looking back, I realise solitude has always been present in my work, long before AI. It wasn’t a conscious decision while making this series. I never said to myself, “I’m going to make images about loneliness.” Those things emerge on their own. That’s true of many recurring themes in my work. They return because they’re part of me, not because I’ve planned them.

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Does that sense of solitude also shape the ambiguity in your images?

I’m not even sure I would call it unease. Some viewers may experience it that way, but that’s their reading, not my intention. What attracts me is uncertainty. Images become more interesting when they resist clear definition and leave room for doubt. I don’t consciously try to create discomfort. Through the process of choosing images, I’m simply drawn to those that contain a certain strangeness or ambiguity.

You have described your inspiration as a “magma” made from everything you have seen, read, heard and experienced. Which parts of that mental archive surfaced most clearly while creating Evening Avant?

I think that’s true of artistic creation in general. Every artist carries a mental archive made up of films, books, music, photographs, conversations and everything else they’ve absorbed throughout their life. Those references don’t remain separate. They melt together and eventually come back out in a form that’s unique to each person. In some ways, I think AI works similarly. It isn’t so different from the way artists have always worked, absorbing influences, transforming them and combining them into something personal. For Evening Avant, there wasn’t one dominant reference. What gradually emerged was a shared atmosphere, a certain light, a palette and a rhythm that simply felt right.

How does AI become part of that creative process?

For me, AI isn’t interesting because it can produce images quickly. It’s interesting because it opens an extraordinary number of possible directions. It allows me to explore visual territories that I couldn’t easily reach before. But that freedom also makes artistic judgement more important than ever. Working with AI is largely a process of selection. In a way, it turns the artist into an art director. Marcel Duchamp famously suggested that art is also a matter of choice, and I think that’s especially true here. AI constantly offers possibilities. The artwork is defined by the paths you choose to follow, and even more by the countless ones you decide to abandon.

Does the machine help you recover images that already existed somewhere in your imagination, or does it give you memories you never had?

I don’t think AI gives me memories I never had. What it can do is help me reach certain unconscious or intuitive places more quickly. Because it allows such a wide exploration of possibilities, it sometimes reveals something that was already there but hadn’t yet taken shape. It doesn’t invent those inner images. It simply makes them easier to discover.

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

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all art works (incl. header) courtesy Franki Domino

Audrey Nuna on KPop Demon Hunters

perspectives

A Little Birdie With Audrey Nuna

written + interview HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

In hindsight, Courage the Cowardly Dog is such a funny cartoon for my dad to be watching. I think it’s just a fascination with humanness. There was a period when I felt disconnected from that, and it showed. My second album is an exploration of trying to remember who I am.

Audrey wears a coat by COMME DES GARÇONS and shoes by COMME DES GARÇONS x JOHN FLUEVOG

Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I felt ostracized for the way that I looked. Seeing everybody hop on Korean culture was redemptive for my inner child, like, ha. Kimbap is smelly, but it’s fire.

There are a lot of people who don’t believe in you, and being able to give them a wink feels good. I was proud of myself and everyone in KPop Demon Hunters who’s had to navigate an industry that didn’t really know where to place them. The film taught me how music can be a form of service. I want to be a better storyteller so that when someone hears my songs, it’s not about me, but it’s about them.

I always thought success was a huge crowd singing back your lyrics. But it should also be measured by how truthfully those words connect with people. I don’t want to have a massive career if I don’t mean it.

The most amazing things in life are the most ordinary things, like the joy of playing hwatu or Go-Stop. With the Thom Browne look for the Grammys, some of the fabric was muslin, which I saw so much of as a kid in my family’s garment factory. They also left the stitching exposed to speak to this idea of loving your craft even if it’s not perfect. In fashion, it’s the details I find compelling.

Even for the Met Gala, I wore a piece by Robert Wun about stains of the past and making something beautiful out of your pain. It’s such a democratizing and neutralizing human experience. What really makes a person is what they decide to do with that pain. You can juice it, you can prune it, you can bake it, you can flash fry it, you can do anything with it.

“superHuman” is about wanting to feel everything and being able to express it. A lot of my best work comes from feeling free to be curious and ask questions rather than answer correctly.

Serendipity actually comes from seasons of winter. It takes patience and belief that those moments belong to all of us. I also trust in the process and, to a certain extent, the vibes. I used to hate that word when I moved to LA.

I’m carrying every version of me on my head. I think there’s power in the way hair continues to grow. In the Joseon era, it was seen as a source of strength, so you didn’t cut it. For me, it’s about my ancestors. Our hair is probably very similar.I think you have to hold onto parts of yourself, not to let them weigh you down, but to remember where you came from. My mom is hoarding my baby teeth in a box somewhere, I’m pretty sure.

Audrey wears a dress by QUINE LI and shoes by MAISON MARGIELA

Audrey wears a dress by QUINE LI and shoes by MAISON MARGIELA

Audrey wears a top by KIDSUPER, a skirt by CURIEL and shoes by TAOTTAO

Audrey wears a shirt and skirt by CURIEL and shoes by MAISON MARGIELA

Audrey wears a dress by QUINE LI

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talent   AUDREY NUNA
photography   STEFEN POMPÉE
styling   PACO LAMPECINADO
creative direction   PACO LAMPECINADO + AUDREY NUNA
hair   AKIHISA YAMAGUCHI
make up artist   MITCH YOSHIDA
assistant   VICTORIA GODELIVA
production   PACO LAMPECINADO + MUSICISMUSE
production assistant   HAL GOETZINGER
studio courtesy of   ANGELA KWON

copyright LE MILE Magazine / Stefen Pompée

Russell Young — Inside Marilyn 100

perspectives

Russell Young Knows Why Marilyn Still Won’t Die

interview + written JONATHAN BERGSTRÖM

British-American artist Russell Young, through his large-scale silk screen paintings, is best known for his explorations of the nature of fame and cultural mythology. After beginning his career photographing musicians including George Michael, The Smiths, and Bruce Springsteen, and later directing over 100 music videos during the height of MTV, Young has since developed a visual practice centered around the icons and images that define popular culture.

His latest series, MARILYN 100, celebrates the centennial of Marilyn Monroe through a yearlong program of exhibitions and new works created in collaboration with the Marilyn Monroe Estate and Authentic Brands Group. Given access to the Estate’s archives, Young revisits one of the most photographed figures in history through his signature hand-pulled (and often diamond-dusted) silk screens, exploring the person behind the myth and the lasting power of image that continues to remain relevant across generations.

In this new interview with LE MILE, Young discusses his lifelong fascination with Marilyn Monroe, the influence of Andy Warhol, his years photographing cultural icons, and how ideas of fame, memory, and personal history continue to shape his work.

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Russell Young
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Jonathan Bergström
MARILYN 100 marks the centennial of one of the most photographed and mythologized figures in modern history. How did you approach such an iconic figure through your own perspective?

Russell Young
What’s fascinating about Marilyn is that everyone already has their own relationship with her. I think Picasso and Warhol really understood the power of repetition. For a while, I moved away from that idea, but eventually I started to understand how repeating an image creates a different relationship between the artwork and the viewer. That was something I explored with Marilyn. I wasn’t trying to reinvent her. I was interested in finding the essence of what makes her image continue to resonate.

Marilyn has often existed somewhere between a real person and a collective dream. Who is she to you, and what does she symbolize in your work?

Marilyn has always been in my life. I discovered her when I was growing up in the north of England. The world around me then was very grey and tough. My father understood that I was artistic and introduced me to films, museums, and culture. Through that, I found Marilyn. She symbolized escapism to me. She represented something completely different from the environment I was growing up in. For me, because I never met her and never lived in the same period as her, she exists almost as a myth. But there was also a real person behind that mythology.

I think people forget how forward-thinking she was. She understood the industry she was in and she pushed back against it by starting her own production company. Marilyn represents both things to me: the dream and the reality. Beauty and glamour but also strength and independence. I think time creates icons, and Marilyn has become bigger than herself.

For MARILYN 100, you are given access to the Marilyn Monroe Estate archives. What was the experience of going through those materials like?

It was incredible. I thought that I'd seen almost every photograph of Marilyn, but suddenly I was discovering images I had never come across before. What fascinated me was the intimacy behind some of those photographs. I met photographer Sam Shaw’s granddaughter and we talked about his images of Marilyn in Central Park. I asked her how he captured such a personal connection. She told me Sam didn’t drive, and when he was working in Hollywood, someone at the studio asked Marilyn if she could drive him to the set each day. That’s how their friendship started. As a photographer, I’ve looked at thousands of images, and you can see when there is a real connection between the photographer and the subject. You recognize those magic moments.

At first, I focused more on Marilyn as the icon, the mythology, but going through these archives made me want to explore the more personal side of her as well.

You’ve spent much of your career exploring cultural icons and the complexities behind fame. What is it about Marilyn’s image and legacy that continues to fascinate you?

I’m fascinated by why certain people rise to the surface and become something larger. Sometimes it’s talent, sometimes charisma, sometimes timing or luck. Marilyn had that rare quality. The more artists interpret her, the stronger the mythology becomes. Marilyn keeps changing because every generation finds something new in her. That’s what fascinates me, how someone who is no longer alive can still feel so present.

Andy Warhol transformed Marilyn into one of the defining images of the 20th century, and you now work with a printing press once used by Warhol himself. What does that connection mean to you?

Seeing Warhol’s Marilyn images probably made me fall even more in love with her. His colors and repetition added another layer of mystery. Working with materials connected to that history is very special. The printmaking press we use was used by Warhol, and I have some of his old screens as well. I never say which ones I use, but I like knowing that the history and energy of those objects continue into new work.

Before becoming known as a visual artist, you photographed musicians and cultural figures like George Michael, The Smiths, and Bruce Springsteen. How did those years behind the camera influence your understanding of fame as a concept?

Being around those people taught me that some individuals have something different. There is an aura around certain people. A presence. It’s hard to explain because sometimes it appears and disappears, but there is something that makes them resonate.

I photographed many talented people who history forgot because they didn’t have that extra quality or the right moment. That has always interested me, why some people become part of culture forever and others don’t.

Russell Young
arilyn Crying small Diamond, Earth Blue, 2024
acrylic, oil-based ink and diamond dust hand-pulled screen print on linen
28 × 21 inches
/ courtesy Russell Young

Throughout your career, you’ve revisited some of the most recognizable images in popular culture. What responsibility comes with reimagining images that hold so much cultural significance?

Sometimes I feel like I’m a keeper of these images. I work incredibly hard to find the right photographs and get them right. The lengths I go through can be crazy.
But at the same time, it’s still my interpretation. Even words can be misunderstood and images are even more open to interpretation. Sometimes I create something and someone sees it completely differently, but I think that’s up to the viewer. They decide what it means to them.

Your own story has been shaped by questions of identity, memory, and personal history. Has creating work around cultural icons ever become a way of understanding yourself?

I think everything you create contains parts of yourself. I was adopted and I moved around a lot as a child, so I think I was always searching and looking at the world differently. The people and images I’m drawn to—Marilyn, musicians, rebels, outsiders—there’s usually something about them that connects with me personally. I’ve always been interested in people who stand apart or challenge expectations.

Much of your process is intensely physical, from hand-pulled silk screens to experimenting with unconventional materials. What does that physical connection to the artwork bring to your creative process?

That physicality is everything. When I’m in my studio, there are no phones, no computers, no distractions. I just have an old record player, and I completely disappear into the work. Hours go by without me realizing. That’s where the magic happens, when you lose yourself. The process is physical, but it’s also emotional.

After I became seriously ill with the H1N1 virus in 2010, that physical connection became even more important. I was in a coma and I had to rebuild myself. Coming back into the studio, pulling screens and making work with my hands helped me regain that strength. There was a moment where I thought, “Okay, I’m back.” I think that experience changed the way I approach everything. I stopped worrying as much about what other people think and focused on creating what feels true to me.

You’ve often worked with images connected to nostalgia, old Hollywood, counterculture, and the American West. Are you interested in preserving these myths or challenging them?

I think it’s both. I’m interested in preserving the power of these images, but also bringing my own perspective to them. I’ve always been drawn to cultural moments and people who represent something larger like Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, the Sex Pistols, the American West. They become symbols, but everyone sees those symbols differently.

Looking back from your early series Pig Portraits to your current Marilyn series, has your relationship with celebrity culture changed? If so, how?

I think it has changed, but the world has probably changed more than I have. The obsession with celebrity today is on another level. We have access to everything and everyone all the time, but I still believe real icons will exist. There are still ridiculously talented people in the world. The difference is that icons are created over time, history decides who lasts. People like Marilyn, John Lennon, and Warhol continue to live on because every generation discovers them again.

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Inside Grebnellaw’s Red-and-White Universe

perspectives

Grebnellaw Is Moving Into Prime Real Estate

LE MILE

Grebnellaw has kept the work almost entirely red and white for years. The restriction began because too many choices were getting in the way, so a colour code became an obstacle that could force decisions and keep what Grebnellaw calls the “red thread” intact. It is starting to crack. Black, silver and gold were always part of the full system, and the two-colour period may now be nearing its end. The music has been equally difficult to pin down. Songs stayed off streaming because the instrumentals kept changing between performances, until SUPERSAVE THE WORLD broke the rule. Its first performance involved 25 people onstage; later it became a recording, and the version being played now has already changed again, slowed down enough for the lyrics to come further forward.

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

The early New Population began as digital portraits assembled from consumer debris and material found online, but their stillness eventually became frustrating. Grebnellaw wanted them to move and began building a population that other people could physically enter. Transsy can walk through Milan fascinated by gravity and the strange reliability of a coffee cup remaining where it was left, then feel completely misplaced on a drag-show stage. Pussy the Cat, meanwhile, has just returned from a large performance at Berns Salonger and is currently at home “recharging,” waiting for another reason to appear. In January, Grebnellaw plans to sleep inside Konstakademien, an old palace beside Rosenbad, surrounded by unfinished inflatable creatures and copies of classical sculpture. The home studio already contains deflated red vinyl skins, discarded textiles and electronic tracks sitting unfinished on hard drives. Grebnellaw does not always know whether a character is being made or discovered. Usually, the answer comes when it starts behaving like one.

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

LE MILE
For years you deliberately kept most of the songs off streaming because they changed from performance to performance. Then you released SUPERSAVE THE WORLD. What made that particular song worth fixing into one version?

Grebnellaw
I think SUPERSAVE THE WORLD was a bit of an anomaly. There was an urgency to it. It felt like an anthem or protest song filtered through hyperpop, and it demanded to exist as a recording. Maybe it wanted to be something people could scream together in a mosh pit. The first time we played it was as part of a huge Grebnellaw performance with 25 people on stage. It was completely insane. At that point I was much more interested in letting the instrumentals mutate with every performance, but this song somehow overrode me. It basically overwrote my instructions.
And ironically, the instrumental version I’m performing now is completely different from the recording. It’s slower and more downtempo, which I love because it brings the lyrics forward: “Evil forces can’t catch us / we’re too savvy and smart for that.” It feels empowering.
Since then I’ve written a lot of new music. It takes me time to get the words right, but I’ve also started thinking about some kind of release. It doesn’t have to be the definitive version of something. It can just be another mutation.

Red and white began partly as a way of reducing too many choices, and you once described it as an experiment to see how long the system could last before it broke down. Has it ever come close to breaking?

The system has definitely cracked, but it hasn’t fallen apart. Nuances have started appearing, and I actually think they produce a better kind of chaos. Every time I explain the colour code, I discover another aspect of how it works. Of course, that’s the point.
I realised I needed an obstacle, so I turned the colour code into a limitation. A visual code to hold the chaos together.It has dictated almost every choice, forcing me to literally keep the red thread intact. Perhaps I need more obstacles. I think I do.
But the full colour code was always bigger: red, white, black, silver and gold. So far, red and white have been enough. The two-colour phase might be coming to an end. I have a feeling the rest of the spectrum is getting restless.

The early New Population was made from the debris of consumer culture, while the Grebnellaws were described as something more organic, almost like climate refugees. Do you still recognise that distinction when you look at the population now?

I have this strange population around me and I’m trying to figure out what it wants. It existed long before I had the language or tools to render it.
The early New Population were digital portraits made from the debris of human consumer culture and the internet. Literal trash transformed into identity. At first I thought my mission was simply to make portraits of them, but then their stillness started bothering me. I wanted them to move.
That desire was one of the things that opened the door to Grebnellaw. What had been images became bodies, costumes, music and performance. Other people could enter the population too, bringing their own bodies and interpretations into it. The work became something that could move between galleries, underground clubs, public spaces, fountains, shopping malls, empty streets, tunnels and botanical gardens.

Transsy went to Milan and became fascinated by gravity, stationary coffee cups, and the fact that ordinary clothes were not made for their body. When you write from inside a character like that, what do you notice about everyday life that you probably ignore as yourself?

Through Transsy’s eyes, everyday life becomes completely absurd. Guards and police tell me to leave, while on the next street someone wants to photograph me or assumes I’m a mascot or an eccentric ice-cream vendor. But Transsy is also fascinated by the physical world. The fact that a stationary coffee cup stays exactly where you leave it feels almost miraculous. Particles behave in ways that are completely alien to everyday experience, while a coffee cup just sits there, absolutely committed to one location.
There’s something of Prince Myshkin from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” in Transsy: a very bubbly saint dropped in the wrong dimension, perhaps. Performing from inside Transsy can actually be quite awkward because I experience them as very shy and innocent. They don’t have an extroverted energy. Walking the streets of Milan works beautifully, but putting Transsy on a stage can feel strangely unnatural. I once performed Transsy in a drag show and felt completely lost.

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

Pussy the Cat apparently became so beautiful that beauty itself was supposed to cause panic attacks and social-media storms. Where is Pussy now?

Pussy is thriving, obviously. She’s probably somewhere with very good lighting, taking another selfie with the Kitty Cunts. Mostly she’s recharging after last weekend’s monster-scale Grebnellaw performance at Berns Salonger in Stockholm. She had some serious competition in the diva department from the rising icon and real-life performer Beata Mona Lisa (BEA) who performed “La Vie en Rouge”, not “La Vie en Rose”. It gave us all goosebumps.
For a moment it looked like high drama was about to erupt: a brutal catfight between Pussy and Bea. Somehow it completely flipped into the sweetest friendship. So Pussy is currently in peaceful deactivation in my home studio, surrounded by the secret red-and-white holy grail, recharging her batteries and waiting for the perfect moment to completely deep-fry the timeline again.

You performed at Konstakademien’s official celebration in 2025. Now you’re returning with Butcherqueen and Leffe Crumlove to enter its collection as what the project calls an “infection.” What changed between those two invitations?

The first invitation was to perform at their annual celebration. This time we weren’t invited by the institution itself, but by 6film / Cinemaqueer. We took over the auditorium for a small performance with Butcherqueen and Leffe Crumlove, but I wrote a proper script for it. The building is so pristine and historically loaded that it almost tells you how you’re supposed to behave. I wanted to work against that. I wanted to trace the ghosts in those rooms: to read the collection, the marble, and the things deliberately left out.

Your January exhibition says you will “camp out” among unfinished inflatable creatures inside Konstakademien. Are you literally planning to live in the gallery?

Yes. I am literally planning to live in the gallery. We’re talking about prime real estate. Konstakademien is an old palace next to Rosenbad, where the Swedish Prime Minister works. So I thought: why not move in?
I love the idea of living there and having visitors hang out with me in my boudoir, where the boundary between studio, dream state and exhibition disappears. And, of course, being surrounded by copies of famous sculptures. But I don’t really think of myself as the person who created this whole population and then put it into the gallery. I feel more like one of its members who happens to have access to the space. By sleeping, breathing, and working inside the installation, the exhibition can remain alive. It stays an active event rather than something completed and frozen.

What is lying around your studio right now that has not become a character yet?

Right now my home is basically a crime scene of future characters. There are deflated skins of red vinyl, scraps of second-hand textiles, foam fragments, prototypes of inflatable bodies, and electronic tracks trapped inside hard drives. A tiny piece of shiny silver. Most of it isn’t a character or an object yet. It’s just raw matter waiting for something to happen.
Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m making a Grebnellaw or discovering one. I usually know something has become a Grebnellaw when it starts behaving like one.

Grebnellaw
/ photographed by Daniil Kudriavtcev

The Atanga Twins Come as a Set

Carlsen and Curtis Atanga, Double Vision

One of Us Is a Meal, Together We’re the Banquet

LE MILE

Carlsen and Curtis Atanga exist in stereo, two voices layered over each other, finishing sentences, finishing outfits, finishing the thought before it has even landed. Estate sales and anime, Gucci trenches and rooftop escapes, hopeless romance and twin telepathy, the catalogue of their world reads like a mood board spilled across the floor of a studio that never sleeps. They speak about fashion as if it were oxygen, something you exhale without noticing, something that signals identity before a word is spoken, and they step into every room aware that their presence carries charge, two Black twins moving through high fashion with looks that spark questions, disrupt stereotypes, amplify visibility.

Carlsen and Curtis Atanga wear coats by TAREET and boots by DSQUARED2

Carlsen and Curtis Atanga wear coats by TAREET and boots by DSQUARED2

Carlsen builds rooms around vintage finds, entire atmospheres imagined from a single object, while Curtis folds lyrics into melodies he insists sound great even without an audience, claiming food or song as his fallback languages when the phone screen goes dark. Dreams drift into their daily reality with little ceremony, stories rehearsed in sleep and retold as memory, proof that their ideas are always half a step from manifestation. Atanga as a set, never as a single, a vibe that comes in doubles, meals that only make sense served as banquet, patience for nothing less.

They trade closets, steal archives, guard secrets, confess to coding in silence, the analog residue of their cybersecurity degrees lingering under the gloss of editorials. They joke about switching places on bookings, they joke about candy jars, they joke about walking out after five seconds, but the undercurrent is serious, a refusal to dilute the package. The Atanga Twins arrive together, leave together, live together in the mirrored rhythm of reflection and echo, a double vision that insists on being seen in full.

Carlsen Atanga wears a wool coat by CHEN SIFAN, shorts by MOUTY and shoes by CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN. Curtis Atanga wears a coat by MOUTY and shoes by CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN.

LE MILE
Phones buried under socks and lost dreams, you breathe real air and maybe remember boredom. What do your hands do, suddenly jobless?

Carlsen
I’ve got a big passion for vintage interior décor. I’d probably be driving to an estate sale, because that’s where the real treasures hide. I spot a vintage piece and instantly start imagining a whole space built around it.

Curtis
Music has always been my second language. If I can’t scroll on my phone, I’d probably start creating and reinventing my own lyrics to a famous song. And not to brag, but I sound really good. If I’m not singing, I’m probably eating.

Somewhere in the real world, a stranger makes eye contact. Does your soul freeze, or do you wave back like nothing ever happened?

Wave back, for sure. We have this motto of putting out positive vibes everywhere we go. You never know how much that small moment can mean to someone.

Everyone’s busy career-ing, collecting jobs like stickers, but let’s talk about the one gig you’d take even if it meant showing up as just a single Atanga.

There’s no “single” Atanga gig. We’re a package deal. If one’s there, the other’s there. ALWAYS.

Dreams filed under D for “Double Vision.” Ever get them mixed up with reality, or is reality just what you make while nobody’s looking?

Curtis
I mix them up all the time. I’ll dream about something so vividly, like walking in a show or meeting someone, and a week later I’ll start telling the story like it actually happened. Carlsen’s always like, “Curtis… that was a dream.” But honestly, I think that’s why my reality feels so alive. I treat the wild ideas in my head like they’re just waiting their turn to happen.

Carlsen
Yes, always. You’ve got to dream first before you can make it real. That’s literally how most of our ideas start.

Is fashion your first language, or is it just the easiest one to shout in across a crowded room where everybody’s already pretending they can’t hear?

Our first language is definitely our twin telepathy, haha. Fashion is our most fluent one. We’ve been finishing each other’s sentences since we were kids, but now we finish each other’s outfits too. It’s the language that lets us represent exactly who we are before we even open our mouths. Being two Black twins in high fashion, we know that every look we put together can challenge a stereotype, spark curiosity, or make someone feel seen. Fashion is our way of saying, “We exist, and we exist loudly.”

Every day, new room, new mirror, same faces. Do you wink at your own reflection, or do you wait for your brother to go first?

Carlsen
Curtis always strikes first. I usually just follow his lead.

Curtis
That would probably be me because I know Carlsen will wait for me to go first, lol.

Carlsen Atanga wears a bomber jacket by Y-3, a shirt by NADAV PERLMAN, shorts by MOUTY and shoes by CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN. Curtis Atanga wears a bomber jacket and shirt by ZELIG DAVOULT, pants by EUGENIA ALONSO and moccasins by JACQUEMUS

Carlsen Atanga wears a jacket and skirt by Y-3 and Tabi boots by MAISON MARGIELA. Curtis Atanga wears a shirt and skirt by Y-3 and Tabi boots by MAISON MARGIELA

Some say you can only wear one look at a time, some say twins double the fun. You say what, exactly, when someone asks for “the Atanga vibe” and only brings enough snacks for one?

The Atanga vibe only exists when we’re both in the room. If there’s only enough snacks for one, we’ll politely remind them they didn’t place the full order. The Atanga vibe comes as a set. One of us alone is a meal, but together we’re the full banquet. Why settle for a bite when you can have the whole feast?

What’s the movie you watch when you’re both pretending to sleep, lights off, volume down, the plot unravels like a really good outfit that almost gets away?

Carlsen
Call Me by Your Name. What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic. The music, the scenery, the way it’s shot… it’s that perfect mix of slow, romantic, and unforgettable, like a summer you never want to end.

Curtis
To be honest, I would probably be watching anime instead of a movie. Either Black Clover or Hunter x Hunter. I love anime because it’s about worlds where you can reinvent the norms of a typical movie plot. Where are my anime lovers at?

Brand loyalty or brand mischief — who’s got the better archive in your closet, and are you ever going to let them in on the secret?

Carlsen
Me, no questions asked. Curtis can’t even argue, he’s always in my closet. He’s probably still jealous of my vintage Kendra Scott x Gucci trench, lol. The secret? Definitely estate sales. Everyone sleeps on those.

Curtis

Carlsen, for sure. I’m so jealous of some of his pieces. I don’t know how he always finds the best stuff.

A hobby that can’t be posted, a pleasure that leaves no digital trace — is there anything left for the analog gods, or have they all gone home?

Coding. I know, crazy! But we did graduate with a degree in cybersecurity. We’re secretly a bit of nerds.

Twins in the industry. Do you ever swap lives for a booking just to see if anyone’s awake?

Not yet. But one day we will, and no one will know until they see the behind-the-scenes years later.

Someone says, “We’ll take just one twin today, the other can wait outside.” How long do you let them think that’s an option before you both walk out?

Carlsen
Five seconds, max.

Curtis

If there’s a candy jar, I would grab some first, but five seconds MAX.

Carlsen and Curtis Atanga wear pants by TAREET and mules by ACNE STUDIOS

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creative direction + photography   OLESYA PARFENYUK
styling   TENWI ARCHIVE
talent   CARLSEN ATANGA + CURTIS ATANGA
agency   FORD MODELS
movement director   EXO BORGIAL
make up artist   SOPHIA GUNEV
hair   SUNDIA WEN
styling assistant   LUCAS LAURENT-CARUGE
copyright LE MILE Magazine / Olesya Parfenyuk

Jakob Wirtz — Deadstock Fashion and 87 Metres of Possibility with (1/1)SAMPLE

87 Metres of Possibility with (1/1)SAMPLE

interview KLAAS HAMMER

What would fashion be without its countless young creatives who constantly turn new ideas, sustainable concepts, and extraordinary designs into reality, often with limited resources (money!). LE MILE spoke to one such young creative. Jakob Wirtz, a fashion student at „Hochschule Pforzheim“ currently in his fifth semester, has already completed an internship at Adidas in Herzogenaurach.He tells us what inspires him, where the name of his own label, (1/1)Sample, comes from and all about his latest collection.

(c) (1/1)SAMPLE

Klaas Hammer
What originally motivated you to study design, and what motivates you in your work today?

Jakob Wirtz
creating. I often set myself goals that scare me. I want to constantly evolve and push myself further. But in the end, it should always come back to a place where I feel comfortable and enjoy the process. Believing that the responsibility of introducing new fashion into today’s world should be approached with sensitivity, I think deeply beforehand about whether my work can live up to that responsibility, and then I give it everything I have.

What is the meaning behind the name of your brand?

A sample is an experiment, not something intended for sale. It is the first step an idea takes towards becoming reality. This is where you have to be brave, and where there is room to try things out. I like the perspective of also understanding the final garments of the brand as samples. Everything is a foundation for further development and something new that comes after it.

How would you describe your design (language) to someone discovering your work for the first time?

Simplicity and clarity are my top priorities. I strongly believe that the more general something is, the more personal it can become. I try to be creative within a very precisely defined framework set by the initial concept for a collection. My dream is to create something that a lot of different people can connect with. It doesn’t have to be the same connection. Creating inclusive access to fashion is a great challenge.

(c) (1/1)SAMPLE

(c) (1/1)SAMPLE

What was the starting point for your latest collection, and what idea or story do you want to convey through it?

A reality made entirely from a single fabric. The only individuality comes from the subject itself. Maximum minimalism. Minimalist maximalism. An attempt to find something exciting in between. The material we used is the entire remaining 87 meters of one of the worst-selling deadstock fabrics from a large deadstock company I have worked with. Together with them, I searched for a suitable fabric that many people would initially have considered ugly and undesirable. This fabric is used for the collection, the interior, and the set for the presentation. The set is designed based on the width of the fabric, meaning the fabric did not have to be cut and can be used in its entirety to produce the collection. Each piece has a label indicating the amount of fabric used to make it. I wanted to prove to myself that context alone can be enough to turn surplus into something limited.

Who are your fashion role models and your biggest sources of inspiration?

The list of fashion designers I admire is long, and there’s no one I would single out above the others. Fashion is so multifaceted that there isn’t anyone who excels in every discipline at the same time. It’s the diversity that truly brings beauty. I’m constantly discovering new fashion role models from whom I can learn something.

Inspiration literally comes from everywhere. Often, the greatest sources of inspiration are the impressions I get from real life. It can be anything. That’s why I try to always stay attentive and notice every little detail in the moment. I also share ideas with my friends, most of whom are creatives as well, and we work on them together.

(c) (1/1)SAMPLE

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creative direction + design JAKOB WIRTZ
set design FELIX STÖHR, JAKOB WIRTZ
commercial TIM KREISEL, SIMON BAKENECKER, JAKOB WIRTZ
lookbook TIM KREISEL, JAKOB WIRTZ
talent MARLON BOSSE TITUS PREIS
label SALMA SARAH BENAMAR, JAKOB WIRTZ
fabric FABRICHOUSE
special thanks to JOHN KURZ, FINN SCHÖN, HOCHSCHULE PFORZHEIM
fashion (1/1)SAMPLE

Fola Adeleke — Building Worlds Through Art, Culture and Memory

Fola Adeleke Makes Home Public

interview by SARA DOUEDARI

Fola Adeleke grew up learning early that the things that felt completely normal at home could look very different outside it. In East London, that meant Nigerian food, Yoruba, family functions, matching prints, gold and his mother’s gele existing alongside school, basketball and streetwear. Years later, those worlds meet again in his work. Adeleke builds images from memory, fashion, collage and digital tools, often returning to details he once tried to separate from his public self. What interests him now is the opposite. He wants African identity to occupy space without explanation, apology or adjustment, and to feel as natural in public as it does at home.

Fola Adeleke, Generations

Sara Douedari
How did you grow up in a Nigerian family in East London? What was home like?

Fola Adeleke
Home was, I believe, very cultured. I would say that about 80 per cent of the food in our fridge and cupboards was Nigerian. A fun fact I remember from growing up: I would see an ice cream container in the freezer and get really excited that there was ice cream at home. I’d get myself a plate, open it — and there would be soup inside. That kind of sums up how African the home was.

It was very cultured. The language my mother spoke to me and my siblings was Yoruba. The music was Nigerian. I think the main things that were really English were that we listened to hip-hop from an early age and watched UK television, from EastEnders to Neighbours and Home and Away. I think cereal was probably the most British thing we had. Beyond that, we had African home-cooked meals every single day. Whether it was lunch or dinner, it was always very Nigerian.

What traditions did your family keep alive?

We always ate together and prayed. That was something we always did. We also had our Saturday chores, which we all had to finish before breakfast. Mine was the bathroom. Once we had all collectively finished our chores, my mum would make what I would call an African breakfast — something really heavy — and we would eat together. While we were doing the chores, there was always music playing, usually Nigerian music. Even to this day, I don’t know which artists it was, but I remember it playing in the background.

Leaving the home, there was even more tradition. Saturdays were always a function. There was always someone’s birthday to go to, and there was always an outfit we were all meant to wear. My brother and I would, for some reason, always have the same thing on, even though we were four years apart. My mum always had an outfit that matched a bag — and she had several bags. I think she was a huge inspiration for what I do because she was the first powerful Black woman, or African woman, I saw. We followed her lead. It was a single-parent household, and I watched her just power through everything.

When did you first become aware of your cultural identity?

I think it was as early as school. I had an uncle who lived with us when I was really young, and he used to come and pick me up wearing open-toed brown sandals and a two-piece set of native clothing, always with prints, and a hat — the fila.

I used to be somewhat embarrassed because he was so different from everyone else who was picking up their kids. When he came to pick me up, I didn’t really want him to. I think I was around five at the time. That experience of being embarrassed by that difference made me aware that my culture was different from everyone else’s. Then, around the same time, my mum made me pack lunch for a school trip. It was beans with stew — quite a spicy stew — and plantain, which I loved at home. I never realised how different it was from what everyone else was going to bring. That was another embarrassing moment of being different. That was when I realised that my culture was different. At that time, there weren’t enough of us for that difference to feel positive. It often felt like we were somewhat alone in those spaces.

Fola Adeleke, Rich in Culture, Spirit and Presence

Fola Adeleke, Lagbaja

Did you ever feel caught between two cultures?

I would say I’ve always been caught between two cultures. Or at least I was. At this stage of my life, I blend both because I don’t believe I need to shape-shift to make anyone feel comfortable. I’ve come to understand that I don’t need to lower my tone, make myself smaller or adapt my culture to appease people or make them feel comfortable, because that’s not what the world is doing for anybody.

From a young age, I’ve always felt that anyone from Africa living in the Western world has to have a dual identity. It even shows in people’s names. Growing up, I knew a lot of people who were Oluwatosin or Oluwafemi, but all of a sudden one day their name was James or Peter. To me, that was them adapting and changing. I actually chose to shorten my own name because it was too hard and complicated for people to digest and say. I shortened it twice. Again, that was me being caught up in that, and I think a lot of people were caught up in it too.

I’m glad I never had an English name. I’m glad my mum never gave me one. But I think that can sometimes be an indication of families adapting to their surroundings so they can fit in rather than be seen as different. So, yes, I’ve always felt that way. But over the last few years, I’ve tried to blend both cultures because I should feel comfortable being who I am wherever I am.

What do you think the world still misunderstands about African culture?

There are so many things. I think the obvious one is the depiction of Africa that the Western world has created through adverts like Oxfam, showing areas of extreme poverty. There is extreme poverty in every country in the world. You can build a narrative that looks just as bad in any country where you see poverty. Maybe some places are more extreme, but that depiction of Africa is not the Africa that I know. Of course, there are places of poverty, but there are many more places of beauty, wealth and hardworking people across the whole continent.There is also this understanding that Africa needs help from everyone else. If we strip it back, Africa is extremely wealthy in minerals on its own. If it stood on its own two feet and was left alone by the colonial countries, I think Africa would be thriving amazingly.

On a lower level, people sometimes think we’re loud. I think we need to change that narrative. That loudness is actually confidence — extreme confidence in who we are. Africa is beautiful, and African culture is beautiful. There needs to be more said about the wealth and rich heritage of Africa. All of that is still misunderstood. And to link it back to my work, my biggest mission is to share the beautiful aspects of African culture and make sure they are seen. I actually believe the backbone of African culture is African women, and I need them to be seen in an amazing light. That’s my soul mission with the art I do.

Where does fashion enter that story?

For me, fashion has been around me before I even knew why I identified it as fashion. Every week, my mother, my siblings and I were off to another house party. Every week, my mother had another print, another gele, another outfit, matching shoes and a matching purse. I saw that all the time. But because, at a young age, there was no connection between African culture and coolness, there were these red threads of culture starting to bubble up in me without me really knowing. I created my own identity away from African culture. I played basketball. I travelled, represented England and travelled all over Europe playing basketball. That allowed me to see how different every culture was and made me curious from the age of 13. I travelled to Slovenia, Portugal, France, Italy, and eventually America.

I veered away from African culture through fashion, which is why I entered the realm of streetwear. But I think African culture was always close to my heart. It just took me away before it eventually brought me right back to where it all began, which is where I am now. I believe all of my pieces speak to different realms and practices. I see myself as a designer and a concept creator, and more so now as a composer — with art being the form of composition and storytelling.

I’m able to take one vision and put all of those things together to build a new world. I don’t think it was something I consciously meant to do. I just kept knocking on the door and scratching the surface until something started to form, which is what we see today. Every piece is more than the composition. It is aligned with storytelling that connects to my life, my fashion, my eye and my sense of composition.

When did you move from fashion into art?

That’s a good question. I don’t think I ever moved. By practice, I’m a designer. Art is a realm I’ve stepped into because I’ve created more and more concepts, and through creating those concepts, I started scratching the surface of an ongoing concept that has become a practice. Through that practice, art formed.I still consider myself a designer, an artist, a conceptual creator and a world builder. Sometimes I don’t feel worthy of the title artist because I still feel that I’m creating a world that exists. If I can create enough of that world, it will be seen from every angle, no matter what kind of collaboration it is. It will always be the same world.

I embarked on this journey about a year and a half ago. I had a conversation with a friend who told me, “I don’t know if you fit in the brief. You’ve given the client you were working for too much of who you are.” My thought was: the client came to me because they wanted my vision. That made me question what was better. Is it better to be a designer who can execute a brief, or is it better to be a designer who has refined his own ethos and aesthetic?

That one conversation led me to embark on my own vision wholeheartedly, without worrying about anyone’s opinion or trying to tread lightly to make people feel comfortable. That brought me to where I am today: storytelling from my own point of view through historical things, reference points, nostalgia, a conversational lens and world-building as a whole. So even though I am an artist, I believe there are lots of tiers to it. If anyone asked me what I am, I would say I’m a world builder.

What made you want to tell stories through images?

I think I have a lot to say. I have a lot in my mind. Part of my practice comes from my sporting background. I believe in reps. I believe that if you think something is the best idea, you need to do a hundred of them, and the best idea will come out at the hundredth one. So I’m trying to let out all of my ideas. And within letting those ideas out, I want conversations to happen. I feel like these conversations need to exist.

What I love about building stories through images is that I can show four different people and they can have four different conversations about the same work — about why something is the way it is. I remember creating a piece where one of my good friends said to me, “It doesn’t seem realistic because they look Nigerian but they’re wearing too much gold, and the amount of gold they’re wearing belongs to another culture.” I told him, “That’s fine.” We’re not trying to build a sense of reality. We’re trying to build something that intrinsically sparks conversation with people. There are a lot of conversations that need to happen in the creative space, and I believe I might be someone who can bridge that gap and help those conversations happen.

How would you describe your artistic language?

There are a number of words I would use to describe my artistic language: rich, African, proud and unapologetic. I would like to keep it as rich, loud and unapologetic.I think it’s very important not to be afraid to share your opinion and your point of view and to stand by it. It’s also important for me to share the beautiful aspects of Africa.

Fola Adeleke, Aunty Funke, Ola’s Mum & Uncle Dele

Your work combines photography, texture, graphics and digital composition. How do you build a piece?

I build a piece starting with storytelling. What is it I want to tell? What dots am I trying to bring together? In fashion, I normally come from a place of nostalgia. I think nostalgia is no different from sampling in music. That’s usually where I begin. Then I ask, what is the story I’m trying to tell? Once I can moodboard — which is similar to design, throwing a few images together to storyboard the idea — I build from there. I start collaging, bringing all my images together digitally through Photoshop and Illustrator, grading them, and then moving towards the accessories and prints I need as part of the story. Once I’ve done that, I try to blend everything using AI tools. My hope is that people see the composition and see beyond the image — that they see some of the storytelling. It doesn’t mean I need to scream from a rooftop what the story is about. If five people see the image and see something different, but it moves all of them and sparks a memory, then I’ve achieved something.

I remember creating an art piece about growing up. If you ask people, especially people who grew up in the 90s, where they would get their drink from at an African party, a lot of us would have to think because we couldn’t remember where we got our drinks from. But we actually got them from a bathtub full of ice. I created a piece with that memory in mind, and so many people commented and messaged me personally saying, “Wow, you’ve helped me unlock a memory I never knew existed because it’s been so long.” For me, it’s about sparking that nostalgia and building through all of those digital platforms.

Where does an artwork usually begin — an idea, a memory or something else?

For the most part, it’s a memory. Sometimes it’s a memory I didn’t actually live. Sometimes it’s an idea. I’m working on a piece that I haven’t quite finished yet. It’s taken me a long time to finish because it’s about the era when a lot of Africans moved to the Western world — America, New York, Houston, London — that first wave. What did that look like? That memory doesn’t exist for me because I was born first-generation. I didn’t have to come over and understand the difference.

I have a collection called Unapologetic, where some of the models and figures are wearing Western clothes, like grey-mile tracksuits, alongside head wraps and gold. They are so far removed from each other, but that must have been something that happened when people were merging cultures. They had just come from wearing what they wore in Africa — for me and my family, that would have been Nigeria — but at that point they would naturally have started mixing Western clothing with their native clothing. What did that look like? That comes from a memory I don’t possess. It comes from imagination. Some ideas come from memory, some from a futuristic ideology or a thought about how things could be, and others simply come from deep imagination and dreaming.

You also use AI in your process. Where does AI enter, and where does your own hand take over?

Similar to how I described my process, I build my work through collage and reference points, understanding design and composition. I build the structure and layout of the scene I want in order to strengthen the idea and message I’m putting together. It could be a seat at a table with a family of African royalty. I put that together through collage and research, understanding what kind of lighting I need, what scene needs to take place and what angle needs to be used to make it the strongest possible idea. Once I get to a good place, I use AI to blend the research and make everything more cohesive. Once I’m happy with that, I take it out of AI and go into a photo-grading process. That gives the image an overarching lighting mood and allows me to make sure the gold remains the statement piece — that the gold and the skin tone are married with the pattern, or that they have a significant centre-stage presence within the image. So AI is a secondary tool. After that secondary process, I step away from it again and find the grade that feels intrinsically like me.

Where do art, fashion and culture meet for you?

I think it’s interesting because they’ve always been married. They’ve always existed together, especially when your culture is rich in celebration. My culture is African culture, and African culture in general is so rich in celebration. Every moment of success — whether it’s a marriage, a birthday or a christening — is rich in ceremony and dressing. It’s a marriage. It’s something that is deeply rooted together.

Growing up, I never knew that watching my mother get changed and matching her gold with her outfits was a process. I didn’t think anything of it. But that was fashion. That was culture. And that was art. The fabric was art. The pattern was art. The composition of everything together was beyond art. It was a statement, and it was effortless. It didn’t feel like it was trying too hard. It just felt intrinsically African. I think that intersection has always existed. I’m trying to make people aware that it exists. I want the pieces I’m creating to make more African women want to wear their gele with denim on a regular day. Some of these pieces aren’t only for African functions. Some of them can become part of everyday life. That intersection has always existed. The question is whether we have been ready and confident enough to own it in a Western society. And I think this is the time. They have always been joined at the hip.

What kind of future do you want to help create through your work?

I want an abundance of my work to be displayed everywhere and used as reference points — for music videos, art, films, collaborations, anything — beyond simply being defined by my country or my nationality as a Nigerian. I want my art to make everyone feel comfortable being African. I’ve had messages from people saying, “Thank you. You make me proud to be Nigerian.”

I want this normality of fashion and art being intrinsically African to push people to be themselves outside of their homes. I don’t want people to feel that they have to change the second they leave their house. I would love for African people living in the Western world to feel confident enough to take their food into their corporate offices and warm it up in the microwave. I want to normalise African beauty and richness so that people don’t have to experience this huge difference between who they are inside their home and who they are outside of it. Because, at the end of the day, living like that is crippling. That’s part of the mission and why I want to show the beautiful aspects of Africa — because there are a lot of people who don’t know Africa looks as beautiful as I portray it to.

Fola Adeleke, African Elegance

Fola Adeleke, Husband and Wife

Xander Zhou on Fashion, Identity and Possibility

No Such Zone with Xander Zhou

interview with Xander Zhou
by Hannah Rose Prendergast

Ancient comes from the past or is packaged as the future.
Xander Zhou works here.
Not to resolve anything, but to establish a point of reference.

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

Pressure from reality, time, and my own doubt.

If a system stops responding to these pressures, it has already failed.

The body is an ongoing state of operation, not a destination.

It doesn’t belong to a fixed place or identity; it belongs to relationships as they unfold.
Thought forms through the body, and the body is continuously reshaped by thought.

Failure is not confrontation; it is knowing when to stop.

Ending what no longer holds is the most basic form of respect for both the system
and its development.

Some parts will always remain unlit.

Those unlit areas form the shadow.
They are not mistakes, nor something that needs to be eliminated; they are an inevitable
result of a system operating in reality.
I prefer to observe how the shadow shifts, and through that, reassess whether the structure
itself still holds.

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

Those who are willing to enter gradually take on its shape.

They are not being represented, but participating.
The work is not shaped by me alone; it forms through wearing, use, lived experience, and
new interpretations sparked by the images or concepts we put into the world.

Repetition often works like a cycle.

Sometimes it signals that a question has not yet completed its path; at other times it acts
as logic, emphasis, memory, or connection.
When conditions align again, certain structures naturally return into view.
These moments allow memories and images to be retested within new realities.

The materials that make me think differently create resistance.

It forces me to question whether I have become too comfortable with familiar design habits.
In this tension, a sense of freshness toward the unknown often leads to unexpected outcomes.

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

Without limitation, would gesture still carry meaning?

Gesture emerges through control, not as oppression but as a form of structural organization.
When the body is placed within limited space, when paths of movement are constrained,
gesture becomes necessary.
In a state of complete freedom, the body no longer needs to produce clear gestures.
Sometimes I ask myself: if one day consciousness could be uploaded, would we truly achieve
freedom?

The body is an ongoing state of operation, not a destination.

It doesn’t belong to a fixed place or a specific identity; it belongs to relationships as they are unfolding.
Thought forms through the body, and the body is continuously reshaped by thought.
Failure is not confrontation; it is knowing when to stop.
I let things fail when maintaining them goes against how they operate.
Ending what no longer holds is the most basic form of respect for both the system and its development.

It exists between order and reality.

In SSAW26, I focus on how formality, regulation, and identity are gradually losing their effectiveness.
We continue to act through these forms, but reality has already shifted.
The rift emerges in this misalignment: when structures keep functioning, yet can no longer truly
respond to the body, rhythm, or environment of the present.

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

Clarity does not come from the beginning.

It forms through continuous judgment, selection, reduction, and correction.
When unnecessary structures are removed, what truly works becomes visible.
Perhaps beneath every methodology, what ultimately matters is remaining honest with oneself
and the need to understand reality clearly.

“Possible” is a form of hope.

Real possibility does not come from unlimited choice, but from conditions that are still workable,
uncertain, yet full of the unknown.
As reality continues to shift, we need to preserve a belief in possibility.
It is not grand; it happens locally, within limits, perhaps moving closer to infinity
and maximum potential precisely because it is constrained.

2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection
/ (c) Xander Zhou

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credits
header image: 2026 SSAW XANDER ZHOU PRO SS26, All XANDER ZHOU PRO collection / (c) Xander Zhou

Nhu Xuan Hua at Fotomuseum Winterthrur

Nhu Xuan Hua in the Afterlife of Images

written LE MILE

Nhu Xuan Hua works with images much like others work with language, carefully and intuitively, aware that every gesture carries the weight of memory. Born in 1989 and based in Paris, the French–Vietnamese artist moves between fashion photography and an increasingly expansive artistic practice that investigates inherited histories, diaspora, and the fragile architecture of remembrance.

Nhu Xuan Hua, Les oubliées, Archive from the year ’70, 2016-2021
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

Her images often begin long before the shutter is pressed, as words, fragments of archives, gestures and symbols gather slowly until they form a constellation from which a photograph can emerge. In Hua’s work, memory appears as something unstable, a presence that returns, shifts, dissolves, and reappears in new forms.

Hua first became widely known through collaborations with international fashion houses such as Dior, Maison Margiela, Chanel and Gucci. Over the past years, her practice has moved steadily toward a more autonomous terrain where photography intersects with archives, mixed media, and conceptual storytelling. Her publication Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory marked a pivotal moment. Built around photographs from her family albums, the project reflects on migration, distance and the ways history continues to echo across generations. Images become surfaces where personal memory and collective experience intersect.

This ongoing exploration now enters a new context in the exhibition One Another – Nhu Xuan Hua and the Collection of Fotomuseum Winterthur, where the artist’s work enters into dialogue with the museum’s photographic collection and expands toward broader questions of visual continuity, rupture and belonging.

Nhu Xuan Hua, Singer "How much love can be repeated?", 2020
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

LE MILE
Memory appears as a driving force in your work; where does it first enter your process?

Nhu Xuan Hua
It is always lingering. I believe the foundation of creativity lies in memory and emotional experience, at least this is true for me. I trust my emotions to guide me. Remembering is both something we can summon and something that arrives unannounced. That duality is what I find beautiful. It is also what moves me. Creating, however, is different. The mind and the heart must allow a passage from the spirit into the physical world. There needs to be an opening.

Depending on the project, memory enters differently. For Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory, I wanted to let things come toward me. I worked with instinct, intuition, and the unknown. It was almost a surrender. With commissioned work, the process shifts. When I am given a departure point (a new collection for a brand, the theme of a magazine issue) I find pleasure in digging into memory from that anchor. A starting point calls memories forward immediately. Then the work becomes excavation: connecting fragments, layering meanings, building dialogues that become more and more complex.

What stays unresolved for you when working with family archives?

It is an infinite, multilayered journey. I think many children of immigrants from my generation are trying to bridge an emotional distance, with our parents, our family history, our homeland. There is often a silence. Working with archives becomes a way to open a dialogue with what was never said. I have realised that even when bridges are built, they remain fragile. Communication can be restored, but there will always be new moments of loss, new quests to hold everything close. With time, I learned to accept this incompleteness. What shapes us is not the answers but it is the search itself.

Nhu Xuan Hua, Family portrait at the wedding, Archive from the year ’85, 2016-2021, (c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

Nhu Xuan Hua, Swan, Archive from the year 2000, 2016-2021
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory draws from inherited material; what responsibility do you feel toward images that predate your own authorship?

It was strange to learn to see these images as objects rather than as the people they represent. There is something almost violent in that shift. When communication is fractured, you invent other ways of speaking. In French, we distinguish between langue and langage. La langue is the shared tongue- a structured system we are supposed to master to understand one another. Le langage is expression: poetic language, the language of the body, the language of silence.

In my family, we never fully shared the same langue,French, Vietnamese, or French Sign Language. None of us completely mastered the same communication system, so clarity was always slightly out of reach. I chose poetry as my language, the language of the heart. Because it is a space where we can meet beyond grammar.
I will never alter the original archives. They belong to family albums carefully assembled by my grandparents on quiet afternoons when they were still alive. My responsibility is not to transform the originals, but to create a parallel language around them. To author the passage I build for myself.

Displacement runs through your practice as an emotional condition; how do you keep it present without illustrating it?

Repetition is essential. I feel like I am drawing a map from one exhibition to another, reusing symbols and gestures to anchor my family’s history, the way you carry certain objects with you each time you move houses. When you are displaced, what you keep becomes more revealing than what you leave behind.

Displacement also has something ghostly about it. A lingering presence. You do not need to see the details of a face to feel the weight of its gaze. I try to work with that sensation rather than illustrating displacement directly. It is a shared human experience. Loss is universal. You do not need to name it for it to take shape. The mind recognises familiar traces instinctively. Memory is something we all carry, it allows absence to remain present without being described.

How does the act of editing reshape the meaning of memory for you?

In Beloved, Toni Morrison speaks about the concept of “rememory”, an image that lingers beyond the boundaries of a single mind. A recollection. A re-membering, gathering the scattered pieces of a body so it can walk again. Editing reshapes that idea in my process. In Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory, editing becomes a way to resist forgetfulness. It feels like an excavation a slow unveiling that perhaps only ends when every colour has been revealed. I see post-production as painting. There is a subject, a color palette, textures. You move from an undefined contour toward clarity. From blur into vision.

In your studio practice, what usually comes first? Is it image, gesture, or concept?

Usually, the concept comes first. Especially in commissioned work. I create constellations of words and images that I live with for a while. They circulate in chaos on paper, on my computer desktop, in my phone notes. I let them breathe before forcing structure onto them. Gradually, a framework emerges. Only then do I begin to think concretely about the photograph itself: the staging, the gesture, the image. The concept becomes a container where the image can exist.

Nhu Xuan Hua, Selfportrait

Your work often carries a dreamlike logic; how do you leave space for the unconscious to operate?

You have to be gentle with the world you create for yourself especially if it was born out of survival. For me, it is both a coping and a healing mechanism. It is rooted in observing my household. My father, who is orally deaf, carried his world through paintings and drawings. My mother built a perfect home for her family, that was her form of art. They both constructed illusions that made life more bearable.

In my own way, I created a similar theatre, where scripted plays meet reality. When you have to interpret language without the proper tools, you invent your own. If my grammar is not strong enough, then I expand my visual language to replace words. The unconscious enters through that expansion, through looseness, through trust, through allowing images to form before fully understanding them.

What changes for you when an image leaves the personal realm and enters public circulation?

When I was working primarily in fashion photography and commercial projects, the emotional involvement ended once the project was released. At the end of the day, the work promoted or sold something, it was ultimately a service. I infused my research into it, but only my creative team might have known the deeper layers. I did not have to speak about them publicly.

With exhibitions, everything changed. People come not only to see the work but to understand the thinking and the emotional process behind it. Releasing Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory was a turning point. It revealed to me the lack of representation of stories from the Vietnamese diaspora. There was a public demand and a community demand, to see and hear these narratives. I felt it too. I was also in demand of it. It was overwhelming. I felt a sort of responsibility to carry a voice not only for children of Vietnamese immigrants in France, but for anyone who experienced displacement. Family archive images create immediate familiarity. They allow viewers to connect with something ordinary that has been elevated into something sacred. Something comforting. Like a hug.

When my work entered national collections and prestigious private collections, alongside exhibitions in institutional spaces, I felt immense gratitude. It felt like building a pantheon for my family, for ordinary people who endured so that we could arrive at this moment. When my gallery told me about my first national acquisition, I shared it with my family because they are the ones in those photographs. They answered: “You made us eternal.” Something felt sealed that day.

How did engaging with the collection at Fotomuseum Winterthur influence the way you thought about continuity and rupture?

At first, I approached the collection intuitively. I projected my intimate experiences onto it, searching for emotional dialogues. Through conversations with Alessandra Nappo, who curated the exhibition, I realised that shared experience often begins in the heart. Visual familiarity plays a crucial role in my practice, especially because visual interpretation shaped how I communicated with my parents.

I observe posture, gesture, the position of a body, whether human, animal, natural, or inanimate, and transfer meaning into it. Feeling a living presence in animals, nature, or objects is essential in this exhibition. It creates this bond I seek between all existing forms. How rupture, separation, displacement, disconnection, loss forces you to create a familiar environment in order to survive those catastrophes that life brings.

At this moment in your practice, what feels most urgent to protect from disappearance?

We are living through a moment where images can be generated endlessly. With the rise of AI, the boundaries between constructed, manipulated, and lived realities are becoming increasingly fluid. I am not against these tools, I believe they can expand vision, open new territories, and help us explore imagination in ways we could not before. But what feels urgent to protect is the emotional chaos at the origin of an image. An authentic image does not come from perfection. It comes from friction. From doubt. From memory that resists clarity. From vulnerability. From something unresolved. If AI becomes a tool that polishes everything into seamless surfaces, then we risk losing the trembling part, the hesitation, the fragility, that makes an artwork human. For me, truth in image-making is not about documentary purity. It is about emotional sincerity. About allowing the image to carry the weight of lived experience, even if that experience is fragmented, distorted, or dreamlike. Technology can assist vision, but it should not replace the internal necessity to create. What I want to protect is the space where imperfection, memory, and emotional disorder can still shape an image. Because that disorder is not a flaw it is the proof that a human being stood behind it. And that presence matters.

Nhu Xuan Hua, Untitled, Archive from the year ’72, 2016-2021
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

Nhu Xuan Hua, Chen, 2016
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

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One Another – Nhu Xuan Hua and the Collection of Fotomuseum Winterthur is on view at Fotomuseum Winterthur to 11 October 2026.

credits
header image: Nhu Xuan Hua, Home, Archive from the year ’72, 2016-2021
(c) Nhu Xuan Hua, courtesy of the Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard

Loose Joints *Editing Photobooks, Materiality and Contemporary Photography

Editing the Language of Images at Loose Joints

written LE MILE

Around the world, photographers continue to return to the book as a place where images can gather, unfold and remain in conversation with one another over time. Within that landscape, Loose Joints has become one of the most attentive independent publishers shaping how contemporary photographic work enters the world as a physical object.

You Are What You Do by Daniel Arnold
Published by Loose Joints
© Daniel Arnold, 2025. Courtesy of Loose Joints

Founded in 2014 by Lewis Chaplin and Sarah Piegay Espenon, Loose Joints emerged during a moment of renewed energy around independent publishing, when new forms of self-publishing, book fairs and specialist bookshops began creating momentum around the photobook again. Rather than responding to a defined gap, the project grew organically from that atmosphere. The ambition was simple and precise, to publish the kinds of books the founders themselves wanted to see in the world and to work closely with artists whose practices demanded a carefully considered editorial form.

At the centre of Loose Joints lies a sustained conversation with artists, with each publication developing through an extended process that moves from editing and sequencing to design, production and distribution, all handled within the publishing house itself. This continuity allows the structure of the book to emerge slowly, with the pacing of images, the scale of the format and the tactile qualities of paper and binding becoming part of the work’s meaning.

The photobook becomes a space where visual thinking takes shape across pages. The rhythm of the sequence carries the reader through a field of images that gradually reveals its internal logic. Chaplin and Espenon reflect on that editorial process through a selection of recent titles: Roe Ethridge’s Rude in the Good Way, Hicham Benohoud’s The Classroom, Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do and Tealia Ellis Ritter’s The Model Family. Each project approaches identity, memory and authorship from a different angle while revealing the quiet intensity with which Loose Joints continues to shape contemporary photographic publishing.

The Model Family by Tealia Ellis Ritter
Published by Loose Joints
© Tealia Ellis Ritter, 2021. Courtesy of Loose Joints

LE MILE
Loose Joints was founded in 2014, at a moment when photography books were already abundant but attention was fragmenting. Looking back, what gap did you feel urgently needed to exist then, and how has that original intuition shifted over time?

Loose Joints
I wouldn’t describe 2014 as a moment of fragmentation in a negative sense. If anything, it was a moment of expansion. From around 2010 onwards, there was a significant resurgence of interest in independent photographic publishing — driven by new models of self-publishing, greater online accessibility, and a network of bookfairs and bookshops that created momentum around the format. Loose Joints emerged organically from that context. We didn’t start with a mission to fill a gap, but rather to make the kinds of books we wanted to see in the world by artists whose work wasn’t always finding a home in mainstream publishing. That early experimental impulse has remained central, but the scale and depth of what we do has grown with time.

What does independence actually mean on an editorial level, in the day-to-day decisions around selection, sequencing, scale, and pacing?


For us, editorial independence means being closely involved at every stage of the process. We rarely work with external editors or designers. Every book is the result of a direct and sustained conversation with the artist. Beyond the editorial side, we also handle our own production, distribution, fulfilment and press, which allows us to remain flexible and responsive. Independence isn’t just about content. It’s about being able to adapt and make decisions quickly and thoughtfully, from concept through to delivery.

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud
Published by Loose Joints
© Hicham Benohoud. Courtesy of Loose Joints

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud
Published by Loose Joints
© Hicham Benohoud. Courtesy of Loose Joints

What signals tell you that a body of work is ready to become a book rather than remain an exhibition, an archive, or a loose constellation of images?

We rarely approach books as translations of exhibitions. Most of what we publish has never been shown in a gallery context, and if it has, the book tends to take a different form entirely. We’re interested in work that feels like it belongs on the page, where the rhythm of the book adds something to the experience of the images. That often means the project has a certain internal coherence or narrative potential, but we also respond to a sense of urgency or necessity in the artist’s voice.

How do you balance editorial authorship with restraint, especially when the work touches on identity, politics, or intimacy?

It’s about building trust. Some projects require more input from us, others are already quite fully formed. But we always take time to understand the artist’s perspective and what they’re trying to communicate. When the subject matter is personal or political, our role is often to help create space for the work to speak clearly and with intention, without over-framing or reducing its complexity. That balance comes from knowing when to support and when to step back.

What does the book still offer that digital circulation cannot, particularly in relation to memory and authorship?

Books and digital platforms serve different purposes, and we see them as complementary rather than oppositional. We invest heavily in how our books are communicated online, through press materials, photography, video, and digital previews, because the majority of people will encounter the work that way. But the book remains a unique medium. It offers a structure, a rhythm, and a physical experience that can’t be replicated digitally. It allows for a sustained engagement with the work, and for many photographers, it remains the most meaningful and durable way of presenting their ideas.

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud revisits work made decades ago but reads as sharply contemporary. What drew you to this project now, and how do you approach reactivating historical material without flattening its original context?

We had seen a small selection from The Classroom years earlier and were immediately struck by its visual language, a bold use of performance, politics and the body that felt surprisingly current. The work was created in the 1990s in Morocco by a self-taught photographer working with his students, using a darkroom he built next to the classroom. It was ahead of its time in many ways. For this new edition, we worked closely with Hicham to access the full archive of negatives, many of which had never been printed. Sarah Chaplin Espenon edited directly from the contact sheets, allowing us to revisit the material at its source and present a fuller, more nuanced reading of the work.

You Are What You Do by Daniel Arnold
Published by Loose Joints
© Daniel Arnold, 2025. Courtesy of Loose Joints

Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do draws from an immense archive of street photography. When editing a body of work drawn from such an immense archive, how do you decide what ultimately shapes the book?

Daniel’s working method is compulsive and nonlinear — he doesn’t build in series, so it was important to establish an internal logic that felt true to the work. Sarah and Daniel went through thousands of images, looking for visual threads and emotional contrasts that could shape the structure of the book. The aim was to reflect the depth and spontaneity of Daniel’s photography, while creating a form that gave the reader room to breathe. Compared to his earlier work, this book feels more reflective. it shows the full range of his practice, from the loud and absurd to the quiet and intimate.

How do you think about taste, desire, and discomfort when editing Rude in the Good Way by Roe Ethridge, where commercial, personal, and art photography intersect?

Rude in the Good Way began as a small idea — a fourth book to sit alongside Roe’s three earliest self-published titles, which we were reissuing as a set (In the Beginning). But over time it expanded into a standalone project, as Roe began exploring themes of sexuality and desire and we encouraged him to take this further. The editing process was about embracing the friction in his work — between polished and lo-fi, humour and vulnerability, image and intent. Roe’s practice is inherently layered, and this book allowed us to surface a different register within it.

The Model Family by Tealia Ellis Ritter deals with proximity, family, and long-term looking. How does editing change when the photographer is so deeply entangled with their subject, and when time itself becomes the main material?

Tealia’s work is emotionally complex: it’s about family, but it doesn’t romanticise. The photographs span decades and blend personal material with more inscrutable images, so part of the challenge was finding a structure that could reflect that fluidity. We deliberately avoided a chronological approach. The captions, placed along the bottom edge of the pages, create a kind of fractured timeline that shifts across generations. The aim was to build a book that reflects the instability and ambiguity of memory without simplifying the work’s emotional landscape.

The Model Family by Tealia Ellis Ritter
Published by Loose Joints
© Tealia Ellis Ritter, 2021. Courtesy of Loose Joints

Across these four books, identity appears as something unstable, negotiated, and often unresolved. How do you approach projects where identity is central but resists clear definition?

The projects we respond to tend to hold tension, or ambiguity, or complexity. In those cases, our role is to ensure the book holds space for those qualities without flattening them. That requires time and sensitivity — and often means spending extended periods with the artist to understand how the work relates to their broader practice and background.

Your books are immediately recognisable as objects, so how early do material decisions such as format, binding, or paper enter your process, and how closely are they tied to the psychological register of the work?

Those decisions are made early, often in parallel with the edit. We begin each project by thinking through its material and tactile qualities, as well as practical questions like scale, pricing, and durability. We design all our books ourselves, and for us, production is never a decorative layer, it’s an extension of the concept. The format, binding, and finish should all deepen the reader’s experience and reflect something essential about the work.

Many younger photographers look to independent publishers as cultural gatekeepers, so how do you remain open to new voices without reproducing a fixed aesthetic or house style?

We keep our submissions open, and over half our projects each year are initiated by us reaching out to artists whose work we’ve discovered or admired. We’re not interested in cultivating a house aesthetic. Our list is diverse by design, and what links the books we publish is a sense of urgency, clarity, and commitment. We look for work that feels essential to the artist, and for artists who see the book as a meaningful stage in the life of the work, not just a credential or endpoint.

Finally, when you imagine Loose Joints ten years from now, what do you hope will feel continuous, and what do you actively hope will have changed?

What I hope remains is the focus: a number of carefully developed projects each year, produced with care and rigour. We do not believe that growth is a sustainable model for both the world and for a publisher. What I’d like to see change is the level of structural support available to publishers. Production costs have risen dramatically in recent years — we’ve seen increases of over 40% since 2019 — and these increases create more reliance on outside funding to make books happen at the level and scope we set for our releases. Meanwhile, the wider photography ecosystem continues to lean heavily on independent publishers to support emerging voices and take creative risks and reveal the artists of tomorrow, often without commensurate funding. If that doesn’t shift, we’ll start losing the very publishers that play crucial roles in making the contemporary photography landscape as rich as it is.

Rude in the Good Way by Roe Ethridge
LuLu With Pink Bow Panties
Published by Loose Joints
© Roe Ethridge. Courtesy of Loose Joints

Rude in the Good Way by Roe Ethridge
Lindesey Lohan at a Gas Station in Miami for Interview Magazine
Published by Loose Joints
© Roe Ethridge. Courtesy of Loose Joints

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credits
header image: Rude in the Good Way by Roe Ethridge, Published by Loose Joints, ©Roe Ethridge, 2025. Courtesy of Loose Joints

Dora Abodi — ABODI Transylvania and The Chronicles

As It Stands
The Chronicles of Dora Abodi

interview with DORA ABODI
story by HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

ABODI Transylvania Wearable Art Collection: Chronicles 1

At the core of ABODI Transylvania is a world of stories.
Forms evolve, but the narratives endure.

My work has a literary dimension.
I create characters that inhabit each silhouette.

The Chronicles mirror the present.
Dracula embodies fear of the outsider and the cost of eternal youth.
Ancient gods represent natural forces we have lost touch with.

Antique hemp, handwoven fabrics, and vintage lace carry the passage of time.

ABODI Transylvania Wearable Art Collection: Chronicles 1

ABODI Transylvania Wearable Art Collection: Chronicles 1

The collection took a year and a half.
Two principal seamstresses and one pattern maker.
I sculpt the ceramic elements.

Wearable art is an autonomous object.
On the body, it transforms.

Elisabeth Báthory fascinates me.
She managed her own estates and was labelled a bloodthirsty monster.

When an idea feels right, I follow it, even if opinions differ.
I release only what I consider excellent, refusing to compromise on integrity.

Even the simplest garment, like a T-shirt, should be passed down through generations.

ABODI Transylvania Wearable Art Collection: Chronicles 1

ABODI Transylvania Wearable Art Collection: Chronicles 1

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ABODI Transylvania Wearble art collection Chronicles 1
creative director at ABODI Transylvania Dora Abodi
photograper Szilveszter Makó
talent Ursula Wångander

set design + illustrations Obsidian Lune
executive producer Siyan Chen
grooming Chiara Giangrossi
strategic consultant Peter Szurszabo

Tom Ducarouge — Industrial Design and Craftsmanship

Shaping the Future of Industrial Design with Tom Ducarouge

written + interview MELANIA MUSCI

Tom Ducarouge has shaped his creative identity between London and Paris. In the former, he began his studies and first approached the world of industrial design; in the latter, his birthplace, he returned to establish his own creative studio. Although several collaborations brought him back to London after his time at Central Saint Martins, Ducarouge found himself missing Paris’s decorative heritage. Those influences, combined with the professional network he had begun building in France before moving to London, became the springboard for a series of collaborations that positioned his name among the most notable in today’s international industrial design landscape.

stool design for GUCCI
/created by Tom Ducarouge

One of the defining traits of his work is the synergy between digital processes and craftsmanship. The world of craft and the stories it carries fascinates him more and more each day, pushing him to learn traditional techniques and explore how they can evolve to enhance the functionality of each object. Rimowa, On Running, New Balance, and many others are among the brands he has collaborated with so far, always managing to express his vision within each project. In a landscape where creating pieces for brand activations has become an increasingly compelling niche, Tom Ducarouge navigates it while remaining true to himself, designing pieces built to last.

portrait of Tom Ducarouge
/ photographed by Alfie Whiteman

Melania Musci
What sparked your initial interest in design, and what convinced you that this was the direction you wanted to pursue?

Tom Ducarouge
I trace my first real encounter with design back to the 2012 World Expo in Shanghai. It was the first time I understood how design could take shape within society. I remember being struck by the UK Pavilion designed by Thomas Heatherwick, a structure that combined thousands of seeds collected from around the world, each encased in optical fibers so that light passing through the building revealed them from within. It was an extraordinary fusion of architecture and design, and it remains one of my strongest memories of what creativity can achieve when supported by true technical mastery.

After that experience, I pursued a BA and then an MA in product and industrial design, which allowed me to explore the full spectrum of the discipline. Over time, I began to understand which direction within this world resonated most with me. Quite early, at the very beginning of my studies, I found myself naturally drawn toward design direction. Step by step, through specific installations and projects I encountered along the way, I reached the moment of clarity where I thought: this is exactly what I want to do.

After completing your studies in London, what ultimately drew you back to France? Was it a personal impulse, a professional opportunity, or something rooted in your creative identity?

Returning to France was, above all, a matter of identity. I grew up in Paris, and the city’s decorative heritage, its mouldings, parquet floors, and the way these classical elements can be reinterpreted through contemporary materials, has always been a strong source of inspiration for me. I’ve always felt a deeper connection to French decorative codes than to the British ones.
Paris was also where my personal and professional network was rooted. Even though our field increasingly operates across borders and new connections emerge in many cities, the community I felt most confident building my studio with was the one I already knew in France. Starting my practice in a place where I understood the ecosystem, and where people understood me, made the transition natural.
When I left London, I continued collaborating with the city for another year and a half through a project with Alexander McQueen, designing textile textures intended to support relaxation through breathing exercises. So I remained closely linked to London, and I still travel there often. I feel very connected to the city but my heart belongs to Paris.

What was the very first material you experimented with when you began designing? Do you still work with it today, or has your practice gradually shifted toward different material territories?

The first material I ever worked with was wood. It’s the most accessible starting point for any designer, because most workshops are equipped for woodworking, and it teaches the fundamentals: how to assemble and how to understand structure. At Central Saint Martins I spent a great deal of time in the wood workshop, learning those basics.
When I began working professionally, however, I shifted toward metal. It offered greater efficiency, shorter production times, and a level of strength and precision that allowed me to deliver projects within budget and with the clean finish I wanted. Wood is beautiful, but it’s more expensive and requires more time to handle properly. Metal became the practical solution, especially once I found an excellent workshop in France that I still collaborate with today.

Metal remains central to my practice, but over time our material palette has expanded. At my studio we now work with stone, glass, coloured glass, mirrors, and of course wood as well. Different materials coexist in our practice, each chosen for what it can express within a given project.

Amel Bench
/created by Tom Ducarouge + photographed by Charles Michalet

Amel Bench
/created by Tom Ducarouge + photographed by Charles Michalet

Your practice blends digital tools and handcraft in a remarkably fluid way. Digital processes come naturally to someone of your generation, but what about craftsmanship? Was it something passed down to you by someone, or did you seek it out independently?

For me, craftsmanship has always been tied to a love of learning. When I was a child, my favorite subject at school was history, because every day brought a new story. Working with craftsmen feels very similar: each encounter reveals a new story about a material or a technique that discovery process is what I enjoy most.

Industrial manufacturing is efficient, rational, and fast, and as professionals we rely on that. But I’ve always valued maintaining a balance between industry and craft. Taking the time to understand how things are made, meeting the people behind the techniques, and learning from them is a fundamental part of my practice.
Over the years I’ve built a kind of internal toolbox: the machines I like to use, the materials I know well, and others I’m still discovering. Working with recurring materials and techniques naturally creates a continuity in my design language. Whether I’m designing a small ring, a piece of packaging, or a large-scale installation for Louis Vuitton or New Balance, there are shared codes, finishes, shapes, gestures that come from that toolbox. In a way, that’s where my identity as a designer truly lies.

And which material from your toolbox do you find yourself returning to most often?

prefer not to single out one material, because every project has its own logic and its own constraints. Sometimes stone is the right answer: it’s heavy, stable, and ideal for outdoor pieces that need to remain in place and withstand time and weather. In other cases, aluminium becomes the most efficient solution, especially when a project requires a metal finish but must remain extremely lightweight, for example when it needs to be shipped by air or carried in a bag. In those situations, steel wouldn’t make sense, but aluminium would. So the choice always depends on the brief and on the final function of the object.

For your project with On Running, you created a heat‑sensitive table that shifts in tone upon touch, while your Jagged Chair was shaped through sand‑casting and surely you’ve explored many other techniques. Which process or method has been the most eye‑opening for you, the one that opened doors to new worlds?

There are many, but one of the first processes that truly struck me was hand‑riveting. It allowed me to assemble metal components without heavy machinery, just a simple rivet gun, which gave me a lot of freedom in the studio.

My work with heat‑sensitive materials also opened an entirely new field. Before the On Running table, I had already experimented with thermoreactive pigments for two commissions in London, creating cushions and seating pieces that changed tone upon touch. Translating that effect from fabric to metal, however, was a real challenge: fabric absorbs pigment, while metal doesn’t, so we had to develop a surface treatment that was durable, non‑scratch, and responsive despite the material’s natural temperature shifts. The On Table pushed the technique further than ever, and although it was demanding, the outcome and the feedback made the entire process incredibly rewarding.

You’ve already collaborated with major brands such as Gucci, Rimowa, New Balance, and Arc’teryx. These projects that exposed you to audiences and contexts far beyond traditional industrial design. Is there a field or world you haven’t explored yet that you would like to engage with in the future?

Absolutely. My long‑term goal has always been to work with proper furniture companies. Designing furniture is what I studied, and it’s what I still do every day in the studio. But when I entered the professional world, I quickly realised that the market for independent furniture designers is extremely small. Many brands rely on their existing catalogues, re‑editions, or simple colour updates, and they rarely take risks on new voices.

For a while, this was frustrating since I had imagined a different path after my studies. Then I found a niche that allowed me to keep designing furniture, but in a different context: creating pieces for brand activations. The stools we made for Gucci, the table for Louis Vuitton, the furniture for New Balance; these pieces are all kept, used, and circulated, which is incredibly rewarding, even if it’s not traditional retail design.
Still, my ambition remains the same: to collaborate with a furniture company like Vitra or Knoll and develop a line that enters production and stays in the world. That’s a life goal for me, and it’s the direction I’m actively working toward.

LVMH prize 2025 tables design
/ created by Tom Ducarouge

Louis Vuitton tables for a cocktail event in Palma
/ created by Tom Ducarouge

This issue of LE MILE revolves around the theme of identity. When working with global brands - projects that inevitably involve broader commercial frameworks - how do you preserve your own design identity? How do you balance your personal signature with the narrative of a large‑scale client?

In the beginning it was more challenging, because I still had to prove that I could deliver something aligned with what these brands were looking for. But today the dynamic is very different. Clients come to my studio because they trust my team’s vision and mine. They want our creative input, and that’s the core of the collaboration. We handle the manufacturing, of course, but the creative direction is the main reason they reach out.

What matters most is understanding the brief with absolute clarity. We need to meet the functional expectations of the project, but creatively there is no real struggle. That part is actually the most enjoyable moment of the process: we receive the brief, we respond with several creative options, and the dialogue begins. The real challenge usually lies in producing the piece at the highest quality within very tight timelines.

In what ways does sustainability shape the identity of your projects? Do you have practical examples of how this dimension influences your design decisions?

Sustainability is part of our process, but we don’t present ourselves as a “sustainable studio”. If we were truly sustainable, we wouldn’t produce anything new at all. What we do instead is make conscious decisions at every stage. For events, for example, we often combine what we manufacture with vintage or rental pieces. Over time we’ve built a strong network of galleries across Europe, which allows us to avoid remaking furniture for every project.
As our studio grows, we also work with more recurring clients, which means we can design pieces to be dismantled, stored, and reused. A good example is the furniture we created for ROA Hiking, an Italian brand part of Slam Jam. It was first used in Paris, then reused in Munich, and it will be adapted again for their next showroom. Around 90% of that collection is reusable, and we can keep modifying elements as needed. We apply the same logic with New Balance, designing pieces that can travel from one activation to another.

Material choices follow the same mindset. We often use raw aluminium or untreated wood so that components can be easily recycled or repurposed after an event. For me, this isn’t a separate “sustainability strategy”; it’s simply part of designing responsibly and avoiding unnecessary production whenever possible.

How do you imagine the evolution of your design identity in the coming years?

In the next few years, I’d love to develop more retail projects. We already have a few in progress, and it’s a direction that feels very natural for us; designing pieces that are meant to stay, not just serve a temporary activation. At the same time, as the studio grows, it becomes harder to carve out time for our own experiments, but keeping that space alive is essential. I want us to continue developing our own objects every year, not only client work. Another important direction is working abroad. Designing only for France feels too limited. What I learned at Central Saint Martins, being surrounded by dozens of nationalities, showed me how much richer design becomes when it’s shaped by different cultures and perspectives. That’s something I want to keep applying to the way we build the studio.

So the evolution I imagine is this: more retail, more international collaborations, more local manufacturing close to each project, and always the possibility to experiment. That balance is what will keep our identity growing.

Side table created for New Balance in Valencia as part of a custom furniture
/ created by Tom Ducarouge

WAVVYBOI — About Finding Beauty in the Dark

wavvyboi Believes Darkness Tells the Truth

interview + written KLAAS HAMMER

Some artists write songs; wavvyboi builds entire worlds. Blending alternative rock, gothic romance, and unapologetic emotional honesty, the rising artist has created a universe where vulnerability and theatricality coexist. From vampire-inspired symbolism to the intimate connection with his online community, every visual and every lyric feels like part of a larger narrative. In conversation with LE MILE, wavvyboi opens up about identity, transformation, digital intimacy, and why darkness can be one of the most beautiful ways to tell the truth.

wavvyboi wears top by ROKH, jacket by HAN KJØBENHAVN, and pants by HELMUT LANG

wavvyboi wears a total look by MARKE

Klaas Hammer
Your music and visual world feel deeply connected — where did the “vampire” aesthetic come from, and what does it represent for you personally?

wavvyboi
I think the vampire thing started less as a conscious aesthetic decision and more as a feeling that I kept coming back to. Ever since I was a child I've always been drawn to those kinds of movies and books, the dark, romantic and dramatic stories where beauty and danger exist in the same place. There is something about vampires that feels very lonely, theatrical and wounded but also powerful so I’m very fascinated by those dualities and I see myself constantly going through those stages in my life. Vampires are the perfect metaphor for feeling different from the daylight version of the world and my music wants to give those feelings a place to exist. The world of wavvyboi is all about being sensitive but intense, soft but dangerous on stage, full of glam but always honest. My wish is to turn loneliness and grief into something beautiful and in a way, that’s exactly what vampires do.

Who has inspired you the most throughout your musical journey — not only musically, but also in terms of attitude, fashion, or storytelling?

’ve always been inspired by artists who build entire worlds around themselves. My dad introduced me to so many great rockstars when I was young, from Jimi Hendrix to David Bowie, Placebo and My Chemical Romance. David Bowie has definitely been a huge inspiration for me because he made transformation feel like an art form. He showed that being different, theatrical and constantly changing can be powerful instead of something you need to hide. Brian Molko also helped me feel seen as a queer person at a very young age, and Kurt Cobain made me want to practise my instruments more and understand how storytelling can live inside music. Nick Cave probably influenced my attitude a little too much, haha.

When I started playing with my band as a teenager, I was already obsessed with the whole world around music, fashion and art. Everyone needed the right outfits, the pictures had to look right, the lights had to feel right, I was annoying everyone around me because everything had to be connected. That is just how my brain works.
Also very important: While other people were out hanging with friends, I was at home studying music videos, interviews and Wikipedia pages of artists I loved. I think every one of those artists gave me another piece of the puzzle that eventually became wavvyboi.

wavvyboi wears shirt by DSQUARED2, pants by MILK OF LIME, FASHION ARCHIVE shoes, and sunglasses by BALENCIAGA

A lot of your fans connect with the emotional atmosphere of your music online, especially on TikTok. How do you experience the relationship between your digital community and your artistic identity?

I think my digital community has become a very important part of my universe over the last few years, and I’m very happy about that because it is something I always wished for when I was younger. I want my world to give a voice to people who maybe don’t feel like they have one, and I want them to feel seen inside this community. I give them a piece of my emotional world, and they give it back to me with their own meaning attached to it. That exchange makes the music feel so much more alive.
Of course, I also had to learn that having an online community comes with impact and responsibility. The things you share can really affect people, so there is always a double-edged sword when it comes to art and social media and my screen time is sadly not the best (there are too many good edits out there).

But there is always something beautiful happening in our community: A few weeks ago, I noticed someone creating an animatic for my latest single “wanderlust,” and it completely blew my mind. We loved it so much that we decided to hire her to create a full lyric video for the song. Moments like that are amazing to me, because it means the music is inspiring other people to create their own art too. I like to call myself a digital vampire sometimes.

Your sound moves between vulnerability and (soft) darkness. Do you consciously try to balance emotional honesty with creating a mysterious persona?

I love that thought but I don’t think I consciously try to balance those things, because for me they naturally belong together. The darkness is not there to hide my vulnerability, somehow it is there to give it all a shape.

I write about very honest feelings: grief, vulnerability, desire, loneliness, pride, being used, wanting to escape your own body sometimes. Those are very real things to me. But I don’t always want to present them in a plain or realistic way. I need a world around them. I need drama, symbols, beauty, a little bit of mystery. It’s funny I always tell the people on my Twitch streams that I should be more nonchalant but somehow I can’t be, also I’m pretty bad at playing the game "among us" because I can’t lie whenever I need to play as an imposter. Online I can be very open, silly and direct but as soon as I enter the world of my music or step on stage, something changes and I fall into a more theatrical version of myself. Sometimes it is easier to say something deeply honest when you dress it in glitter, soft-darkness and drama (at least for me).

wavvyboi wears top by AUTEL and pants by HELMUT LANG

Social media often pushes artists to constantly reveal themselves. How do you maintain mystique while still staying connected to your audience?

You really need to get a feeling for it and I’m still searching for the perfect balance but somehow it is working fine for me the way I’m doing it right now. I try to share emotions more than explanations. I don’t need to show every private part of my life for people to feel close to me but I’ve developed a feeling for which things could be interesting and important. In the end you just need to be authentic and honest that's what it's all about.

I love being connected to my audience, and I’m very grateful that we can have such a direct conversation online. But I also think artists need shadows and times where they can study to become better artists. For example, when I’m in writing sessions or working in the studio, I might share a small glimpse of the process but the deeper emotional development is something I often keep to myself until the song is ready - people will discover it later through the music and not through the short sound on Tiktok.
There is a difference between being honest and being constantly available.

If someone entered the “world of wavvyboi” for the very first time — through one song, one visual, and one feeling — what would you want them to experience?

I want them to feel every emotion they were never allowed to feel before.
The song would probably be “black glitter,” because it feels like an entrance into my world and my emotions. It is the song that finally helped me shape my music and identity. All the dramatic guitars, all the honest emotions, it feels like an answer to all the people who did not accept me over the years. It tells them that I am not ashamed of the person I am, and that is what I want people to feel when they listen to it.

Visually, I would want them to see my “wanderlust” music video or live footage from one of my shows. The “wanderlust” music video shows the fragile, haunted and emotional side of my world, while the live footage shows who I become on stage, raw, theatrical, overdramatic, but still honest. I think those two sides together explain wavvyboi quite well: the fragile emotions and the dramatic guitars.
For the feeling: you are not too much here, and you are valid the way you are. If you feel different, wounded or unable to explain your emotions, there is a place for you in this world and hopefully my music can show you that. <3

wavvyboi wears shirt and jacket by DIESEL

wavvyboi wears a total look by MARKE

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talent WAVVYBOI
photography MARIO PALUFI
photography assistant NICOLAI SAUER
styling + interview KLAAS HAMMER
hair + make up PHILIPP VERHEYEN

credits
all Images (c) LE MILE and Mario Palufi

SKYE NEWMAN — SE9 Part 2, Healing, Identity and Taking Back Power

Why Skye Newman Had to Return to SE9

interview + written KLAAS HAMMER

With SE9 Part 2, available to stream on Spotify, Skye Newman delivers her most personal work to date. Exploring identity, inherited trauma, healing and self-discovery, the project transforms deeply intimate experiences into stories that resonate far beyond her own. In conversation with LE MILE, she reflects on the making of the record, the courage it takes to embrace vulnerability, the importance of setting boundaries, and the everyday inspirations that continue to shape her creative world.

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Klaas Hammer
"SE9 Part 2" is named after the postcode that shaped your childhood. Looking back, what are the most important lessons and experiences from SE9 that still influence the artist and woman you are today?

Skye Newman
Looking back, the most important lessons and experiences from SE9 that still influence the artist and woman I am today are probably the ones I talk about in “Vicious Cycle” and “Too Far South.” Those two, in particular, really stand out to me because they’re about taking back my power, finding more strength in myself, and facing things that I didn’t necessarily feel comfortable facing a little while back.

I think they carry really important lessons in life. It’s about trying to do our best for the next generation and making sure we become better versions of ourselves before we have children. We need to be aware of how much the way we view ourselves affects our children. And “Too Far South” is also about being selfish with your life in the best way. I think so many people don’t realize that you need to put yourself first before you can be the best version of yourself for the people you love and the ones around you.

There are so many important messages throughout the project. You can definitely hear even more by just listening and really taking in the music.

Throughout the project, you explore themes such as inherited trauma, identity and emotional survival with remarkable honesty. Was there a particular song on the record that felt especially difficult—or liberating—to write?

There were definitely a few songs on the album that felt more difficult to write, but also incredibly freeing at the same time: “Too Far South,” “Traumatised,” “Vicious Cycle,” and I think “Family Matters” is a big one. I got to process a lot of emotion and heal so much through writing this album, which was such an incredible experience. That’s why I love music so much, and I’m so happy that my music has reached people and carried the message I wanted to share: that no matter where you come from or what you’re facing in life, you can do whatever you believe in. You just have to believe in yourself to get where you want to go.

So yeah, there were definitely times when I struggled in the studio. And I think “Woman I Am,” as beautiful as the song is, was definitely a turning point in my life. It was a moment where I realized how incredible women are and how amazing it is to have that love around me, but also to acknowledge the struggles I’ve had to go through in order to truly realize that.
But yeah, it was such a beautiful experience and such an amazing thing to be able to write about, so I’m very lucky.

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

One of your greatest strengths as a songwriter is transforming deeply personal experiences into stories that feel universally relatable. As your audience continues to grow, how do you balance vulnerability with the need to protect parts of your private life?

I would definitely say this is one of the hardest parts of my job: trying to balance vulnerability with the need to protect my private life and my own personal business. It can definitely be a struggle at times. Facing a lot of these issues in such a public space can be really, really scary, and I do get people overstepping boundaries or digging too deep into things. But I think you just have to trust the process, write your music, allow yourself to heal through it, and simply not answer questions you don’t feel comfortable with.

I’ve been in interviews where certain things have been said or questions have been asked, and I’ve just thought, “I’m not comfortable with that.” And I think that’s okay. It’s important to set boundaries. It’s definitely hard sometimes because there are certain subjects you may want to talk about more, but then it becomes a domino effect—more questions, more attention, and more people trying to get too deeply into your personal life.

I think you just have to set those boundaries and be aware that people are going to pry and people are going to want to know, but that doesn’t mean you have to tell them. Just do what you’re comfortable with.

Beyond music, what currently inspires you the most—whether it’s books, films, fashion, art or everyday moments—and how do those influences find their way into your creative world?

Beyond music, so many things influence and inspire me. That goes for films, clothing, my personal style, and fashion—I love it so much! I love putting an outfit together because it expresses how I’m feeling that day or the stage of life I’m currently going through. I definitely think all of that plays a part in creating my art. I think it all builds towards creating who you are as a brand and who you are as an artist to the world. I think a lot of people connect with my style and my love for fashion, and it allows me to share a little more of my story.

I also take so much inspiration from the people around me every day and from my experiences with them. Even a small conversation with a stranger can be inspiring. There’s so much inspiration in the world if you just step outside and talk to people. It’s crazy how much you can discover, and it’s such a beautiful experience that I then get to turn into music. So yeah, I’m very, very lucky. As I said, it’s amazing—and thank you guys for always giving me inspiration.

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all images courtesy of Sony Music